MINUTES
Employee Assembly Meeting
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
12:15 - 1:30 p.m.
316 Day Hall
“Being an active Voice for Cornell Staff”

I. Call to Order

T. Grove called the meeting to order at 12:20 p.m.

Present: J. Boodley Buchanan, B. Cristelli, L. Croll Howell, B. Esty, K. Fahey, C. Ferguson, T. Grove, M. Kitchen, L. Meyerhoff,L. Sayam, B. Schaffner, J. Seymour

Absent: D. Brooks, L. Morris, G. Osborne, G. Stewart Also Present: A. Epstein, A. O’Donnell, M. Opperman, D. Skorton

II. Call for Late Additions to the Agenda

J. Boodley Buchanan said she would like to report on the last Campus Planning committee meeting.

T. Grove said in her report she will talk about elections.

III. Approval of Minutes from last meeting

B. Cristelli made a motion to approve the corrected minutes. All were in favor, and the minutes were approved.

IV. Business of the day

a) Conversation with President Skorton & Vice President Opperman

President Skorton asked what sort of feedback the EA had been receiving about the employee survey?

T. Grove said she has been hearing a lot of feedback from staff across campus. She said C. Ferguson could jump in on this a bit, as she knew it was discussed during an all staff meeting in his area. C. Ferguson said the meeting took place during spring break.

J. Boodley Buchanan said she felt it wasn’t clear to her what the president’s directive was to the deans. She asked them if they would clarify. M. Opperman explained they have asked each VP/Dean/Director to hold “All staff” meetings to start discussion on the data they have gathered in order to determine what it means for their own colleges and units, especially in the four target areas.

President Skorton then said Mary had also sent everyone their areas information so they could see the overview for the whole university and their own and be able to draw a comparison.

J. Boodley Buchanan asked if they were given a time frame. M. Opperman said it is supposed to be done this spring. B. Cristelli reported that in CALS, she has not heard anything specific yet. She said a meeting has been scheduled at the beginning of May to discuss it in depth, so she hopes to hear more then.

C. Ferguson said one of the ideas/suggestions he had was to meet with the deans/ directors and have them come in and speak one on one as to what they plan on doing with their results.

He then asked about the status of the New Destination program. President Skorton said Laura and Lynette and the group from the Diversity Council have still been working on refining it. In addition, during the month of April, they will be putting the information out in the Chronicle.

K. Fahey said what do they thought of the depth of the development of these approaches and what it meant in terms of deserting things that have already worked but maybe didn’t have the resources or attention they deserved? M. Opperman said she was not sure the concept had to be a new idea, it may be that it needs to build off an existing idea. The concept we are trying to build on is if an approach is working, we want it to work better or we want it to improve. What we’re saying is we need to do better and past practices haven’t gotten us where we need to go. It’s not that we want to abandon successful methods but instead maybe ramp it up a bit.

President Skorton said even with ideas that have been working, except for compositional diversity, they have not been quantifying these things. Therefore, they need to not only ramp it up but to also quantify it. M. Opperman added they might, for example, want to keep something that is working but measure it to see how well it is actually working.

President Skorton said they would love feedback from the EA. M. Opperman said they need active participation in helping us frame this. They think they’ve developed a design that will work, but it is not finished. It needs work in order for the community to change and grow.

C. Ferguson asked how did they select the participants when creating the Diversity Council? These are fine choices, but said he didn’t see anyone who looked like him-African-American, male, or anyone under 30. M. Opperman said that was a great piece of feedback. These people are there because of their job position not their composition. Compositionally, they’re not diverse yet. This does hinder us; how we go forward with our strategies we need to think about that. A set of goals and initiatives will be developed. But what happens after the first year when they are not helping us reach a diverse population? Can we develop a broader representational group that will help deans and vice presidents be more creative in helping with these initiatives? These are the things as a community we need to think about.

T. Grove said they’ve been talking about workload and the ability of the staff to balance it. M. Opperman said it is hard to ask staff to say what they are doing and what they think they shouldn’t be doing because they could feel it would put their job at risk.

C. Ferguson then asked what type of work was being done with job descriptions. I know this has been a wide spread problem, because I looked at my job description and it doesn’t fit what I’m doing. A good way to look at it is am I doing what is laid out in my job description and if that conversation does occur how will this impact salary and seeing if people are doing equitable work?

M. Opperman said he is in the majority whose job doesn’t align with their job description. She admitted many job positions have changed radically over the years. We need to get the job descriptions to reflect what people are doing. HR is overwhelmed so everyone will need to be patient. K. Fahey said she had rewritten two job descriptions this year and found HR was reluctant to adopt these changes. M. Opperman said the amount of work HR is being asked to do is mind-boggling. She also she will help move it along if needed.

EA visitor then asked if the supervisory training program still existed? She said the program was helpful to her. M. Opperman said there is a Leadership Academy and a Management Academy. She said we have more than 2,000 staff who have gone through supervisorial programs but many who still haven’t.

IV. Report from the Chair

a) Onboarding update

T. Grove said she had contacted Judy Small and is waiting to hear back from her. T. Grove said she asked Judy if she could put EA information and brochures in the onboarding center. Also, she asked if she saw any benefit in the EA being involved in the process to let her know. For example, having someone from the EA call and welcome them to Cornell and to let them know we are glad to have them as part of our community and if let them know if they have any questions or want to get involved in the EA to feel free to reach out. They will plan to invite her to a future EA meeting

b) Elections

T. Grove reported there are 9 vacancies and 9 people running—which is excellent.

V. Committee Reports

a) Faculty Senate meeting update - Leslie Sadler Meyerhoff

The last meeting there was a proposal to cancel classes on April 27th, 2015 to celebrate Cornell’s sesquicentennial, which passed. They are also looking at a proposal to change the academic grievance procedure. Lastly, their process of selecting the new Dean of faculty was interesting and she wanted to share how they did it. The dean of faculty process was basically�2 candidates who made 5-minute presentations followed by a brief question and answer session. An online election was done and the winner was Joe Burns.

Also, the NYC Tech/Technion “partnership”/relationship is controversial. Students for Justice in Palestine are upset because they claim Technion has committed human rights violations. In addition, the fact the FS was not consulted on the decision is not sitting well. Some students want Cornell to wait on signing the contract. There was also opposition to the opposition.

b) Public Safety meeting update — Brigitt Schaffner

B. Schaffner said at the Public Safety meeting the main take away was for people to stay out of the gorges. The money put into gorge safety was the main topic. Passing a resolution to the SA to make this part of the Code, so students would be in violation if they are found in the gorge. The Cornell Police wanted this added to the Code of Conduct since it is already against City ordinance.

There was also a discussion on fraternity and sororities and cracking down on drinking and partying on campus. The Cornell Police is partnering up with the Ithaca Police to help control this.

c) Planning Committee — J. Boodley Buchanan

There was a presentation about the vet school expansion and how they might best do this and still keep green space. They are also looking to update classrooms and lecture space in order to increase the student population per class. The growing need for vets is the big push to do all this. There was also a presentation about changes to Tower road. They are hoping to create a more pedestrian area, they intend to remove parking spaces to give the area more of a “plaza” feel.

VI. New Business

a) Term limits

i. Resolution The proposed resolution is in regards to term limits for EA officers. T. Grove said to take a look at the resolution and if you have any changes you want to make to let her know and the EA can revisit this at a future meeting.

VII. Open Forum

There were no items for open forum.

VIII. Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 1:30 PM.