Faculty Senate Meeting, February 21, 2023

Minutes

2022/2023 FACULTY SENATE

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

2:00pm – 3:00pm

Virtual Meeting-Zoom

1) Call to Order 

There was a call to order at 2:07 PM

Roll Call 

1. Present:

• Ed Boog (SCS)
• Gibran Chavez-Gudino (SA)
• Glenn Heath (SCS)
• Eric March (SCS)
• Jim Lowe (SCS)
• Crystal Chang (SA)
• Cruz Laudenslager (SCS)
• Marinn Clampit (SCS)
• Michele Casella (SA)
• Tillery Williams (SA)
• Cheryl Olson (SA)
• Monica Aguilar (SCS)
• Gar Casale (SCS) Absent:

(1) Danielle Donato (SA C. Quorum established.

2)Approval of Minutes – September/October/November

Eric moved to approve December minutes and Glenn seconded. It was unanimously approved. There was a typo.

3)Guest Invite Tracy Sherman, Chair-of-Chairs

1. Tracy has a monthly meeting with all senators, and they try to keep it to 4 hours.
2. [GH} Will state employees be returning to work? The Governor announced that we will be returning to pre-pandemic work status. [TS] Her administrative Assistant works from home. A lot of employees from CSN that are working from home have ADA letters. That is the easiest way for people to continue to work from home. There is not much that anyone can do about it. At CSN there is not enough room for people to return. There will be a problem statewide. The state let go of leases for workspace. There is a rumor which if true, then a lot

of demand at the beginning can be justified with reasons why people can continue working from home, when there is documentation to support the claims. [EB] If feel the same way about SA and SCS with documentation. [TS] Got the impression that our current chancellor is fine with telecommuting. [EB] Glenn did you want to add anything? [GH] Question about leased space up in the North. From a Higher Ed standpoint there are concerns about people looking elsewhere as far as job performance. [EB] Three quarters of the offices in Reno stand empty but with all the roof leaks it makes it hard to work in the current space. The leaky roofs must be repaired. [TS] it explains why there is money for deferred maintenance to repair the roofs. There are roof leaks at UNR too.

• [Ed] What are the different levels of the professors in Faculty Senate? [TS] At CSN

Instructors are either tenured (full professor) or Instructor. There are 550 full-time faculty; 1500 part-time and another 250-300 AFA. To become a tenured professor at CSN, it is 4 years of consecutive service and then you can apply for tenure (takes 9-10 months). All tenures are voted on by the Board. It is a general consent agenda item, then they vote on all applicants at the same time.  Tracy has tenured professors and no administrative faculty as part of her senate because they have their own senate. There is the AFA-Administrative Faculty Alliance. There has been discussion to integrate them, but they would have to give up their AFA. There is an NFA Union which does not cover administrative faculty members.

1. [JL] Had questions about remote work which were similar to the other questions asked previously. Jim learned from our CIO that UNLV’s IT department is saying there is a push to be remote. They are not customer facing and the majority of their job can be done online. This will also help them to be able to retain and especially hire new people. When they can list that remote work is possible, they have more applicants apply for the job.
2. [EB] Jim also had a question on our Chair’s representative in the Chancellors search committee? [TS] They have their own group for the Chancellor’s search. It’s like an advisory committee that all faculty senate chairs are on and there is student government representation, although unsure if they are their own advisory group. Right now, there is a survey, from the search consultant. The consultant has asked some questions from the organization. The consultant has asked what characteristics the new Chancellor should and should not have. They are completing the survey. They are asked what they liked and did not like about previous chancellors. And can you tell us about any past chancellors that they liked? These questions may not be relevant to student government as they may not know or remember anyone from the past.
3. [TW] Watched the meeting and as a follow-up question, are they are looking at Nevada only applicants or if they would do a nationwide search. [TS] She does not know. That question also came to Regent Arrascada but is still unsure and has no new information.
4. [EB] what bills are the chairs following this year? [TS] is waiting to see what comes out of the meeting. There are a lot of proposals that have not been decided. [JL] Specifically wondering about COLA. Will it be 8%? 10%? [TS] Unsure about NSHE but state employees will get a retention bonus. If so, NSHE employees are supposed to receive it too. There is a 22-24% vacancy rate in the state so we should receive COLA. Possibly a raise based on pay, again unsure about the amount. The legislature has heard from the previous governors that retention is a big problem. Since it is a one-shot, we may receive the funds.
5. What part of Workday do you like and dislike knowing that we maintain Workday? [TS] Only uses Workday when she must use it. [JL] How are your expense reports? Expense reports used to take several weeks and now it takes 3-5 days. [TS] has little experience with it so she is unsure. She knows they are magically always there. As an end user she feels like it is not easy to get into and use. Some boxes are redundant and repetitive, and some things are listed that she does not need to find the right list. Her husband is the person that helps her figure it out. [JL] feedback is important, and this is good to know. There are cheat-sheets that can help support configurations finance/payroll/benefits/hiring. From our team Jim is an HR Business Analyst and Marinn is a Finance Business Analyst. [TS] does not think that it is very intuitive.
6. [EM] Knows it is still a developing relationship but wants to know your impression on the Chair and Vice Chair? Or general thoughts on working with the previous vice-chairs and current chairs? Eric worked with them for 3 years previously. [TS] Has still not met with them since the last meeting was with the old people. Between having a new Chair, Vice Chair and new Chancellor, it’s unsure how it will look in a year. And how much pull it will have in the type of chancellor we get? There are so many questions that it is hard to answer. [EM] There are so many special meetings. [TS] March is the next full meeting. It is a different vibe. [EM] Regent Brooks attended an All-Hands-Meeting and seems supportive, it seems good, but they are so different. [TW] It stems back from the previous Chancellor and some feelings were brought back about alliances from the past. [TS] It demonstrates the split in the Board so it’s something we all know.
7. [TW] This question concerns the equity in pay bonuses/raises of that nature. We know that NSHE paints the narrative that we are strapped for cash. Is there ever talks about staggering to see what makes sense to narrow the wage-gap? Because there is a big difference for people making 200k than someone who makes less when talks of percentage. From COLA issue with inflation, these are the people we are losing because they are losing so little.

Does this conversation come about in your conversations? [TS] Agrees with you completely. At the institution level the discussions are taking place. They are happening at CSN and recently where they got a new CBA voted, retention bonuses were given and varied by pay/years of service. At the institution levels those conversations are happening, so it leads me to believe they are happening elsewhere. If they are not, she would be in support of it happening. There was a study that said Nevada is third in nation for the gap between managers and regular employees pay. She thinks this should be done for lower-income people because they are harder to retain. As part of a retention effort how can they not talk about it. She doesn’t have any other incite besides what is happening locally.

1. After the discussion introductions were made of FAC. [TS] Has been with CSN for 25 years. Was a previous faculty chair. Is the program director for the Cardio-Respiratory Sciences Program (respiratory therapist). Deeply believes in helping students change their lives.

Would like to thank everyone for the work that they do. Is very happy to have been invited. Reach out if you have questions. [EB]Thank you for coming.

4) Old Business

1. 1. EDIC update: February 1, 2023, there was IDEA committee meeting. A name change took place at the March Board Meeting. IDEA stands for Inclusion Diversity Equality & Access. The name change took place at the March Board meeting. Tillery has been staffing the committee since the departure of Vice Chancellor Constance Brooks. He helped work on the anti-discrimination resolution. At the most recent meeting a few things took place. i) The committee passed a Juneteenth resolution, which will make Juneteenth a paid state holiday. Asking the Board to notify the legislature of their support to do it.
      1. There are some bills making their way through legislature. There was AB31 but it was pulled.

• The NSHE Equity Statement, which is a public facing statement, saying what we value and encouraging those who come from historically marginalized groups, from both the student admission standpoint and the workforce standpoint, to apply with NSHE because of our values and wanting to diversify.

1. The next one is Blind recruitment. The concept is that it is supposed to condition and control biases for certain identifiable words. Things like what school you went to and places of employment. This will condition people to look at things of merit. Businesses both public and private have been using to diversity their workforce, so the committee passed that it.
2. The IDEA committee wants to increase 2 meetings to 4 because there are a lot of discussions/issues about inclusion and diversity. It was passed through, along with chair notes for the March Board meeting. Has been doing the work for 6 months and has become the permanent person, which gives him more discretion and allows him to be more vocal with the research and best practices.
3. IDEA council retreat scheduled for Friday. IDEA council is in the Board handbook. There are boots on the ground and Diversity Officers at each of the institutions. They will discuss the 2023 priorities and the Chancellor will be a part of the conversation.

1. [EB] going back to a previous topic on Blind recruitment: Do you hide the name? [TW] Yes and if you do that from the front end, all of that is redacted and blacked out, so that way you have a better sense. There is usually a test that he had to look at to gage a person’s sense of knowledge and experience. Taking off colleges and universities, that concept is what levels the playing field. To what extent and what level of exclusion is a conversation that we must talk to HR representative and how it talk to Workday. Also working on a pilot to map out how it will look so we have talked to the committee for the approval. We don’t know but have an idea that it will be in the department at one of the institutions.

5) Comments

1. 2023. [EB] Passed on notes from the Faculty Senate Chair meeting and the Chancellor meeting. He will send the notes for the minutes. Also, he passed on the notes from the IDEA committee. There is a Special BOR and search committee meeting on February 3, 2023. [EM] Thank you Ed for passing those along.
   2024. [TW] Update on the search committee. They are in the process of securing the contract to set up a

plan for the employee evaluations concerning the employee pay scale. A lot of the conversations were driven from the conversation that were had directly in this group. If there are instances where people are not being paid for the work they are doing, this will identify those areas, and bring people up to the levels they deserve. This will be finalized in the next few days, and everyone will hear about it from the Chancellor.

6) New Business

[EB] Anyone we want to invite to the next meeting? Send requests or suggestions to Ed.

7) Next Meeting

Tuesday, April 21, 2023, at 2:00 PM via Zoom

8) Adjournment 

There was a motion to adjourn by Eric and seconded by Glenn. Meeting was adjourned at 2:58 pm

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