Employee Assembly Meeting
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
12:15 — 1:30 p.m.
316 Day Hall
MINUTES

I. Call to Order

B. Cornell called the meeting to order at 12:22 p.m.

II. Call for Late Additions to the Agenda

B. Cornell called for late additions to the agenda. D. Goss asked to add the Wellness Initiative.

III. Business of the Day

a. President David Skorton, VP Mary Opperman — Welcome

B. Cornell welcomed President David Skorton and VP Mary Opperman to the meeting.

b. PowerPoint presentation highlighting EA’s goals for this year

B. Cornell said the EA had established goals for the year 2007–08. He described how they had developed the goals. He then described their top 5 goals for the year.

K. Howell said the Communications Committee and the EA have been working hard to provide mechanisms through which employees can give and receive feedback. They’ve received about ten requests to date. Requests include; time off for volunteering efforts, the development of a wellness release time policy, and employee sabbaticals. They’ve been compiling these requests then passing them on to the committees responsible or directly to the appropriate Cornell departments.

There was a discussion about how the activities and goals of the EA would be communicated to the employee community. President Skorton asked how an employee could find out what is on this list. K. Howell said that once the employee request had been forwarded to the appropriate committee (or department) and the committee (or department) had given feedback, then they could be addressed in more public forums. One of the things they are working on was when to make these issues public. She said the EA meetings are recorded and posted on the Assemblies website where the wider community could access the recordings.

B. Liddick said they are trying to focus on how to reach employees. They developed a visual representation of where their constituents were located in the Cornell community and where the EA members were located. He said the next step was to figure out how to use this information to improve their reach. He said their goal is to develop an effective, formal process of communicating information to employees and to reach as many employees as possible.

President Skorton said that he’s asked the Chronicle to periodically have a special feature on a staff member who’s doing something interesting.

B. Liddick said that after determining their goals they decided it was just as important to have a mechanism in place to track the progress of these goals. He said basically the goals are listed by priority and assigned to various committees and they have a simple, straightforward mechanism in place to evaluate the status of the goals.

P. Korolov reiterated one of their focuses this year was to keep better track of goals, projects and issues. In addition to focusing on improving their reach to their constituents, they are also focusing on improving their relationship and communication with other assemblies.

B. Cornell mentioned other initiatives as well such as tuition reimbursement initiatives and expanding the eligibility of emergency grant funding.

M. Opperman said they should ensure they are relaying staff issues and requests to the appropriate departments so the EA is not spending time handling issues that other people are paid to handle. The EA’s focus should be on working to provide the feedback they’re receiving to these departments, and tracking the department’s progress in handing these issues.

c. President Skorton’s and VP Mary Opperman’s comments on the recently announced $20 million investment in the community President Skorton said Cornell’s tax-exempt status is an issue that is brought up every year because it seems as though the surrounding community bears a great burden. One way for Cornell to alleviate this is to try to contribute in areas that will help their employees and students, which accounts for a substantial portion of the community population. M. Opperman said that Steve Johnson is coordinating ideas at the leadership level.

There was a brief discussion about this initiative.

M. Opperman reminded the EA about the State of the University Address this coming Friday, 10/19 at 8:30 a.m. in the Statler Auditorium. She said they would be receiving national awards from the Labor Board for Exemplary Voluntary Efforts for their diversity efforts and initiatives.

President Skorton said they were working toward having a university-wide enunciation of university goals. The University doesn’t have a definite spending plan, but they’ve developed a “top 5” list of overarching goals that will be rolled out in January.

IV. Report from Chair

B. Cornell said everything is going well and he felt the meeting had been successful.

V. Report from Employee Trustee

K. Howell reminded everyone that the State of the University Address was this Friday, 10/19. The Trustees are meeting Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week, and M. Esposito will be attending those meetings.

VI. Report from UA representative

There was no report since the UA had not met since the last EA meeting.

VII. Approval of Minutes

There were no minutes to approve.

VIII. Committee Reports

a. Executive Committee

B. Cornell said the Executive Committee spent most of their time coordinating today’s meeting.

b. Staff Award Recognition

B. Cornell said the Staff Award Recognition committee had nothing to report.

c. Communication

K. Howell said the committee had met yesterday. They discussed the Chili Chats, Listening to Leaders and the REACH project, which is moving forward-they expect a plan to be finalized soon. They are working on the brochure for the new employee orientation program. The first “Welcome to Cornell” new employee orientation will be on October 30, 2007 from 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. They will need volunteers each month for this program from now on.

d. Finance

B. Liddick said they hadn’t met, but he did have a few updates. The expenses for the President’s Address to Staff had totaled $7,321. They had $3,200 in the budget for it, and budget relief for the remainder has been requested from Human Resources.

He also said they had paid for the entire cost for the pizza provided for the Emergency Grant Fund Auction and that it had come to be more than what we had budgeted for. He said he suggested EGA fund the difference this year, and agreed the EA would discuss increasing the budget accordingly next year. There was a brief discussion about how paying for the refreshments for the auction could be misunderstood. D. Stein said those who contributed did so with the intention of contributing to the Emergency Grant Fund.

There was a discussion about the President’s Address and its impact on the EA’s budget. D. Goss said they should increase their budget to accommodate if this was going to become an annual event. P. Beach said she had requested funding for two President’s Addresses per year because President Skorton has stated he was accustomed to addressing employees several times a year. B. Liddick said they had discussed whether they would move the President’s Address to a less expensive venue in the future.

e. Emergency Grant Fund

D. Stein said that the preliminary figure on the amount raised was $5,000.

f. Personnel Policy

D. Goss said she had met with Beth McKinney the day before on the Wellness Initiative. B. McKinney has been doing a lot of work to build a case for this initiative. After the meeting, D. Goss agreed to call a meeting of the Personnel Policy committee to discuss this. She said the main purpose of the project is to establish policies that will ensure wellness among employees.

g. IOC

P. Korolov said IOC had not met, but that a few people have expressed interest in being on the EA. There was a brief discussion about the five individuals who had picked up packets.

P. Korolov said he had sent out the recruitment posters to the EA members, so they could post them around campus. He also said they had tabled the changes to the Charter for the time being.

h. University Benefits

They still hadn’t met but, when they did, they would likely continue to address retiree benefits. D. Goss said the committee had a new Chair who was a faculty member.

i. Employee Education

D. Goss said she didn’t agree with M. Opperman’s assessment of the tuition reimbursement issues. She said they agreed the committee and HR should share information they had about tuition reimbursement issues. She said she would contact Maureen Brull, from HR, to improve communication between HR and the committee.

IX. Old Business

a. Inclement Weather Policy Committee update P. Mahoney said they met a few weeks ago. She said the policy had been finalized and would be presented to senior administration, hopefully, in the next month. There was a discussion about the departments’ responsibilities during inclement weather, improving campus communications, and the unofficial policies regarding inclement weather.

P. Mahoney made a motion to extend the meeting by 10 minutes. There were no objections.

X. New Business

a. Chili Chat and Listening to Leaders resolution

D. Goss said that M. Opperman had sent it back to them with comments and they had not completely reviewed or incorporated them yet.

b. EA shirts and pens proposal

K. Howell said the committee would like to order 20 shirts for EA members and 500 pens for distribution that total up to $555. D. Goss made a motion to purchase the shirts and pens. P. Korolov seconded the motion. There was dissent.

I. Mahler said they should table the order for shirts and pens until the issue of the Auction refreshments is resolved. A. Epstein asked whether the money for the shirts and pens had been listed in the previously approved budget. B. Liddick said they were not a line item but it was being proposed the $555 be taken from the Communications portion within the budget.

D. Goss withdrew her motion to purchase the shirts and pens.

XI. Adjournment

K. Howell adjourned the meeting at 1:42 p.m.