Present:

Marie Scholle, Chair; past president and current representative, UAF Staff Council
Don Lynch, President, UAF Faculty Senate
Barb Tullis, President, UAA Assembly
Lawrence Lee Oldaker, Chair, UAS Faculty Council
Rita Dursi Johnson, Representative, UAS Faculty council
Rita Bowen, President, UAS Staff Council
Betty Dupee, President, Statewide Administration Assembly

Pat Ivey, Executive Officer

Others present:

Marylou Burton, Statewide Budget Director
Patty Kastelic, Executive Director, Statewide Human Resources

Absent:

Kelly Haney, President, Union of Students of UAA
Wendy Young, President, Kodiak College Student Association
Gil Bane, Vice President, UAA Assembly
Catherine Wheeler, President, ASUAF
Shawn Paul, President, USUAS

Motion: passed

"The System Governance Council moves to approve the agenda for April 23, 1997. This action is effective April 23, 1997."

This item was postponed until the next Council meeting.

4. Chair's report

Scholle reported that things were grim as far as the university budget was concerned. Governance has done about everything to gather support for the university. She urged governance leaders to begin thinking about the future; that there is nothing further to be done about this legislative session.

The Board of Regents formally charged the president and chancellors to develop some way to recognize and honor faculty and staff who are retiring through RIP The Board wants the chancellors to give a formal presentation to the faculty and staff in appreciation of their years of service to the university. In Fairbanks, this will occur some time around graduation. Tullis reported that in Anchorage this will occur at a breakfast May 30 and there will be thank you gifts for everyone.

Budget status

Marylou Burton, statewide budget director reported that the conference committee starts tomorrow. The conference committee goes through and looks at any place in the budget where there is a difference between the House and Senate versions and try to work out a compromise. In the case of the university, both the House and the Senate gave the university an unallocated reduction of $2,500,000 from FY97 and that will stand.

On the House side, the Alaska Science and Technology funds in the amount of $530,000 were restored. It was not restored in the Senate, so that is an item that will come before the conference committee.

The conference committee will also be looking at the way contracts and in particular, CEA, was handled on the House and the Senate side. Funding for the CEA was eliminated in both the House and Senate budgets, but was done in different places, not with any difference in intent.

A wild card in the two versions of the budget right now is that the House put in very explicit language that eliminated funding for union contracts, or in the case of the university, any salary increases at all for FY98. The Senate was silent on the issue, but then zeroed out the funding for contracts. The ACCFT salary increases are not in the budget at this point because they don't have a contract. The university has now submitted information on that contract to the Department of Administration and they will forward it through the Office of Management and Budget over to the legislature.

The salary funding issue is probably going to be the "ticket out of Juneau" issue that gets resolved in the final hours of the session.

The Senate had two committees that were not regular subcommittees. One was a committee on information technology, and the other was a committee on economic development. The university was significantly effected by both of those.

The information technology committee took a $1.2 million reduction to the university and state agency budgets ostensibly for data processing equipment. The committee's rationale was that everyone spends too much money on data processing equipment. The Senate version forces the university to take about 37 percent of the total reduction or $338,000. The House did not address it at all.

The Senate, upon recommendation from its economic development committee, took away the general funds from UAA for the Alaska Center for International Business (ACIB) and the World Trade Center and directed that the university to return the endowment for ACIB. About $115,000 of that is supposed to come back to the university in the form of a grant for the World Trade Center. The idea is that the Department of Commerce would take over and continue the functions of ACIB. The university is looking at a lot of alternatives to what is being proposed.

In summary the House proposes to reduce the UA budget by $2.7 million over the current year budget. The Senate proposes to reduce the UA budget by about $4.0 million.

The Board of Regents has asked for more information on the budget than in the past. The Board is having a planning meeting in May and at their June meeting will get quite a bit of detail on the chancellors' and the president's plan for FY98. As part of that exercise, staff is trying to figure out, aside from the real dollar reductions to the general fund budget, what are other things that are affecting the budget.

Conservatively, not counting any general fund reductions, the university is looking at having to reallocate $8.0 million next year for items such as building maintenance, fixed costs, and salary increases. What that means for the campuses is that when these things are all put together, there is a need for some significant reallocations just to tread water.

Scholle responded that some departments are trying to generate additional income to offset deficits, but get chastised for competing against private enterprise, even when there is no private enterprise offering the service or program. She suggested that policy be eliminated.

Campus plans

Kastelic said it was her understanding that chancellor's have all been doing extensive planning on their campuses to meet the shortfall.

5.1 UAA

Barbara Tullis said UAA is using the full chancellor's cabinet in conjunction with the UAA Assembly and the deans to work through strategies for budget reductions. The first meeting was held the first of this month. The second will occur during the May UAA Assembly meeting. The chancellor is trying to keep everyone as informed as possible and wants everyone involved. This process will probably grow into a long-term budget planning process for the institution to be proactive rather than reactive. The intent at UAA is not to make across the board cuts but rather to make the cuts where they could be withstood the most. Those discussions are ongoing at the cabinet level and including the ad hoc budget committee. Kastelic said the regents have specifically prohibited across-the-board cuts.

Tullis asked if the president was going to approve filling of any RIP positions. UAA has some positions that were authorized for recruitment and now down to the interview level but there is no word from President Komisar as to whether or not UAA will be able to offer the jobs once the recruitment process has been completed. The best candidates are lost once the word goes out that a hold has been put on offering the job.

5.2 UAF

Scholle reported that at UAF, reallocations are already occurring. Departments are being combined. Administrative services is combining functions and not filling vacancies.

Lynch reported that he had been told that no positions which are vacated but not under RIP will be filled at this time. That money will be used for salary increases next year. He has also been told in writing that none of the retirement incentive positions will be filled with permanent people; that will simply have to wait a year. One of the concerns is what to do with fall courses. There are departments which have lost very sizable numbers of faculty and there appears to be no replacements. The School of Engineering is losing four or five of its top people. If they are not quickly replaced, the university will loose its capability in Arctic engineering. In some areas, UAF could be risking accreditation if certain faculty positions are not filled.

Lynch said the provost has asked the deans to prioritize requirements for the coming year. The College of Liberal Arts was told that they could hire no lecturers or part time faculty for the coming year. Subsequently, CLA was told that they might be able to hire some for the fall semester only. What that does is make problematic CLA's ability to staff the basic English composition and speech courses at the freshman level which are normally taught by lecturers or graduate students.

Kastelic said that Chancellor Wadlow has had extensive all day meetings with her academic leadership as well as her administrative leadership. They have developed numerous scenarios and have come through with a variety of options. Kastelic thought this had been going on at UAA as well. Tullis confirmed this.

5.3 UAS

Rita Johnson reported that she didn't have any information yet. The Chancellor's cabinet will be meeting the end of next week to begin discussions on the subject. Oldaker said the UAS Chancellor's retreat has been scheduled for Thursday and Friday of this week. Bowen said the planning for budget reductions had been going on at UAS for quite a while. Right now, UAS is looking at enrollments and listing classes that are not meeting an acceptable enrollment level. 5.4 Statewide

There were not comments about how Statewide Programs and Services will handle budget cuts.

Program assessment:

Ivey asked if program assessment was out the window with the anticipated budget cuts. Kastelic said program assessment was still in process and in effect and that the strengths and weakness highlighted and areas identified as critical in the program assessment report and ways to deal with them still hold true. The problem has been that while the reductions are occurring according to plan, money has not been available for the enhancements because the legislature has reduced the funding and because the university has lost funding in certain auxiliary research categories, and lost tuition revenues. So the money realized through reduction has not been available to move to enhancement.

Dupee added that in addition, the university has also had to cover all the fixed cost increases and meet the Board of Regents mandates to fully fund building maintenance and renewal and replacement. In addition, the Board of Regents is asking for a lot more budget detail than usual. Not a lot is being generally communicated at this point so as not to generate mass hysteria.

6.1 Involving alumni associations

Scholle said she recommended that the UAF Staff Council add an ex-officio member from the UAF Alumni Association to the Staff Council because we need to get people involved outside the university proper and the only way they are going to know what is happening to the university is to have someone from outside the university listening to what is going on. She suggested that UAA and UAS staff governance groups follow suit. She also suggested that an alumni association member be added to the Staff Alliance or the System Governance Council.

Tullis said UAA alumni are represented on the UAA Assembly and it has been very helpful, particularly this year when they have been brainstorming ways to encourage community support. It would be helpful to have that contact everywhere.

6.2 Building district constituencies for the university

Scholle reported that Ivey has been working to match the voter registration guide to the employee and student databases to determine how many employees and students and their parents if possible reside in which districts. Too often when university community members attempt to gain support from legislators in districts that do not contain a university campus, the legislator is quick to respond that the university is not in his or her constituency. The university needs to demonstrate the university constituency in each district, and to the extent possible, the economic value of that constituency.

The databases by district can also be used to send out notices to university faculty, staff and students about what is going on and how their legislators are voting on university issues.

It was also suggested that alumni be added to the database list.

6.3 Aligning university members with legislators

There needs to be 60 university employees, staff and/or alumni identified right away, one from each House and Senate district who are willing to spend the summer with their legislators to bring the university message to them, to garner their support, and be able to report to governance on what is going on.

By the time fall rolls around, legislators' plans start to solidify for the coming legislative session. By the fall, things start to solidify. By November, legislators pretty much have finalized their plans and strategies. By the beginning of the legislative session, all the university can do is react.

6.4 Identifying and building district constituencies

See item 6.2 and 6.3 above. There also need to be university booths at every fair, and sign-up sheets available so people can sign up as supporters of the university.

This item was not discussed.

8.1 Faculty Alliance

The UAA and UAF faculty senates and the UAS faculty council are working through the Faculty Alliance to develop a common grading policy for all three MAUs.

8.2 Coalition of Student Leaders

Ivey reported that the Coalition of Student Leaders met in Juneau the day after the Board meeting and declared it a Joe Hayes Day. The Coalition will be active over the summer and into the fall on a number of issues. One of the Coalition's highest priorities right now, in addition to keeping the pressure on the legislature through this week is and has been the student affairs policies. The first batch of revisions came out for discussion in February, were rehashed and redistributed to the Board in April. The Coalition urges that no action be taken until student governance has a chance to review them in the fall. There are some legal ramifications that the Coalition is researching.

The Coalition is not happy with the student employment policy which includes the salary scale which has not been changed since 1984.

There are two student regent candidates as of this date; Grace Wilson-Laudun, President of the Mat-Su Student Government and Annette Nelson-Wright from Juneau, editor of the Whalesong.

8.3 Staff Alliance

The Board of Regents is appreciative of everything that staff has done on behalf of the university. Regents said that staff were to be congratulated on the hard work they did and deserved a pat on the back.

8.4 Local governance groups

Scholle reported that the Associated Students of UAF is in the process of conducting elections for president. There are two strong candidates: Steve Nuss, and Jean Richardson.

The new president of the Union of Students of UAA is Kevin Tritt.

The Union of Students of UAS-Juneau is in the process of conducting elections.

Grace Wilson-Laudun, president of the Mat-Su Student Government has been elected for a second term.

Don Lynch reported that the UAF Faculty Senate has had an unusually active year. The senate approved well over 140 course changes, have begun assessment of the core curriculum (called general education requirements at other campuses), has developed a new grading policy to accommodate both the interests of the Fairbanks main campus and the rural campuses. The new president as of May 12 will be John Craven. The new president-elect will be Madeline Schatz who is head of the music department and director of the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra.

Dupee reported that the Statewide Administration Assembly has been extensively involved in the paid time off issue. SAA passed a motion in support of the theory of paid time off. SAA did feel there were a couple of areas that required some additional work .

Bowen said the UAS Staff Council has been getting a lot or responses back to the paid time off on what employees like and don't like. Scholle said she attended a Council meeting while in Juneau for the Board of Regents. Members asked a lot of questions about benefits task force and paid time off. Bowen said there had been a lot of problems with attendance and that she sent out a memo saying essentially that if members did not attend meetings and are not interested in any of the issues, they should not complain after the policies change. Many people won't attend because they believe they have lost and lost and that the Council does not have any influence with administration. UAS employees did not like paid time off and do not want to lose any of their health benefits, even though the Council has made every attempt to keep them informed. Employees would rather join a union and hope that their benefits stay exactly the same.

Oldaker reported that the UAS Faculty Council has been functioning since the August, 1996 convocation. In its first year of infancy, the following activities have been addressed. The Council continues to progress in transition from a faculty senate to a faculty council within the revised single-dean organizational structure. A new faculty handbook is being drafted and systematically approved. The Council is on Chapter 3 now. Accreditation is a major task that is beginning to take form. Assessment of lower division student opinions is in progress. This will be the first of many to be coordinated by members of the administration and the faculty co-chairs Rita Dursi Johnson of the UAS library and Dave Marvel from the education faculty. The Council is represented at the chancellor's monthly cabinet meetings, and at statewide, the Faculty Alliance and System Governance Council. A merit pay proposal for eligible faculty members is being fashioned at this time for approval. A Faculty Council web page is being designed to provide information on activities, rosters, the faculty handbook in its entirety, commonly-used program forms, etc. The Council reviews course and program proposals as a committee of the whole. The environmental degree and the environmental technology certificate and AAS degree program are examples of the Council's instructional focus. Both of those were recently approved by the Board of Regents. Council participants are engaged in statewide concerns, including the Banner systems, sexual harassment policy, grading standards, faculty development, and distance education. The UAS faculty has begun a series of celebrations to honor professorial activities. The first event was a dinner held on April 8 that featured retired professor Wally Olson's irreverent history of UAS.

The next meeting of the System Governance Council will be Thursday, May 15, 1997, 2:00-4:00pm.

10.1 Patty Kastelic

Paid time off

Kastelic reported that SWHR has put the conversion of sick and annual leave to paid time off on indefinite hold. If any group wants to take up the issue again, they are welcome. The university pays $19 million in paid time off (combination of sick and annual leave). It is not an insubstantial part of indirect compensation costs to the university. She said she had received communication from Anchorage asking why the university wanted to move to paid time off if it wasn't going to save any money. Kastelic had hoped that the material she has out on the internet on the issue explained that any plan would have to be cost-neutral.

Paid time off is a national trend. There are employees who believe there are many more reasons for having unscheduled time off than illness; that they need to attend to family business on an unscheduled basis; and that paid time off systems treat the employee far more maturely and far less intrusively. It had been Kastelic's hope that a discussion in a conversion plan from sick and annual leave to paid time off could be accomplished at a time when the university could do it in a cost-neutral way. We would have much more flexibility in designing a conversion plan if the university were not in a financial crisis. Kastelic said that was why there was no target date for implementation. Paid time off was never intended to diminish the cost of the program, but rather redistribute it and redefine it to be less intrusive and to have it meet more employees' needs than the current program has.

Scholle said there were two stumbling blocks, (1) everyone perceived losing eight sick days per year as a benefit reduction, and (2) employees at rural sites usually have to travel to Anchorage to go to a doctor. What would take employees at urban campuses a couple of hours may take rural employees two days or more. Rural employees believe that losing eight sick leave days per year would really penalize them.

Kastelic responded that the university health care plan pays for employees to fly in to communities where health services are available, but there are limits on the number of times an employee can use this benefit. Except for acute illnesses that require immediate care, rural employees receive their health care in a different way than urban employees might. Instead of taking two hours off to go to the dentist and then an hour a month later to go to a doctor's appointment, rural employees tend to schedule all of their appointments over a one or two day period, and go into Anchorage to get the medical services they need all at one time. Having said that, Kastelic said that the rural employee issue really had not been explored as yet.

Regarding the other issue, Kastelic said that, for staff, most people are not sick 18 days per year. Sick leave is allowed to accrue. As the number of years an employee works at the university, the amount accrued increases.

Scholle asked if employees could take at least half of their accrued sick leave and put it into paid time off. Kastelic said it couldn't be done because the conversion needed to be cost-neutral. Paid off needs to be fully funded.

Scholle asked if that meant that if an employee had 400 hours of sick leave, 200 of which was converted to paid time off and combined with the annual leave balance, the employee would be forced to use the paid time off before using the 200 hours. Kastelic said no. That represents an unfunded liability for the university because the staff benefit rate for sick leave is based on past year's costs of that program. The accrued sick leave, because the university does not pay it off upon retirement, PERS doesn't credit it toward retirement, it is just there. If suddenly, people were taking a lot more leave than they have in past years, the university would have to collect even more from departments the next year to pay for it. Thus, to turn any amount of unused sick leave over what is currently funded into paid time off that is cashable at the time of departure is an additional cost to the university.

Tullis said two years ago, Kastelic used a statistic that 75 percent of the annual accruals of sick leave were used and asked if it was still running at a 75 percent usage rate. There are greater leave usages in the lower pay grades which is expected, because those people tend to be young with young children. It doesn't run the same across all pay grades because it is age and circumstance correlated. Dupee added that the staff benefit rate is based on the dollar amount of usage and not the hours, so if a lot of the lower paid employees were using more of the sick leave, the dollar amount doesn't add up as fast. Kastelic said people with a high rate of pay contributing .6 percent of their salaries could fund a lot of lower paid people's sick leave hours. That is why when the figures are examined, it doesn't seem like it is being used at 100 percent. It's because lower paid people are using more than higher paid people and there are some reasonable explanations for that. Secondly, it is only the annual accruals being examined, not the long term balances that may be out there. The liability is in the long-term balances. The university doesn't expect the majority of employees who have 1000 hours out there to use them unless they have a serious illness.

The state did do a conversion and brought across a certain amount of the old balances, but it cost some additional money for that conversion. The university cannot put more money into programs without reducing positions.

Tullis said she personally wanted to enter into a discussion about paid time off because in her case it would be a benefit. Tullis said that if it was presented with all of the ramifications, some of the people who are distrustful of any kind of change may be won over.

Kastelic said if staff governance asked her in the fall to work on this issue some more just in theory, that was fine. Kastelic said she had been given the very clear message from Anchorage administration was that there is so much uncertainty given the budget picture and a number of other structural changes, it was causing the work force to be upset. That was never the intention.

Although the APT and staff governance groups in Anchorage were looking for a full-blown presentation directly to them, Kastelic was told by the Anchorage administration that staff governance wanted to work on them at a local level directly with the Anchorage personnel office on all personnel-related issues. Kastelic was told by the Anchorage personnel directors that this had been discussed with the staff governance groups. Kastelic purposely did not design a plan because she was waiting for feedback from the units on the basic idea and the philosophy that it could not add costs to the program and that leave balances away from existing employees, and that there needed to be a fail-safe for new employees with low balances so that if they had a serious illness they would have income protection. Other than that, there is no preconceived plan.

Scholle estimated that the issue would probably surface again. Some governance people liked the theory but just have to work out the bugs.

Scholle reported that Kastelic did present the paid time off concept to the Board of Regents as well as an update on health benefits and she did tell the Board of Regents Human Resources Committee that the paid time off is on indefinite hold. The committee was perfectly willing to go along with the recommendation that action be deferred.

The web page for information on this issue is at http://info.alaska.edu/UA/benefits/leave.html.

Sexual harassment policy

Kastelic reported she is working with the Faculty Alliance relating to student-faculty relationships and student-faculty processes. The next draft will attempt to incorporate the latest concerns of faculty governance and it is hoped that the Board of Regents can approve it in June. The staff governance people have already reviewed the sexual harassment policy for staff related concerns and acted upon them.

Oldaker said he was looking at the policies relating to sexual harassment and wanted to represent a legitimate pedagogical interest, as well as assure safeguards. The policy currently addresses all past relations, so the question is, should he proceed to draft something and get the UAS faculty to react to it and forward it through the process. Kastelic said there was not enough time to work on three different draft, that she would call him directly. Oldaker said he was working on a faculty orientation section. It would also address all relations on campus. Kastelic said that regarding the Professional Teaching Practices Commission, what had been agreed to was to incorporate a reference to the PTPC policy and add "as amended from time to time." Thus, if the PTPC policy is amended, the UA policy would also change.

10.2 Board agendas

Barb Tullis requested that a complete Board agenda packet be sent to her prior to every meeting and jv her for the costs.

The meeting adjourned at 4:10pm.