CALS Committee on Academic Staff Issues
Minutes for February 04, 2003

Meeting was called to order by Frank Kooistra at 8:35 p.m.

1. Opening Remarks

   Mentoring-The campus mentoring program is currently going through the application process. F. Kooistra encouraged the committee to participate as mentors and asked them to encourage new academic staff members in their areas to sign up. It was suggested that information on the program be included in the packets that are distributed to new academic staff.

   Research Professor Title-There is a research professor nominee from the College of Engineering going through the system.

2. College Update

   Budget Deficit-The size of the budget deficit seems to change weekly. There has been no new information from the Chancellor's Office. They are waiting for the Governor's speech on February 18th. CALS departments have been asked to start a budget exercise with two scenarios-a 3% reduction and a 6.3% reduction from the non-faculty budget. This equates to a 5% and 10% cut. The 5% cut would reduce CALS's budget by $l.3M and the 10% cut would reduce it by $2.6M. Half of the College's 101 budget is faculty salaries. The other half is S&E, capital budget, and non-faculty salaries. Faculty positions will not be filled and the savings will be used to offset the budget deficit. The departments have been given a target number for each scenario and are working on their budgets. There will likely be academic staff layoffs and the classified employees will have bumping rights within the College. The departments have been asked to keep this information confidential because CALS Administration wants to see the impact of the bumping rights before it becomes public. Academic staff situations are more complicated. Layoffs are determined by seniority in their area. Operational area is defined in the appointment letters. If it isn't defined, the operational area is the department where they are employed. Seniority is based on their entire academic staff appointment at the University.

   Following are several questions that were asked and the answers.

   • What is the Dean's Office doing about hiring people? The departments have been asked to carefully consider if they really want to fill a position. D. Hogg, F. Kooistra, and L. Heideman review the requests and call the departments if they think there is a real problem.
   • Can you voluntarily reduce your appointment to less than 100% to help save money? Yes, but you should indicate in the letter that it is a temporary change.
   • Are cuts equal across the College? There is variance between the departments. There will also be vertical cuts.
   • What effect does this have on tenure decisions? The College policy is that any departments that fails to tenure a faculty member will have the position automatically authorized for restaffing.
   • This exercise is for the next biennium. What would the College do if we have a give back? Freeze spending and hiring.

   The departments will retain 100% of the money from salaries that move from 101 to grant money. Layoff is done solely on seniority without regard to their contract, even if you have an indefinite appointment.

   Facilities-All projects have been suspended unless there is a contractor currently under contract. Suspended projects include Microbial Sciences, Soil and Plant Analysis Lab, Integrated Dairy, and the Greenhouse. DFD will review each project and the College will know their status by mid-March. The ones that are not approved will probably be delayed a biennium or two. F. Kooistra thinks Microbial Sciences and the Soil and Plant Analysis Lab will be approved.

3. Approval of Minutes

   T. Wright made a motion to approve the minutes. B. Jensen second the motion.

4. Questions from the committee

   There were no questions from the committee.

   F. Kooistra updated the Committee on the Land Tenure Center. Eleven academic staff have received layoff notices and some are appealing. They will be meeting with Dean Aberle. A committee has been appointed to design a reorganized and restructured LTC and will present a recommendation to the Dean by mid-March.

5. Academic Staff Job Security Report by Division

   F. Kooistra distributed a summary of academic staff job security reports by division.

6. Joint CASI/CALS EDC Meeting on Increasing Supervisor Awareness of Employee Policies

   F. Kooistra distributed notes from the above meeting. The Committee will discuss them at the next meeting

   He also distributed a gender equity report of Category A employees by salary range.

   L. Heideman will add seniority in title and years in service for each range.

7. Committee Reports

   Academic Staff Awards and PD-Recommendations for the academic staff awards have been forwarded to Dean Aberle for his approval. A meeting will be scheduled later this month to address questions that came up while making the selections. CASI will talk about it at the next meeting.

   Communications, Website & Districting-Brenda Spychalla is putting together a website for the CASI in Education. C. Dilihunt has exchanged URL's with her but has not looked at the site yet. If anyone has any suggestions for the CALS CASI website, let him know.

   Nominations and Mentoring-The committee has not met. R. Daluge asked when the nomination process will start this year for the CALS committees. It will be done this summer. F. Kooistra suggested they review last year's committee lists and make suggestions in writing to D. Hogg by the end of the academic year.

   Personnel Procedures and Compensations-The committee is continuing with the informational emails. Two more emails are ready to go out. One is on position descriptions and the other on layoffs and non-renewals. The question was raised about what process is used to update the email list. B. Jensen gets the list from C. McCabe each fall. B. Wilson suggested getting the list in October and February when most new hires have been added. C. Dillhunt said in July the data warehouse will have a new data view that will be more accurate. L. Heideman will be meeting with department administrators on February 5 to discuss layoff procedures. Also, there was an announcement from DER that represented classified employees may have the blue/white flu February 6-8 or soon thereafter.

   Governance-R. Russell distributed a questionnaire on governance that was put together by John Mather. He asked the CASI where they would like the Governance Committee to go from here. In a previous meeting, Dean Aberle said that the University governs from the bottom up. If that is true, academic staff governance in the department will not occur. It was suggested that Dean Aberle distribute the questionnaire under his signature. The questionnaire will be emailed to F. Kooistra and he will ask the Dean to distribute it to academic departments and centers. It was suggested that centers be added to the wording of the questionnaire wherever department occurs. Also, a comment section should be added after each major section. It should be sent by email with a deadline for response. F. Kooistra said the general consensus from ASEC is that it is up to the CASI's to be persistent on this issue. The results also need to be published.

Submitted 2/5/03
J. Simons