April 3, 2008 Minutes

1. Call to Order

2. Roll Call

Present: Kelly Barnts, Lenord McGownd, Cathy McFall, Cindi Barnett, Patrick Byers, Roger Dulcos, SuzAnn Ferguson, Marian Green, Konya Knackstedt, Steve Lowery, Dale Moore, Sheila Morris, Dennis Perry

Absent: Casey Comoroski, John Avery, Ron Boaz, Debbie Branson, Donald Clark, Patrick Day, Norm Griffith, Sue McCrory, Emily McGee, Orlando Hodges, Rebecca Woodard

Guests: Jeremy Schenk

3. Approval of Minutes -Due to lack of quorum, the March minutes were not approved.

Due to a lack of quorum, most official business did not occur.

4. Announcements

  • The Senate had several guest speakers this month. Mary Ann Wood was our first speaker to talk about the Public Affairs Conference that will be occurring on-campus April 15 – 18. The conference this year is called Seeking Solutions: Conflict, Violence and the Courage to Change. Mary Ann was there to explain the history of the conference and to encourage everyone to attend the conference and to volunteer to assist with the conference. There is a wide range of speakers and topics at the conference. For more information contact Mary Ann or go to the conference’s website: https://publicaffairs.missouristate.edu/conference/
  • Our second speaker was Jeff Dorn from SHAPES. SHAPES is an organization sponsored by the General Council of the Assembly of God here in Springfield. The group tries to pair individuals up with children who have at least one parent in the prison system. The program is similar to the Big Brother/Big Sisters organization. This is a good program for anyone or a group looking to volunteer some of their time to help others. Presently there are 30 children who need to be paired up with a mentor. Jeff had some brochures and flyers available for people to take back with them. The basic requires of being a mentor is dedicating at least 1 hour a week to your child. All mentors have to pass a background check and they will be trained on how to interact with the child and resources available to them.
  • The April Membership Drive was talked about. We have received 16 applications so far and looking for more to arrive! Publicity has been distributed to the staff about applying for the openings.
  • Kelly Barnts suggested that we looked into establishing a scholarship from the Staff Senate. She believes that it is important to give back to the community and thought this would be a good way. She will have Heather King from the Financial Aid office come to our meeting in May and discuss how we could establish this scholarship. The Senate would have to determine eligibility criteria and the policies and procedures related to the scholarship. The Senate would have to come up with a way on how to raise money for this scholarship. Since there was not a quorum present we will have to bring this topic back up next meeting.
  • Dale Moore, Chair of the Work/Life Committee for the University reported back that he thought the focus groups would be starting shortly. He hoped it would be a fast, streamlined process and that the Committee would be about to start analyzing data soon.
  • During the monthly meeting with Dr. Nietzel, the summer flex policy from the Committee was presented to Dr. Nietzel and Greg Burris. At this meeting Dr. Nietzel suggested not using flex time during the summer and giving all employees who worked over the summer an additional 4 days of vacation. These four days could only be used between June 1 and August 1. Any of these days that were unused after August 1 would be remove. Greg Burris was going to check with Human Resources to see what the ramifications were with a plan such as this and report back. He was also going to check with Southeast Missouri State University to see how they did
    their summer work schedule and how that was recorded by HR. (Everyone at SEMO works 4-days a week. The entire University is closed on Friday). Dr. Nietzel was hoping to have something resolved before May 16.

5. Adjournment - The meeting ended at 2:27PM.

Submitted by Lenord McGownd