Faculty Senate Meeting, November 15, 2022

Minutes

2022/2023 FACULTY SENATE

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

2:00pm – 3:00pm

Virtual Meeting-Zoom

1) Call to Order

There was a call to order at 2:02 PM

Roll Call 

1. Present:
   • Ed Boog (SCS)
   • Gibran Chavez-Gudino (SA)
   • Cheryl Olson (SA)
   • Marinn Clampit (SCS)
   • Glenn Heath (SCS)
   • Eric March (SCS)
   • Monica Aguilar (SCS)
   • Danielle Donato (SA)
   • Jim Lowe (SCS)
   • Tillery Williams (SA)
   • Crystal Chang (SA)

1. Absent:
   • Michele Casella (SA)
   • Cruz Laudenslager (SCS)
   • Gar Casale (SCS)

1. Quorum established.

2) Approval of Minutes

There were no minutes available. Approval will be tabled until the December meeting.

3) Public Comments

1. 2022. The Evaluations letter was delivered to the Chancellor on 10/19/2022. No major changes were recommended by the chancellor about working remotely. The lawyers are still looking it over and it may/may not happen in November.
   2023. Thank you to Gar for updating the FS Group email.
   2024. Welcome to Crystal Change – LV-SA
   2025. Roberta has requested Emeritus status and the Faculty Senate gave its approval. The

Chancellor will sign a letter and she will be recognized at the December All-Hands meeting.

4) Guest: Dale Erquiaga

Welcome to Dale Equiaga we have some questions:

1. (MA) What measures should NSHE take to better attract and retain talent?
   1. This is a question raised/heard from across the institutions. Institutions poaching from each other. Losing to other institutions for remote policies. It is why System Administration is interested in completing a climate survey. Dale has asked to create a staff retreat. Staff can talk to peers, and it would be useful information. The Chancellor said he has limited latitude about salary, is bound by merit pool, bound by cost of living, and bound by what the legislature states. ii) We can attend to those culture issues. About you all, not chancellors and vice chancellors. See what climate survey says and a staff retreat might yield some of that climate suggestions. One of the troubles about remote work is that we are not around each other anymore. If we are never with your peers, how can we say there is a work climate. As a group, what then does it look like to be a climate in a remote environment? The Chancellor cannot change health or retirement benefits or work hours, particularly with the number of leadership changes that are occurring. The better way to go is with a retreat.

iii) (MC) Workday team half in Reno half in Las Vegas. Some travel back and forth – being together for a day or half a day. (Dale) NSHE SA and SCS has four offices. Travel and hybrid are good. In California they had Home Week – twice a year – four times a year. They all came together.

Travel might be a way to do some of this. We can budget for travel in the next fiscal year.  iv) (GH) I understand there are different pots of money. But why can we fund travel or fund a consultant to study salary disparities/compression? (Dale) Classified staff is different.

Professional staff – we get to decide those levels. We tell them how many positions we need to hire and get pools of money for each. And the funds can be repurposed for consultancy. We cannot increase the size of the bucket of money and take an open position’s salary.

1. Is there an NSHE policy for personal stuff in our offices?
   1. Dale is not aware of any policy. Nothing in the manual. There are some rules we follow per fire code, such as not having a space heater because of a blown fuse or possibility of starting a fire. Also, removal of furniture because it blocks walk-ways.
2. What is the plan or process for the newly elected regents?
   1. Board members reported in two forums that onboarding and training was lacking. Board office has first responsibility for contacting and orienting regents. January 13 ceremonial swearing in. Building our own orientation from the Chancellor’s office. Most regents have varying degrees of understanding of the system. The Chancellor’s Office will offer orientation to the Board and regents in buckets; Legal, Finance and Student Academic Affairs. The Board Office will train on open meeting law, ethics, processing reports, and travel.
   2. Do you have any concerns about any individuals making their mark early?
      • Dale spoke with two Regents. Outgoing regents will be missed. The new ones are coming in with fresh eyes and spoke only about student success, enrollment and workforce development. It’s all about students and improving educational economic outcomes for state

• Do they pick which committees they are going to be on?
  • As Dale observed, the Chair assigns the committees. There will be a new Chair election in December.

1. (GH) It is encouraging to hear that the five new regents coming in focused on education and not politics. Going into a new session with new regents is there an indication of the budget being overturned? (Dale) The Governor elect’s budget is already cemented by early January. Made public around MLK Jr. day. Prebudget hearings begin January 17, 2023

1. (JL) Heads up for Dale from someone who has been at SCS for 23 years. Request will almost always be – why can’t we outsource SCS. Each time that we have seen this, each time this comes back SCS runs this on a shoestring I cannot believe they run as many things as they do especially in comparison to other systems. (Dale) People talk about his office having 160 employees without knowing that 90 work in Computing Services. It’s a talking point to break up the system.
   1. (MC) Has Anne spoken about what SCS does? (Dale) Has a rudimentary on the buckets of work. He has grown to like Workday. Does not use PeopleSoft and has some understanding about NevadaNet.
2. (EM) Predictions feelings about 23 legislative sessions? (Dale) Republican governor and democrat majority legislature. Either there will be sessions of compromise and back and forth negation or gridlock and everything will pass at the very end. We will see how they do as leaders. It’s unsure how they will act? We are prisoners of current politics. They campaigned for no new taxes, raises for teachers, returning state government and state agencies to pre-pandemic conditions, which includes ending remote work. However, most of the conversation will be taken up by talking about staffing and shortages, retention and benefits. Vacancy rate at the state is over 20%. 1 in 5 jobs in the state is vacant and have been for a long time. There is money for one-shots. For the end of fiscal year 2022 there was a 1-billion-dollar surplus. Fiscal year 2023 will end with a similar surplus. They must use that money for building buildings, pilot programs, and grants. Things like equipment requests are considered one-shot projects. Economic forum will be conservative in May. Base dollars are much harder to predict. It looks 50/20, like lot of the last few sessions which may be bad or a status quo session for NSHE.
3. (GH) Has the new chancellor search begun? (Dale) The search begins December 1, 2022. The Board will appoint the first 3 members of a committee and a chair which will appoint an advisory committee January 13, 2022. In January they will decide about a search consultant.
4. (JL) Comments: Workday HR team wanted to let Dale know that UNR is piloting administrative reviews on Workday to have them in place in January. The rest of campus can observe how it works and changes that need to be made for being able to use by 2024. Also (JL) respects the Chancellor’s communication style. It goes a long way to making all feel appreciated and that we have a voice.

5) New Business

• Three months of meetings to approve at the next meeting
• A suggestion for our next guest is Tracy from CSN who is Chair of Chairs – The invite will be made to her to join us for our meeting in January.
• Ed is taking questions from everyone for Tracy

6) Next Meeting

Tuesday, December 20, 2022, at 2:00 PM

7) Adjournment

Meeting was adjourned at 2:51 pm

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