Faculty Senate Meeting, August 16, 2022

Minutes

2022/2023 FACULTY SENATE

Tuesday, August 16th, 2022

2:00pm – 3:00pm

Virtual Meeting Zoom

1) Call to Order

1. 1. 2:01 PM

2) Roll Call

1. 1. Present:
      • Ed Boog (SCS)
      • Gibran Chavez-Gudino (SA)
      • Michele Casella (SA)
      • Christine Haynes (SA)
      • Glenn Heath (SCS)
      • Marinn Clampit (SCS)
      • Gar Casale (SCS)
      • Eric March (SCS)
      • Jim Lowe (SCS)
      • Danielle Donato (SA)
      • Tillery Williams (SA)
      • Monica Aguilar

1. Absent:
   • Cruz Chacon (SCS)
   • Cheryl Olson (SA)

1. Quorum established.

3) Approval of Minutes

Eric March moved to approve. Approved by popular assent.

4) Chair’s Report

1. Sherry Olson SA HR Director Q&A
2. i) Was only one rating available to employees on their work evaluations?
   • There were four ratings, excellent commendable satisfactory and unsatisfactory. Every employee had the opportunity to be rated based on those four levels. Rating criteria has

not changed for many years. It will be reviewed for next year. We saw ratings at all three levels. No bell curve. Each person is rated based on their performance.

• Contact Sherry if this is not the case for you.

1. What are some of the goals that NSHE has to retain employees. What can we do to help retain employees? Professional development? How do we start that discussion?
   • Merit is not a percent. Policy put in place in 2019 that allowed for NSHE to set aside 1% for merit. That is the only percent. We have a certain dollar amount set aside potentially for merit. The actual calculation is a share. It is a share of the number of “excellents” and “commendables”. Dollar amount is flat across categories. All excellents get the same money all commendable get the same money. SCS and SA amounts are different because we have separate budgets.
   • Retaining employees. Restructuring. New HR person is coming in. Search is moving along. We will reevaluate a lot of things with new team members and based on what leadership wants to do. Salary, climate, and just being a good colleague is always going to have a positive impact in somebody’s impression. Since the pandemic, great resignation is a real thing. People walking away from jobs and difficult to recruit new employees. People have reevaluated where they want to be and chosen how to make that happen. Professional development is available. Taking classes is available. Speak to your supervisor. SCS pays for certifications. PD budgets are usually department/unit specific.

• Understanding that there are different buckets of money. Did the settlement with Melody Rose affect anybody at NSHE?
  • Sherry not involved with budget. Question should go to Andrew Clinger.
  • Salary schedule study was very limited. It will affect recruitment. Going forward there is opportunity for further compression. That is an area that the CHRO will be looking at. Put in practices to correct or get us closer to correcting some of the salary issues that we have. It would be extremely costly to do it all at once.
  • Tillery Williams– the conversations that take place – do so at an upper level in a vacuum. People hear information that is inconsistent. Different people will say different things – varies widely. One of the things you have to have in a good workplace is having consistent messaging. People may not like what they hear but at least they know that it is accurate. Often what happens is if you have so many messages, nothing ever gets

done and everyone gets disgruntled. Sherry Olson– might be a good idea to have the person come and join for a meeting today. I think one of the difficulties is that there has been so much change in the organization. Finding a place of stability in the last couple of years has been very difficult. Instability does affect us on a day-to-day basis.

1. CHRO what is the timeline (loosely)?

(1) Committee needs to be convened. Soft-post date has come and gone. Initial review has occurred. Next month or so – mid to late September early October.

1. Remote work. Living off the original guidance of BOR. Sounds like information is being gathered for the BOR.
   • Overall policy in place that affects every institution – will be reviewed by the board. We have prepared quantitative and qualitative questions for the institutions plus SA/SCS final report will be compiled and will go to the board. Looking at what has been in place thus far – how it has worked – what challenges has there been?
   • We have our current remote work for SA and SCS. End date is approaching – working with Nancy Kelly (knee deep in human capital management). Preparing to put those documents on Workday. Instead of having the forms it will be a process in Workday. One other institution that is currently doing that. We are going to move forward with that. We can also report off of it. It will probably be a little easier to manage. It will look very similar to what we signed off on last year but it will be an electronic Coming up in the coming weeks and days. Putting in place our ongoing remote status – between now and the new sunset date of 12/31/2022. We do not know what the board is going to do.
   • BOR will be receiving report on October 14^th.

5) New Business

6) Comments

• • Glenn Heath – We should request statement be included in HR evaluation documents to cover concerns. From HR the more generic the information, the more likely we will be able to get anything.
  • Tillery Williams volunteers to draft a letter to send/forward to HR with regards to concerns.
  • Jim Lowe – Let’s get a benefits person in. Give us 15 minute run down. Awareness of benefits that you have. Grant in aid – retirement. Educate this group. Bring that back to co-workers. We could advertise out to folks. BCN benefits.
  • As of yesterday UNLV is a non-smoking campus. Some lack of messaging out there.
  • Michelle Casella – new to faculty senate. What are we supposed to be doing? I would fee better if I knew –What is our purpose? What is our impact? Can we be more like the institutional senates?
  • Gibran Chavez-Gudino – large structural difference between institutions and SA/SCS – shared governance, no academic faculty to back-stop collective action.
  • Glenn Heath – inviting stakeholders will go a long way to help us become a more involved group.

7) Next Meeting

Tuesday, September 20th, 2022, at 2:00 PM

8) Adjournment

Ed moved to adjourn the meeting at 3:32 pm

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