Workshop of the

University of Alaska

System Governance Council

Wednesday, August 24, 1994

Beginning at 9:00am

via videoconference

Fairbanks video site: 212B Butrovich Building

Anchorage site, University Lake Building Video Conference Room

Juneau site: Library Conference Room

with audioconference hookups to student leaders at other sites

Minutes

1. Call to order and roll call

Present:

Donna Chantry, Chair Kate Wattum

Eric Heyne John Dede

Richard Hacker Joe Hayes

Paula Long

Absent:

Scott Trible Diane Owens

Jack Dalton

Guests:

Mike Humphrey, SW Office of Human Resources

Nanne Myers, Academic Affairs

Alison Elgee, SW Budget Office

John Lehman, UACN

Jim Lynch, SW Finance Office

Patty Kastelic, SW Office of Human Resources

Pat Ivey, System Governance Office

Jeannine Burnett, System Governance Office

Since a quorum of members was not present, a workshop was

held regarding the agenda items.

2. Adopt agenda

MOTION (Moved by Long, seconded by Dede)

"The System Governance Council moves to adopt the agenda for

the August 24, 1994 meeting. This action is effective August 24,

1994."

3. Approve minutes

MOTION (Moved by Dede, seconded by Hayes)

"The System Governance Council moves to approve the minutes

for the July 11, 1994 meeting, with the change to remove

members titles from their names. This action is effective August

24, 1994."

4. Program Assessment update; unity reports from August 18-

19 Board of Regents meeting

Donna Chantry asked Nanne Myers if she had any new

information about Program Assessment, such as timelines and

program inventory.

She stated that as far as the calendar, originally they had set

their goal of establishing the inventory by June 30, and by July

1, identifying all the inter-campus issues. This proved to be

harder than anticipated. Over the summer, the Systemwide

Academic Council has been trying to bring together the processes

on each campus in identifying the programs for study. They

have been looking very hard of what kinds of data to use. The

Academic Council has been working with Institutional Research

and the President to use the data in a way to get good

management data. This seems to be gathering momentum as

they gather responses from the campuses.

A meeting took place between the Academic Council and the

Student Affairs officers on August 23. The Student Affairs

officers seem to really have everything together, they have an

inventory, have established some intercampus issues, and have a

good document for gathering data.

On August 24 the Academic Officers, Business officers, and

Student Affairs officers will meet together. She stated that the

academic officers isn't coming together as readily, basically

because the differences in the processes, and that the processes

involve the faculty to different degrees over the summer at each

campus. There will be a meeting between the president, the

chancellors and the systemwide academic council and others of

the president's staff on September 1, to try and bring this all

together and make sure that the intercampus issues and the

inventories on each campus all come together in a coherent

whole. She doesn't expect any documents to come out before

September 2, that provide everything.

Chantry asked when everyone could expect to see documents

from the individual MAU's on inventory. Myers responded that

nothing would be out until after September 1.

John Dede stated that UAA draft inventory came out on this day

over the VAX. He stated that in this document it stated that

there are several systemwide review activities that underway that

will not be part of the program assessment process formally.

These include more systemwide review of opportunities for

coordination between schools of education, business,

engineering, etc. He asked if there had been discussions about

what the linkage can be to the program assessment process with

these separate reviews. Myers responded that it was her

understanding that this would be a part of program assessment

and they have scheduled meeting with the deans, at which point

they will be deciding whether the whole schools, or just certain

programs, would be considered intercampus issues. She felt that

this was not intended to be outside the program assessment.

Dede stated that according to the UAA document, approximately

1/3 of the programs would be categorized in the "C" list. It

appeared that this was a directive of the president. Myers stated

that that was kind of a "best judgment" amount, that it was

somewhere between one quarter and one half.. She stated that

the purpose of program assessment is to find where to save

money, because the basis of this program is to become a more

efficient operation with better quality. The document that the

BOR approved, was one that wanted to look at where the

university wanted to place emphasis on programs to enhance

them, as well as cut, if need be, and also to reorganize where that

would either improve quality or efficiency.

Paula Long stated that the BOR's program assessment document

said, "July 31, Systemwide Academic Council will have identified

intercampus issues to be considered during the process..." She

asked if this had been done. Myers answered no, that this is

what they were still in the process of trying to complete, and

should be settled by September 2.

Dede asked, in their discussions with SWOIR on available data,

are they finding criteria and measures that can be applied

throughout the system. Myers responded that what they are

doing with SWOIR is trying to find the data that can be used with

the criteria that are in the Regents' Policy. There really isn't any

more criteria, as far as on a systemwide basis, although each

MAU and department could find other criteria that could assist

them. SWOIR is currently just trying to get as much data and as

many management ratios as they can to help assist in the

process.

Brian Brubaker asked, on behalf of the student governments,

that at their last meeting they were asking if student

governments would be assessed. As self supported services,

would this be on a one-by-one basis? Myers responded that this

would be a decision that would come up from each MAU, and she

stated that this would be a good time for the students to state

how they feel about it.

Brubaker asked if self supported services would be left off the

inventory, or categorized as "A". Myers stated that she really

didn't have an answer for that right now.

Chantry stated that she is on the Statewide Administration

Program Assessment Committee. Tentatively they want to see

research on budgets and what is happening in program, they've

asked for responses from questionnaires and surveys that were

sent out, so that they can look at those before making decisions

about assessing statewide.

b. Update by John Lehman

Lehman reported that in accordance with the

recommendations from the Kaludis Consulting Group, the IBM

3090 administrative system is now being replaced with a group

of UNIX-based systems from Digital Equipment Corporation as

the initial supplier. They expect to have the changeover entirely

completed within two years. He explained that there is quite a

bit of urgency to complete this because the excess cost of the

IBM, compared to today's new technology, is running the

university approximately $45,000 per month (translated to one

employee per month).

Unfortunately, one of the characteristics of older computer

systems, is you are locked in to them. The only way in which

you can change is to completely replace all of your systems.

With the new UNIX-based system, UACN will no longer be

"locked" into any one hardware vendor and in the future they will

be able to change hardware without changing the software, and

will not have to go through this dramatic process.

The new software will all be based on the Oracle Database

Management System, which will give them good, modern facilities

in information retrieval, not just for people in Institutional

Research, but for everybody. They are also making Oracle

available to those academic units which would need it for

instruction, and it will be free to them.

They are currently replacing the financial systems and

hope to be complete by July, 1995. Resources System will be

next, and they expect to have the student system replaced

between mid to late 1996. The timing on this depends primarily

on the people in the units who use the system, making decisions

on how they want it configured, yet they are trying, for the most

part, not to customize the systems, but are trying to use them

"out of the box" as much as possible, as this will save money

also.

In addition to these changes, they are changing the data

access and security requirements so that, for example, faculty

will automatically be provided with advising data as soon as they

request it, rather than having to wait six months to get

permission, as is currently the case.

The other major item they have been doing is the National

Information Highway, and they have upgraded their internet link

with the lower 48 from 56,000 bits per second, to 1.5 million,

and next year this will be up to slightly over 47 million with the

Super Computer taking up and paying for most of that.

They have also upgraded the connections between

Fairbanks and Anchorage, and Fairbanks and Juneau, by factors

of approximately eight to fifteen and are working on additional

upgrades. Juneau's line will be going direct to Fairbanks, rather

than going through Anchorage, which should remove about 3

points of possible failure for it and will hopefully be more reliable.

In terms of funding, about one-third is coming from

depreciation accrued from the previous systems and remainder is

coming from internal reallocations. UACN, last year, reduced

their spending on existing activities by approximately $750,000,

with some of this going to pay for the new systems and the

remainder going to general funding the university deficits.

In terms of program assessment, in addition to, or in place

of the regular program assessment, he has requested that they

have a systemwide review of information technology, on the

grounds that much of their current organization, which is six to

nine years old, is based on technological assumptions that are no

longer valid.

5. Legislative survey questionnaire and legislative priorities

Chantry asked the members to review the questionnaire and

discuss any changes they felt were necessary.

It was asked whether the second question under demographics,

"Have any of your relatives attended, or are any now attending,

the University of Alaska?", was an important consideration. Pat

Ivey responded that it is in terms of how we might use that

information to strategize legislatively. Chantry stated that she

also feels it is important, especially when you are directly

speaking to a legislator, knowing that either they've gone, or

someone in their family has gone to school at UA, you can really

make your comments with them a little more pointed.

Ivey explained that the results of this survey will be put out onto

the internet by candidate and district and will be retrievable by

all university personnel.

MOTION: (Moved by Dede, seconded by Long, passed

unanimously)

"The System Governance Council moves to approve the 1994

Survey of Legislative and Gubernatorial Candidates, with

minor grammatical changes. This action is effective August

24, 1994."

6. FY96 Operating and Capital Budget status

Alison Elgee stated that initial changes to the FY96 operating and

capital budgets had been submitted to the Board of Regents at

their August meeting in Homer by the chancellors.

The requests were built around planning assumptions of a five

percent increase in general fund for the operating budget and a

budget of $85 million for capital that excludes deferred

maintenance. She stated that they would again be approaching

deferred maintenance as a package as they did last year, but

hopefully with better results.

In addition to the five percent request that the campuses made

for direct kinds of programs, there are also some real specific

items included in the statewide request that will be requested for

the system as a whole and the money distributed back to the

MAUs, should any of those requests be funded. In that area

there is a request for the underfunding of personal services, it

covers whatever may happen in terms of compensation and

benefit increases in FY96. There is also some very specific items

targeted towards distance delivery, health education initiatives

and the business and industry fund.

Elgee stated that realistically the university must anticipate a

cost at level of general fund in FY96. The oil prices are much

better than they were last year, they are now averaging around

$17 per barrel, which is an okay average. She stated that with

this being an election year, the legislative session will be

beginning with a new governor and legislature, and there is a

tremendous public pressure to cut state spending. She feels that

if there is going to be additional funding for items for the

university, it will probably be predominately on the capital side.

Elgee stated that her office is in the finalization process of the

budget proposal, which will go back to the Board of Regents in

September for their approval, and then on to Office of

Management and Budget, the governor and eventually the

legislature.

The building maintenance money continues to be a very high

priority of the Board, and is probably the one area they discussed

most in depth. Elgee stated that they will be continuing to put

that forward as increase general fund support type requests.

But, based on the Board direction, she anticipates that some

methodology to cover building maintenance through reallocation

will be part of the program assessment process.

Relative to FY95, when the Board of Regents adopted the

planning assumption in April, they did it before the legislature

had completed work on the budget, the university was looking at

a house and senate scenario that were anywhere from a 1.5

percent reduction to 3.5. The Board chose to assume in those

planning assumptions that there would be a 1.75 percent

reduction of general fund, and that assessment was made at the

MAU level, based on a percentage of their total general fund that

had been appropriated. When the legislature completed their

work on the budget, that 1.75 percent actually pulled $424,900

more in general funds than they actually had reduced. The

Board had anticipated this in the planning assumptions, so that

that would be redistributed back to campuses based on BOR

priorities. The proposal went to the BOR in August for the

redistribution of that money. $200,000 is going back to

campuses to address the campus security and safety increments

that were proposed from the FY95 budget. It has been allocated

between Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau, but without

specifying which portion of the request it is intended to fund

because the requests were almost $1.5 million.

She noted that there will also be $100,000 distributed back to

campuses for purchases of equipment. There will be a system

set up that will identify equipment matching dollars, so that

these dollars will go to leverage other dollars to purchase

equipment at the campuses. There is $97,000 for supervisor

training and mediation training, and $32,400 is going to cover a

reduction that was made by the legislature to account

communication charge back costs. This was a mistake on the

part of the legislature, in that they were doing this in the context

of the department of administration budget and then allocating

reductions out.

7. Fiscal policies and governance review

Chantry stated that policies 05.02.01-.08, 05.08.02-.03 and

05.14.01-.08, were approved by the Board of Regents before ever

coming before governance. She stated that at this point in time

governance was still able to comment and forward any

recommendations to the president and BOR, either within the

council or within the local governance groups.

She stated that although these were not major changes, it is still

very important that governance groups be given the chance to

respond.

8. Future of the Advance College Tuition Program

Jim Lynch explained that ACT is a legislative mandated program,

the purpose being to enhance the ability for the state to provide

education to the citizens of Alaska. It was actually structured

under the university at its request in 1991. It is designed to

provide an incentive for people to continue and complete their

education, to provide an incentive to improve performance of

students in their grammar, middle and high school, to provide

affordable access to college education, and to improve

recruitment for students for the University of Alaska.

As to its success, it is difficult to tell. They have sold a fair

number of credits, but they really don't know what the impact to

the university is at this point.

Bonnie Williams, Director of ACT, was one of those effected by

the reductions in force at Statewide. What they plan to do right

now is not actively market the program, although they will

continue the Permanent Fund Dividend enrollment for the

program, which is actually the source of most of the credits.

They will discontinue advertising and promotion. They will do an

actuarial assessment of the program to find out what the long-

term liabilities are.

When they designed the program in 1990, the university was in

an environment where interest rates were 10%, and tuition

inflation was at 4%, this has now reversed itself.

They are going to focus on trying to simplify the enrollment

process, and focus on long-term commitments for record

keeping. In many respects, this is similar to a life insurance

policy, where the university is making agreements with people

today and 15 to 20 years from now, they'll show up here. So,

record keeping is critical.

One of the areas the program has been lacking in, is selling the

program within the university. Right now, the university does

not know what the need is going to be for students 10 years from

now, or what the university's objectives will be for recruitment.

But, this is actually one of the tools with which someone can

look 10 years in the future. Conceptually the idea was to change

the mindset of children as early as sixth grade, as to whether

they want to go to the University of Alaska or not. Lynch still

feels it is a viable program and can still make it work.

9. Employee benefits-cost status and vendor changes

Mike Humphrey, SW Director of Benefits, stated that he had

preliminary cost information on the healthcare plan. In FY92 the

plan had on average 3,558; FY93 - 3,507; and FY94 - 3,534

employees with coverage. The overall cost of the plan in FY92

was $15.2 million, FY93 was $15.4 million and FY94 was $16.7

million, this shows that the plan is still escalating in cost. What

has helped the university absorb some of these costs, is the fact

that they made some plan modifications, implemented a

dependent charge for dependent coverage, this generated

$557,000.

He stated that this is the fifth year of the universities contract

with Aetna. Under the state procurement regulations, the

university can only enter into a contract with a provider for five

years. The RFP has now gone out for bid to 40 potential vendors.

This includes health insurance, life insurance, long term

disability, reimbursement account, and vision plan providers.

The closing date for the RFP's is August 31, 1994, 5:00pm.

During September the benefits committee will spend its time

scoring the offers, to be completed by September 30. The

vendors should be in place for the annual open enrollment period

in November.

One of the areas which they would like to modify is the vision

plan. The vision plan currently costs between $250,000 -

$260,000 per year and it is not within the university's capability

right now to expand the cost of the vision plan. They are trying

to look to see if there are more cost effective ways to provide an

expanded vision plan to the employee population. SWOHR would

like to see how employees would feel about paying an additional

charge for dependents, which would be optional. With this plan,

employees and their dependents would have a better, more

expanded, vision program.

Humphrey would like to have some feedback from the

governance groups about changing the vision plan, and

potentially implementing a dependent charge.

Currently, the university has only one vendor handling all

aspects of employee coverage, Aetna. Humphrey stated that

when the whole process is done, the university could end up with

several vendors, covering different aspects of the plan.

Some other changes is, the university will be capping out the

dependent eligibility for those dependents who are full-time

students at age 24. This will not impact the dependent who

potentially has a disability or a handicap, they will still maintain

the coverage until that disability or handicap, or their ability to

work because of that disability, ceases to exist. This change will

be effective January 1, 1995.

Kate Wattum asked how many full-time student dependents,

over 24, will be affected by this change. Humphrey responded

that the number is approximately 300, and they will be sending a

letter to these dependents in September explaining the changes.

This does not mean that they have lost access to the university's

healthcare plan. There is a Federal provision, COBRA, which

allows for dependents who have lost coverage because of divorce,

age limitations, etc., to continue for up to 36 months for a

premium charge monthly.

Another area Humphrey is actively pursuing right now, is the

establishment of preferred provider contracts with doctors and

hospitals in the State of Alaska. To date, Aetna has a preferred

provider contract with Providence Hospital. Humphrey has

asked Aetna to do an analysis, with the assistance of the

university's benefit consultant, William Mercier, to look at the

university's claims history for the last 15 months, and look at

what the university may have been able to save had they been on

the preferred provider contract. The findings of that analysis

were that over the last 15 months, it is estimated that the

university could have saved around $500,000.

The other area he is actively pursing is a network with doctors,

setting up positive incentives to go with a preferred list.

Richard Hacker asked if any of the vendors would come up with

a program to distinguish between smoking and non-smoking

employees and dependents, or other behaviors which could

potentially add costs. Humphrey stated that he asked for that

specific information on the life insurance plan, if they had rates

that differentiated between smokers and non-smokers. He also

asked what kind of documentation they needed or required to

determine whether somebody was a smoker or non-smoker.

10. Discussion of personnel policies and regulations affecting all

classes of employees: faculty, staff and student employees

Patty Kastelic stated that at the recent Board of Regents meeting,

they did edit and adopt the new Human Resource Mission

Statement. They also adopted, effective August 18, 1994, the

Uniform Personnel System Policy, which does include at will

employment provisions for temporary employees, which includes

student employment. They asked that the regulation have some

changes made to it. Kastelic stated she is concerned that the

university is sitting on a new and highly divergent policy from the

existing policy, without accompanying regulation. She will be in

touch with Regent Kelly, hoping to at least let her put out an

amended administrative procedures in advance of them really

taking a careful look at the regulation.

Personnel is one of those places that, although the president has

the authority to promulgate regulation, because it is so

inextricably involved with policy and the way the university treats

their employees, the Board has asked her to bring them

accompanying regulation in each and every instance that they

are going to adopt new policy.

Kastelic noted that they are now completely finished with the

new job evaluation form, and it is now available for use. She

feels it is a very much improved instrument that should be much

easier for employees and supervisors to use and understand.

The training for the new committee membership will be taking

place the first week of October, so they need to know what

membership is going to be. Each of the MAUs will have their

own process. She is encouraging wide appointment or

suggestions from governance, so they make sure that they have

major fields of endeavor represented, people who understand the

technical aspects of computing, they need some accountancy

representations, basic support staff (this is the non-faculty job

evaluation systems).

She stated that the committees will be evaluating all jobs at the

university now with one tool, the HAY guide chart method, so

both exempt and non-exempt staff need to be represented on the

groups. Because they anticipate a fair amount of work, they are

asking that they have a large number of people so that it will not

be a burden on any one department, or individual.

Training is scheduled in Juneau, October 3; Anchorage, October

4; and Fairbanks, October 5; and then on October 6, there will be

a videoconference for all of the recently trained people to meet

together to discuss some jobs that each of them will have had an

opportunity to evaluate.

In response to governance concerns, they will have regularly

scheduled system meetings that are going to have representatives

from each of the campuses, so that what has happened in the

past will not happen in the future, and that is they will not see

divergent determinations, where the same job on one campus

turns out to be evaluated at a different level than on another

campus.

Up for draft, which she hopes to have out by September 9, will be

the section on Employee Relations. She is not sure whether it

will be adopted at the BOR September meeting, since there is

such a short time period between their August and September

meetings. On the other hand, she is concerned about not

adopting this fairly soon because the existing old policy is not a

good fit with some of the policy changes that have already been

adopted. Specifically, grievance policy, there are not good cross

references and this could be confusing to employees. However, of

primary importance is that the policy that is eventually is

adopted, that it be clear, fair, easily understood and a consistent

policy without the gaps and holes that current policy and

regulation have.

Eric Heyne stated that after program assessment is complete,

faculty expects that there will be a large number of grievances for

various reasons. He asked if it was possible for SWOHR to create

a position paper outlining the possibilities of what could happen

so that faculty could have some idea of how they might come out

of it.

Kastelic responded that although she feels this is a valid request,

she feels it is necessary that faculty defer to their chief academic

officers. She feels it would be very presumptuous of her

department to develop a process for those kinds of concerns.

Heyne stated that what he would like to see is a description of

what appropriate outcomes are possible. Kastelic stated that the

next time the chief academic officers meet, she will take this up

with them, and say that this question has been raised and I

think that it would be better to do an outline before the fact,

rather than after the fact and see what their direction is in this

regard.

11. Regulation 03.01.01 and Council constitution-status

Chantry stated that there is no additional news on this item, that

it is still under review by Vice President Kauffman in General

Counsel. She will be writing a letter to the president and general

counsel requesting final resolution no later than September 1,

because there are handbooks which need to be completed.

12. Council calendar, balance FY95

Chantry requested that Pat Ivey meet with President Komisar

about having a fall retreat to see when the council may be able to

schedule this. Richard Hacker noted that he would be

unavailable the week of October 12.

Dede stated that he felt October would be a bad month all

around because of program assessment. He felt it would be more

productive to have a governance retreat after the results of

program assessment are known, and this would give governance

a more focused role in discussing what the university will do at

that point in time. He stated that late November might be best.

The committee agreed tentatively to the following schedule:

Tuesday, September 20, 1994 2:00-4:00pm

Videoconference

Tuesday, October 24, 1994 2:00-4:00pm

Videoconference

Tuesday, November 29, 1994 2:00-4:00pm

Videoconference

13. Agenda items for next meeting, September 20, 1994

¥ Program assessment update and other matters of interest to

President Komisar and the Council

¥ Possible retreat with President Komisar

¥ Update on results of legislative/governor candidate survey

¥ 1995 legislative agenda

¥ FY96 operating and capital budget

¥ Draft policies

- Procurement and property

- Real property

- Risk management & environmental health & safety

- Public safety

- Policy advisory councils

¥ Program assessment-unity report on business affairs and

new information systems

¥ Land management report

¥ Membership for the HAY evaluation committee

14. Comments

Ivey stated that she would like to have all of the local governance

meeting calendars from everyone as soon as possible so that her

office can create the FY95 governance calendar.

She also stated that the needs all membership rosters, and

constitutions and bylaws so she can get her files up to date, per

the presidents request. Also being created is the FY95 Who's

Who in governance, and she requested those new members who

haven't done so, to submit a brief bio and their photograph.

15. Adjourn