MINUTES
Employee Assembly Meeting
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
12:15 - 1:30 p.m.
316 Day Hall

I. Call to Order

T. Grove called the meeting to order at 12:18 p.m.

Present�D. Brooks, C. Ferguson, T. Grove, L. Croll Howell, L. Meyerhoff, L. Morris, G. Osborne, C. Phillips, G. Stewart

Absent�K. Coldren, T. Denesevich, P. Dongtoe, J. Seymour

Also attending � S. An. O’Donnell, A. Epstein

II. Call for Late Additions to the Agenda

T. Grove said she had a report from Beth McKinney on the recent trustee meetings.

III. Business of the Day

a)Faculty Staff Assistance Program (FSAP) Update

L. Croll Howell gave some updates on changes to the FSAP effective 7/11/11. The changes have not been publicly announced, but the EA needs to know about these things early on. Linda said there are currently 3 parts to the FSAP. 1) there is a crisis manager for situations off hours 24/7 2) there is a 1–800 number run by an outside vendor 24/7 for personal crises 3) There are on-site counselors available from Family & Children’s Services of Ithaca to focus on workplace concerns.

Effective 7/1/11, all of these functions will move under Gannett’s management. This will help clear up the confusion on who to call and will create a one community Mental Health Support Strategy. There were questions on confidentiality. Linda reported the counselors are bound by the same rules as other licensed counselors, and only disclose information in the cases of harm to self or others. FSAP will still be connected to HR by a service agreement and the funding will continue to come from the benefits pool. HR will still provide strategic direction for the function. Important to note, this is a budget neutral move, and in time they hope to offer better services for the same budget. There will be a push to publicize this especially at time clocks and other areas where staff have limited access to email.

b)Spring meeting in Geneva

There was a brief discussion about the meeting in Geneva. G. Stewart said he would like to talk to people, and find out the new developments happening there. The date was set as May 4th to go to hold an EA meeting in Geneva.

IV. Approval of Minutes

a)January 19, 2011

The members reviewed the January 19th minutes. There was one small change to the attendance list. L. Meyerhoff motioned to approve the minutes. L. Croll Howell seconded. The members voted, and the January 19th minutes were passed.

V. Report from the Chair

a)Monthly meeting

T. Grove said she missed copying Mary Opperman on a couple of recent resolutions that were transmitted to the president, so in the future, she will always put MGO on the list of those copied. They also briefly discussed the Climate Survey, more on that under “Old Business.” Mary was glad to hear that the EA is reaching out to staff and that they will have a member on the University Diversity Council. Mary suggested the EA talk to Lauren Jacoby to get the language correct. Mary also suggested the George Peter Award improve their guidelines, and suggested the EA develop a smaller, less formal award for staff that would happen more often. T. Grove also said that there was a Benefits meeting a couple of weeks ago with Paul Bursic and she reported that the benefits pool will increase next year. It is important to keep the benefits competitive for new faculty, but not so good where it affects taxes. There will not be anything new added for a while, but it is good the committee is having meetings again after a long hiatus.

VI. Committee Reports

a)University Diversity Council

L. Meyerhoff said she went to a meeting last week. She said the committee includes all constituents, and they are revising the bias response protocol. The committee was originally formed in the 1990’s as a result of an incident in the residence halls. This is an anonymous process, and the committee is looking to have the new process in place by May. It is in the hands of the Dean of Students now for review, and there will be an open forum in March to gather feedback. L. Croll Howell said the EA could develop rules for civil behavior. She also passed around a print out of George Washington’s list of 110 examples of civil behavior. Some are definitely outdated, but many are still applicable to this day. C. Phillips suggested we consider the term “civic” behavior, which would also apply. The term is more general than specific. G. Stewart warned this was a big issue for the EA to tackle alone.

b)University Benefits Committee

L. Meyerhoff said she attended the first meeting of the committee recently. The committee has been tasked to address the Health Care bill. That means that by 2014, everyone will be required to have health insurance. Employers pay for employees or pay them to buy state available health insurance. Costs may rise, including premiums, deductibles, and co-pays. This benefit may eventually show up on W2’s, but will not be taxed. She reported the new medical cap is now $2,500, which is down from $6,500 in two years.

c)Board of Trustees report

T. Grove read the following report from Beth McKinney, who was unable to attend.

1. We are expecting budget cuts (the NYS budget should be out on Feb. 1 — so you might already know this). Not sure what to expect, but cuts are imminent. 2. Warren Hall will be undergoing renovations, and Cornell will be putting up modular office swing space on the Ag quad — on the area which is currently a parking lot across from Warren. Should be there for 5 years. 3. The firm designing the new bridge barriers split and we had to renegotiate with one of the principles. We are sort of on track, but might be delayed by about 6 weeks from our target date of presenting designs to the City of Ithaca. 4. 410 Thurston (the old Alumni House) will undergo renovations. Everyone is looking forward to this new multicultural center that will house OMEA, LGBT, Asian and African American groups on campus. 5. Good news: a. The provost reported that we have received 36273 freshman applications—more than ever. b. We hit the 3 billion dollar mark for our fundraising campaign (over several years — still have a long way to go). c. The financial plan that was developed (the cost savings plan) has many parts to it. Everything is tracking as planned, and we are a little ahead of where we expected to be at this time. 6. Faculty renewal is our next big strategic planning effort — the University will be hiring a lot of faculty in part because we have not hired recently and because we expect to have more faculty retiring. 7. We had a good discussion about Cornell’s rankings and how differently they are in the different colleges vs. as one big Cornell. That’s it in a nutshell. Everyone is getting excited about the sesquicentennial in 2015.

In response, G. Stewart suggested the EA give Beth some information to give to the Trustees next time.

G. Stewart also suggested he invite Charlie Kruzanski to an EA meeting sometime. The EA agreed that would be interesting discussion, so Gary will set it up.

VII. Old Business

a)Climate Survey

T. Grove said that Mary was wondering why the EA was considering sending the President a letter on this and not a resolution? She said she didn’t think a letter has as much impact. A. Epstein offered to help write the resolution from the existing letter. The name for the survey is now the “Staff Engagement Survey” in order to reduce confusion. She said they will work on re-writing this and bring it to a future meeting.

b.)Elections Chair

T. Grove said that Curtis Ferguson is officially the Elections committee chair. She and Curtis met with the OA office to discuss elections this week. The OA will be taking the photos instead of the Registrars office. There will be 13 seats available this year. They also discussed the possibility of a “mandatory” meeting to discuss expectations. There should also be an attendance expectation also. L. Meyerhoff will go to many of the timeclock meetings, but she will need some help to cover them all. This is only maybe a 5 minute thing, and talking points will be provided to help.

VIII. New Business

L. Morris said the email she received about “myCornell” was confusing, so she would like to have Peggy come to explain more about it. A. O’Donnell said she will set this up for a future meeting.

Linda Croll Howell is still working to get a date for the EA to attend Soup & Hope event this semester.

IX. Open Forum

No items were mentioned on Open Forum.

X. Adjournment

C. Ferguson made a motion to adjourn the employee assembly meeting. L. Morris seconded the motion. The EA meeting was adjourned at 1:33 p.m.