University of Southern Maine
Professional Staff Senate
Minutes

Wednesday, August 11, 2003
11 Baxter Boulevard, Portland

I. Attendance

Present: Donna Bird, Robin Day, Kat Gowen, Dana Gray, Anita Higgins, BeckyHodges, Pat Marston, Kathleen Pease,

Excused: Julie Archibald, Joce Lapping, Norma Charette, Cassandra Fitzherbert, Sheera LaBelle, Mark Menezes

Absent:  Daniel Axford, Sandra Bogdonoff, Joy Britting, Pam Roy, Tom Wood

Guest: Beth Shorr

 We did not have enough attendees for a quorum so items requiring voting had to be postponed until the next Professional Staff Senate meeting on September 3, 2003.

 II. Acceptance of July 9, 2003 Minutes

Voting on acceptance postponed until September 3 meeting.

 III. President¹s Office Report

Beth Shorr presented the new USM logo to the senate.  The selected logo will be unveiled to the full USM community at the USM Opening Breakfast on August 29 at 8am in the Costello Sport Complex.  The logo is being implemented to help tell a consistent, focused story about USM and to help raise public awareness around all the good things USM is doing.  The consistent look will help USM in creating a strong visual presence.  The large USM entrance signs on each of the campuses will be replaced with the new logo as will the banners on campus. The President will roll out the logo to the Corporate Partners Breakfast.  Departments should use up old stationary before using the new stationary that will be available for order on September 2.  The USM website will also reflect the new logo on September 2.

The next URIC (University Review & Improvement Committee) meeting is on September 20.  Members of that committee include Chairs of each of the Senates, including Robin Day, and the President¹s staff.  The committee is starting to talk about the process for how this group is going to operate. They envision discussions with various groups on campus but are unsure how that will work or how formal it will be.  This group is charged with achieving savings and efficiencies in the short term in order to support long term goals.

There will be a University Business Process Improvement Committee that will most likely require a representative from the Professional Staff Senate. This group¹s membership has not been populated yet but both Dana Gray and Donna Bird remain interested in participating. Robin Day will formally submit their names to Beth Shorr for inclusion on this committee.

 IV. Executive Committee

 a. Updates from the Senate Chair: Robin Day announced that Dana Gray is the new Professional Staff representative on the Space Planning Committee beginning August 1, 2003.  Robin spoke with Jenny Nelson, who held the seat prior, saying she was happy to relinquish the seat as she had been on it for several years.

 Robin provided Kathleen Bouchard with a list of people who may be interested in serving on the Emerging Professional Staff Award committee.  This list was generated from the list of people who ran for a senate seat but did not receive enough votes.

Robin has been invited to speak at the Classified Staff Senate Retreat on Friday, August 8 at the Stone House.  She plans on giving a history of the Classified Staff Senate and talk about links to the Professional Staff Senate.

 The Professional Staff Senate Executive Committee met on July 24.  This group includes the senate officers, Robin Day, Pat Marston, Becky Hodges and Mark Menezes as well as Kathleen Pease and Anita Higgins. 

If anyone is interested in the minutes from these meetings, please let one of us know. Several members of the senate expressed that it was nice to know they are available, but did not necessarily need them sent out regularly.

 b. Treasurer¹s Report :  The budget for 2003/04 is the same as last year at $1,150. 

c. 2003-04 Meeting Dates & Location Review :  Becky Hodges passed out a proposed list of the 2003/2004 Senate meeting dates and locations that was discussed by the Executive Committee.  Approval was postponed until next senate meeting. It was noted that the October meeting was missing from the list.  Becky will update and hand out again at the next Senate meeting.

 d. Committee List Review:  Becky also passed out a draft list of the Senate Committees and the members of those committees.  She will make updates and pass it out again at the next Senate meeting.

 V. Committee Reports/Updates

a. Elections Committee:  Eric James¹ departure from the University left a vacant senate seat.  Donna Bird spoke with Sharon Bannon and she is interested in the two year, at-large seat.  Since the Senate could not vote without a quorum, Donna will conduct the vote by email using the Prosen Listserve.

b. Bylaws Committee:  Dana Gray and Kathleen Pease met and brainstormed about what they would try to accomplish this year. Focus will be on representation in the election process and committee involvement requirements.  Kathleen is trying to put order to the list of professionals she has by way of divisions.  She said it is hard to know because divisions have changed names, new divisions, etc.  Donna Bird will give Kathleen the criteria used during last year¹s elections.

… Purpose to get more equal representation from all professional staff

… Outcome may use other criteria instead of or in addition to divisions,

such as, geographical proportion

… Review at large issue also

… Anita Higgins said in the beginning there were no criteria for who was elected on the Professional Staff Senate, so representation was limited.

The Senate decided to use divisions as a way to get more representation.

… Their next meeting will be in September.

c.   LAC Wellness (Ad Hoc) Committee

… Purpose - to find out information about the need for a wellness program at LAC

… End result - bring a proposal back to Classified Staff Senate for review, other committee members bring back to their Senates also.  Include in the proposal options, solutions and research on why LAC should have a wellness program.

… Suggestions were made by Senators that maybe a representative on the committee should be from the Employee Health and Recreation committee.

Jenny Nelson is in charge of this committee

… Senator asked if Suzanne Roy should be a member.

d.    Space Committee

… As of August 1st Dana is the representative on the Space Committee as

Jenny Nelson has stepped down from this committee

… Rosa Redonnett it is now the chair and will be refocusing this committee

… Committee will be reviewing the process of getting the space assigned

 VI. Senate Reports

 a.    Classified Staff   (Kathleen reported)

… Sam Andrews said student enrollment was up by 6% but he thought it would drop some 

… Senators talked about fundraising - no decisions were made

… Still want to continue with the newsletter

… They voted to give the Employment Development Day $250.00 (if they need it)

… Reviewed their scholarship requirements - eligibility is open to all classified staff and they can submit anything that will be good for their life -

need to show a receipt for reimbursement.  All applications will be put in a hat and recipients will be drawn out.  Four $75.00 scholarships this year - 2 in October and 2 in January.

… Annual Classified Staff Meeting - October 24, 2003 2 -4 pm Campus Center, rooms A, B and C

 b. Student Senate (Kathleen reported)

… Summer meeting and focused on goal setting

… They came up with two or three easel pages of goals - decided to focus on three - review their Constitution and make changes, raise Activity Fee and be more visible to students by better marketing of the Student Senate - these goals will be discussed more in September

 c.    aculty Senate

… No meetings during the summer.

… We need to get volunteers to attend the meetings for the coming school year.

 VII. Open Forum

a.    Environment Sustainability Convocation

… Donna Bird and Nancy Artz are the co-chairs

… Donna said convocation means a "calling together"

… Academic Affairs is in charge and has $20,000 a year to spend

… Donna passed out a calendar of coming events to take place Fall semester

… A lot of events will also happen during the Spring semester

… The issue could/will have an impact on the university.  Dana said there is now a APL#55 on sustainability

… Senate needs representation on the committee

… We, as the Professional Staff Senate, could decide to do something to promote this issue.

… Donna will talk about this again next month

 b.    Senate Goals

… Table this discussion until September

… Robin said the executive committee looked at the goals from last year and discussed how we should deal with the goals.

… Executive board suggestion is to have an Ad Hoc committee, which includes other professional staff not just Senators, to review the goals and make suggestions on how to proceed

VIII. Old Business

a.    Employee Development Day Donation

… Tabled discussion we didn¹t have a quorum

 VIII. Adjourn

… We couldn't vote to adjourn due to lack of quorum.  We all just agreed to close the meeting around 4:15 pm.

 Next Meeting is September 3, 2003 2-4pm at 128 School Street Conference Room, Gorham

Reported by Becky Hodges, Co-Secretary and Pat Marston, Co-Chair