president’s staff advisory committee - brown university · absent: karen davis, lori nascimento...

PRESIDENT’S STAFF ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Meeting Minutes — January 13, 2009 Sharpe Refectory, Dining Room 8‐9

Present: Karen Asquith, Doreen Burgers, Patricia Davey, Sean DeBobes, Therese Doyle-Parillo, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne, Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Lisa Sheehan, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter, Jennifer Whitworth

Absent: Karen Davis, Lori Nascimento

Amy opened today’s meeting by asking each subcommittee leader (Doreen, Lisa and Sarah) to describe the mission of their committee, what they do and hope to accomplish for the new year. New SAC members will then be given the opportunity to decide what committee they are interested in serving on.

Joe Sarno, the Director of Labor Relations at Brown University, introduced himself to the group and explained his role as an advisor to SAC. As an advisor to SAC, one of his roles is to serve as interface between SAC and senior management. He can be instrumental in conveying concerns of staff to senior management. When concerns are communicated to Joe and Karen Davis, they attempt to find answers for SAC. Joe also advises SAC on certain projects-for example, the Town Hall meeting SAC hosted with President Simmons and other members of Brown’s senior administration. Joe served as mediator at the Town Hall meeting and helped organize it. Joe also looks at meeting minutes for accuracy and confidentiality. He also helps to draft correspondence on behalf of SAC and answer concerns.

Advisor’s Report

Karen Davis was not present at today’s meeting. Joe Sarno gave advisors report in her absence.

Joe Sarno noted that the University is committed to establishing more efficiency between departments. Amy mentioned that at our next full meeting we will discuss Organizational Review Committee (ORC), and that it will be one of our topics today. Joe Sarno stated that once areas for improvement are identified, outside and inside consulting firms will look at how we can be more efficient. President Simmons will be emailing employees by the end of month with an update on the hiring pause among other issues. He also explained the cone of silence, which is the term we use when we introduce a topic that is not to be discussed outside of SAC.

Joe noted that the University has met 85% of its goal with Brown Gives Green. He encouraged us to get the word out to help the University meet its goal.

One final note, Joe asked for feedback concerning the early release email he sent on December 19 due to snow storm. Joe was concerned that some thought it was a hoax, realizing that most people do not know who Joe Sarno is. Suggestion - perhaps he could introduce himself via morning mail, and put link to a Brown website for alerts. Joe was asked how many members use the Snow Line x3111 phone number. Suggestion - perhaps alerts should automatically go on a Brown web page for employees to check. Have link from MIR 3 to Brown webpage for updates.


SPS – Doreen Burgers reported that a position on the Parking Violation Appeals Board was filled. The candidate is Jenifer Lane, she will start as soon as the office relocation is complete. She also reported that SPS will need to fill 3 other committee positions this winter.

O&C – Sarah Peri reported that the O&C committee worked on creating a Winter Break Poll which is available on the SAC website. People are asked to fill out the form and it will be sent to the SAC email. O&C will gather data, and give poll results to President Simmons. We should spread the word about the poll to encourage people to fill out the questionnaire.

Amy then initiated a new member ice breaker - an exercise designed to introduce new members of SAC to existing SAC members. Members rotated around the room to discuss fun topics for 30 seconds.

Action Planning

Amy addressed the committee. She asked that we break into 3 groups to discuss 6 issues. She asked us to brainstorm what actions can be taken to move agenda items forward? She also asked that one person in each group to record the minutes for their group. Members then broke into 3 groups spearheaded by Joe Sarno, Sarah Peri and Doreen Burgers. Each group met for 20 minutes. At the end of 20 minutes SAC members had the opportunity to discuss the remaining 3 topics. At 1:20 p.m. the groups finished their discussions and all SAC members re-convened.

Debrief with entire group

Ron Dunleavy, mentioned tech support for website, formulating ideas; we need someone who is able to work with Contribute, perhaps 2 people. Amy asked group how the discussions went and if it was difficult to come up with action items.

Several SAC members noted that they have a lot of interest in serving the community outside of the University, tons of ideas, there is a desire not only to be a collection point, but to have more opportunities to serve. One SAC member mentioned that she received an email looking donations of clothing and jackets. These items could then be brought to a donation center on Elmwood Avenue. The idea of having a campus location for donations was suggested.

Joe Sarno spoke about how to get issues before SAC and how to connect the Senior Administration to SAC. He suggested that he will work with Karen Davis on that; how to reach out to administrators and what services we can provide.

There was some discussion about our identity and visibility as SAC members and what options we have. It was suggested that members add “Member of SAC” to signature on emails as a possible way to increase awareness of SAC and visibility (Sarah will circulate). We were encouraged to share all no-confidential information with colleagues in our own departments and to use our own departments to increase communication.


Announcements

Amy mentioned that in 2 weeks SAC will be meeting at the CIT building to learn about the SAC WIKI. Stephanie will be our instructor and she will give training on how to use this tool. We will then proceed to 169 Angell Street to have lunch and hold meetings of the subcommittees.

Karen Leonard mentioned that SAC has a shared folder on server that she would like SAC members to be able to access.

There will also be a link to Ladd Observatory Night on the website

Meeting adjourned at 1:30pm

At the end of this meeting photographs were taken of new SAC Members (and anyone wanting to update their current photo) to be used on the Staff Advisory Committee Website.

Meeting Minutes — January 27, 2009 CIT 215 & 169 Angell St.

Present: Karen Asquith, Doreen Burgers, Karen Davis, Sean DeBobes, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne, Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Lori Nascimento, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Lisa Sheehan, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter

Absent: Therese Doyle-Parillo, Michelle Nuey, Patricia Davey, Jennifer Whitworth

Today’s hands-on Wiki Workshop was conducted by Stephanie Obodda ([email protected])

Wikipedia’s definition of Wiki; A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified mark-up language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in business to provide intranet and Knowledge Management systems. Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work."

Factoid: Wiki means “fast” in Hawaiian

Brief overview of workshop; please refer to hand out for more detailed information

1. As long as you have a web browser, you can view and edit a wiki page.

2. A lot of people can have access to a wiki page. It is an excellent tool to use for collaborative editing. Typically, there is a fast learning curve, no special tools are required, and you can have multiple pages and multiple editors. Wiki can also handle different permissions.

3. Wiki is not good for specific formatting– it is best used for just getting information out there.

mailto:[email protected]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia


4. You can access wiki at Brown by just opening your browser and typing in wiki.brown.edu.

5. You can also add and view comments to a wiki page.

6. A useful tool for SAC members. Sub committees can create a page for their issues, use as a tool to track progress, and as a discussion tool.

7. It is possible to be notified of changes on wiki page, click email button on wiki page and you will be notified of any changes made on that page.

8. The reply to this button creates a threaded discussion.

9. For tips about pasting MS Word documents – please see handout.

10. Wiki will notice if two people are editing a page at the same time. Whoever saves first will have their edits shown. When the other person saves theirs, it will seamlessly combine the two edits.

11. You can change formatting and headings using the format button.

12. It is possible to insert a new table by clicking insert table. Click in one of the cells and start typing-- columns will adjust themselves as you type.

13. Link button. You can create links from to the web or to something within the wiki. You can also link to an attachment, by clicking on Attachment, then browsing for it.

14. Image button lets you add an image. You can browse, find an image, click attach, then ok, and it will attach itself to your page.

15. Wiki markup is code (very scary button) Not often used.

16. You can add a comment about your edit.

17. Click minor change box and no notification will be sent out. For example, this should be use when editing spelling in a document and when it is not necessary to notify everyone about the change.

Feel free to email Stephanie with your wiki questions. [email protected]. Or visit http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page

Workshop meeting adjourned and reconvened at the 169 Angell Street location for lunch and subcommittee discussions.

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page


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Meeting Minutes — February 10, 2009 Hillel Meeting House, 2nd Floor Present: Karen Asquith, Doreen Burgers, Patricia Davey, Karen Davis, Sean DeBobes, Therese Doyle-

Parillo, Joe Gagne, Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Lori Nascimento,

Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter, Jennifer Whitworth

Absent: Ronald Dunleavy, Sarah Peri, Lisa Sheehan, Kristen Soule

Albert Dahlberg, Secretary of the University

Volunteer opportunities during commencement weekend

Al asked the group if anyone has ever volunteered at commencement. A number of members raised their hand. He

mentioned that commencement is a wonderful time at Brown a combination of reunion classes and graduating

class. Brown is the only Ivy League school that combines the two. Part of Al’s job is to coordinate activities for

commencement weekend and he is trying to reach out to staff members and let them know about volunteering

opportunities. There are a lot of opportunities to get involved.

1. There are volunteer opportunities at the Saturday commencement forums, where speeches are given by

invited speakers.

2. On Sunday, volunteers are needed along the Procession Route to the Van Wickle Gates and at the service

at the First Baptist Meeting House.

3. Volunteers are needed for ushering late morning through late afternoon. Also for Saturday afternoon from

2:00pm to 4:00pm. Then again on Sunday 8:00am to 12:30pm, then from 11:00are to 2:00 pm.

4. Training for volunteers is provided and is a lot of fun! 5.

Al will be sending out a notice in Morning Mail about volunteering opportunities.

Al started planning for this year’s Commencement last June. Amy suggested Al also speak with the Ambassador

Group. 20-25 volunteers are needed overall, and prior training is done a day or two before and morning of the

events. Al Tente mentioned that he volunteered last year and trained for about an hour. Albert said that you don’t

know Brown until you see commencement weekend. It truly sums up everything. To see the undergraduate

students come thru the gates and to see 1 or 2 from the class of 1927 and the roar of applause is amazing. It’s a

very emotional time.

The Procession proceeds through the Van Wickle Gates and lines up along college street, once everyone comes

through the gates the Presidential Party is right outside Van Wickle Gates everyone gets a chance to applaud the

procession, they are also applauding Ruth Simmons and the Corporation, the alumni, and the students. Albert

suggested that you send him an email if you have any questions. If you know of anyone who would like to

volunteer, please send them his way.

General Discussion

Discussion was opened up about possible cost savings for travel reimbursement with direct deposit instead of

issuing a check. At this time, we cannot use the direct deposit method with the old system that we currently have.

Also many of our employees are paid monthly and do not want to wait for reimbursement.

Amy wanted to bring to the groups attention to some rules about the SAC wiki, threading conversations mostly.

When commenting hit the reply button to stay in that conversation.


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Joe Gagne announced that the Drive has reached its goal-- Raising over $2,800.00 with Change for Change.

Karen Davis would like to help with the charities drive next year. This year was a terrific effort given the current

financial back drop. Karen believes that we could do better next year with SAC’s help! SAC will begin discussing

the 2009 drive in July, with early brainstorming; Joe Gagne, wants to kick it off in early fall, would start

mobilizing at that time.

Sean brought up the topic of the new bookstore café, Blue State, and Brown First. People are concerned-- why are

we outsourcing jobs with other companies and not keeping it within Brown? Karen Davis cannot answer that at

this time. Karen will report back after researching; she also noted that Blue State Coffee is run by a Brown Alum.

Advisors Report: Karen Davis and Joe Sarno

Regarding direct deposit and travel reimbursements, Karen is 98% sure that Brown is going to delay the HR

payroll systems replacement project. Brown decided to work on payroll first, and then the financial system. In a

perfect world you should do them together. It may be that we can rethink some issues in advance, it may be good

to slow down a bit to give us a chance to re-examine the issue. That’s the update. ITPRC meets monthly and

focuses on high level projects, there’s some level of university wide priority setting, such as payroll. There is a

February meeting that will allow some of this discussion.

The Corporation’s regular meeting will be next weekend; there has been a lot of activity since the October

meeting. Between that time and now, we’ve done a lot of internal analysis and have a greater understanding of

what is happening. The Corporation formed an ad hoc committee to discuss Brown’s financial situation. Karen

believes that President Simmons may send an additional community-wide communication about the ad hoc

committee’s recommendations. Next time we meet, Karen will let us know what has come out of the

Corporation’s meeting. In October Karen gave a presentation to the Corporation. Since then the financial

backdrop has changed. At that time, the Corporation wants a 10 year view of revenue and expenses. The

Corporation wanted to talk about the hiring pause, had inkling about hiring pause which was intended to be just

that, a pause. The idea was to force all of us to pause before rushing to fill vacant positions. The easiest way to

save money is not to fill a vacant position. We knew at the time that we would not save a lot of money. This pause

has given us more of a chance to stop and think about organization review. Between November and mid January

the Vacancy Review Committee received 66 requests to fill vacant positions, including positions that are fully or

partially grant funded or seasonal. A real mix of requests came in, of that 66 the committee said yes to 31

positions, for another 5 we said ok but urged to find an internal candidate, 9 we said yes to fill with a temporary or

consultant. 21 or so requests were denied. Most people that Karen has spoken to have felt that the process was

reasonable, fair and logical. We are doing a mid course correction, had to develop for making the process a little

more straight forward.

An Organizational Review Committee (ORC) is also being formed; it is meant to achieve significant savings

overtime approximately 12 million dollars. Brown has been doing 5-year budget and financial plans. To

summarize, over the next 5 years, we must cut 60 million dollars from projected expenses; the more we cut now

the easier it will be to reach that target. FY 10 is the first full year that we can do something. Betsy and Karen are

part of the ORC committee along with Vince Tompkins, Bob Pelcovits, physics professor, Brenda Allen and Jim

from Bio Med. The ORC’s charge is to identify areas that are worth looking at in more depth to eliminate

duplicated efforts. The committee is trying to narrow down the potential areas. There is no magic date, once

approved for further study then the hard work begins - using internal or external consulting help is a possibility.

Are there other organizational models that might help; e.g., could one or 2 faculty members share an


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administrator. Another, for some university departments, a single administrative unit could service several groups;

perhaps this would be a way to consolidate resources and to give better service. Also the committee talked about,

departments that have a communications or development person. ORC will be ready to make some

recommendation in a month or two. Implementation may take a year-- this is not a short term easy fix.

Karen suggested brain storming about what things can we stop doing all together, where do we have business

processes that can be more efficient? Does anyone have an idea for Brown that someone else uses (a model) that

work?

Karen shares Amy’s view that a Town Hall meeting should wait until a little later in the year.

We are open to new ideas. Karen wanted to discuss ideas or confirmation of things we have heard from other

places.

Ways departments can save money

1. Ban single page copying, use color only if necessary.

2. One dept has tried to go paperless for Faculty searches and post doc searches, use on line applications

instead of paper applications.

3. One department has looked at its telecommunications line, no more caller ID it is cheaper, cut down on

phone features to save money.

4. Bring your own coffee cups.

5. Turn off lights when not in use, maybe a reminder can be sent out to say turn off lights! Looking at ways

to cut power usage. When you shut down your computer, shut the monitor off, shut speakers off, better

yet, unplug the computer.

6. Printing, use a multi-purpose copier, rather and a printer and copier. Why do we need both?

7. Bring in desk lamps with energy efficient bulbs rather than overhead lights.

8. Eliminate student messaging in dining hall, table slipping. Costs money to print slips, and then clean up.

Try to do electronically instead of table-slipping, (an important way to promote function) should consult

with student activities. There was an editorial in the BDH about eliminating table slipping. It would be

nice to know what the saving would be.

9. Dining services should ask if you need little creamers instead of just sending them.

10. Catering was looking at reducing paper work a couple of years ago. Write fax that goes directly to your

computer, is this cost savings? Can we fax from our computers to save paper?

11. Great time to renegotiate vendor contracts, maybe they would be willing to give discounts that they

wouldn’t a year ago.

12. Ordering things in bulk to waive delivery charge. Coordinate ordering within department. Ask about an

educational discount when ordering.

BEAR Day discussion: Angel Hillard

Angel spoke to us about BEAR day- how many attended? It is always good to get feedback right after the event.

Angel sent an email for feedback. One complaint was the room was too crowded; some liked the crowded room

made it seem more intimate. Let’s break each element of the program down for discussion.

1. Ceremony what worked and what didn’t work: Held in Solomon this year, everyone loves Salomon, some

people didn’t get a seat which was a complaint. Some people in the overflow rooms could not see the


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ceremony, because the camera was not focused on the right things. Was 001 filled up? It did fill up pretty

quickly. Needed to adjust the volume down. They could only see one side of the stage. Will try to correct

that. Projection was dark and not very clear.

2. What did we like about Salomon; in main room it was perfect. Intimate and fun, good spirited, Amy

thought it was great. Video was very charming; they are in the process of posting it on website (HR).

Perhaps the video can be used as a recruitment tool.

3. Survey said most appreciated the casualness, not stuffy, informal. Even people who were downstairs

stood when Beppie asked them to!

4. Angel acknowledged that it was crowded. It was suggested that they could the ceremony start 5 or 10

minutes later to get people who came in later more involved. Angel commented that we usually start a

few minutes past 3:00pm. It was made very clear to all what time the ceremony was to start, they should

have been there on time, an email was sent out. If we start late, it aggravates people who were there on

time. Start time should be start time. It was also mentioned that there was a lot of activity during the

ceremony; maybe they shouldn’t let people in after the start of the ceremony.

5. The reception: had to have it when classes where in session, we had to partition off areas in back of

Sayles for dining services. Maybe next year it can be during winter break, it depends on President

Simmons schedule. During winter break maybe we could use the refectory. Other improvements?

A. Maybe not having it on a Friday.

B. Acknowledge folks in overflow rooms by the MC.

C. Have video in 001 projected upstairs, do the wave?

D. Was easier to have it on campus, no shuttle buses involved. Saved a lot of money by having it

on campus.

E. Saved on reception menu, given economic climate. Maybe too much fried food.

F. A suggestion was made to switch BEAR Day to staff development day. Most agreed it is

nice to have 2 functions.

Amy thanked Angel for coming and made the following announcement:

In 2 weeks SAC will be at 121 South Main Street. Don’t forget to bring your ID to get into building. Agenda

suggestions go on wiki. Subcommittee meeting day - 1 hr committee meeting, 1 hour to discuss future projects.

Meeting adjourned at 1:30.


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Meeting Minutes — February 24, 2009 121 S. Main, Room 247 Present: Karen Asquith, Doreen Burgers, Patricia Davey, Sean DeBobes, Therese Doyle -Parillo, Ronald

Dunleavy, Joe Gagne, Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Lori Nascimento

Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Lisa Sheehan, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente,

Amy Umstadter, Jennifer Whitworth

Absent: Karen Davis

SAC subcommittees met for the first hour of today’s meeting.

Staff Concerns

Sarah Peri received an email from a staff member asking about alternatives to layoffs. The email suggested that

perhaps employees would rather accept cut hours than people losing their job, furloughs with proportionate cuts in

pay.

Joe Sarno responded by suggesting that some of those issues have been considered noting that the idea of f

furloughs came up this morning in the finance and administrative meeting. Sarah will forward email to Joe.

Amy spoke of the recent Administrative Leadership Meeting, where they spoke about layoffs. They have got it

down to approx 30 current positions that will be eliminated. They will try to find new positions within Brown for

those employees; a real effort will be made.

Joe Sarno stated that there will be a correspondence going out today or tomorrow from Beppie, explaining the

additional cuts that the Corporation deems necessary. Some positions will have to be cut, but they have been kept

to a minimum, they will do their best. There will be an offer of severance pay, a comprehensive and generous

severance pay. Hopefully extending people’s health benefits, there will be outsources such as career services.

URC and Vacancy Review Committee said that some good suggestions have come from SAC and to keep them

coming. Sarah Peri added that we should encourage people to respond to the cost savings link, or SAC email. If a

suggestion to the link it will be anonymous.

Nancy Magers asked, if the 30 positions include the first cut or is this in addition to. Joe Sarno said for this first

pass, it does include the first cut.

Group Reports

O & C subcommittee

O&C has been working on the Winter Break Poll and has received 400 responses. Sarah is hoping to get the letter

to President Simmons written by Spring Break. A thought on the letter would be to bring to the forefront, the

comments that are noteworthy; we will print them and give them to President Simmons. If President Simmons

wants to see all of them, we could send them to her. Sarah received an email from employee suggesting that we

should post the results of poll on our webpage for others to see. Regarding Morning Mail, O&C thought on the

wiki under the O&C link, Marla will create a folder called Morning Mail and one called Webpage Changes. If

you have a Morning Mail that you want to be posted, you can write it and then put one the O&C wiki link and it

will be posted.


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Amy suggested shared ownership of the website’s information and assigning pages for each subcommittee to

review periodically. In the folder for Webpage Changes, please, make a note of an errors or changes that should

be made (i.e., broken links/old links, spelling changes, outdated information).

Events subcommittee

Lisa Sheehan reported that the Best of Brown, Ladd Observatory event had an estimated 150 attendees. It was a

great night. Next project may be Rebuilding Together in April; the Committee will start working on that. We will

get going on a volunteer list, start thinking about food for breakfast and lunch. We have been coming up with

ideas for Best of Brown, Lori has been in touch with the greenhouse, and there may be a theater night with free or

reduced-rate tickets for a performance. One idea is a Library tour at the John Hay or maybe something in

conjunction with RISD. A Haffenreffer tour is also a possibility.

SPS subcommittee

SPS is currently considering applications for the University Resources Committee, application deadline is

tomorrow, Doreen has one applicant, but will consider extending application deadline until Friday. Encourage

people to apply we would like to have a few more to select from.

One of the things we would like to do is to create a collection week every month for a different charity as part of

Brown giving to the external community.

Some ideas for charities are:

1. RI Food bank (there is not enough food to sort, the need is great)

2. Collecting school supplies for Fox Point.

3. Collections for Cross Roads, they are in need of personal items like toothpaste and soap.

4. Collecting for a local women’s shelter for business casual clothing.

5. The Human Society, they need food and blankets for the animals.

6. Collecting coats and winter gear.

We will try to get the RI Food Bank collection for the first week of March. We will try to get the communication

out to everyone. Over the next month we will work on getting everything set up.

Beth suggested collaborating with student organizations (Roger Nozaki at the Swearer Center would be the point

person) so they are aware of what we working on. One SAC member said that at her daughter’s school they make

a point of saying that you do not have to feel obligated to donate, parents were feeling “donated out.” Doreen

offered that collection bins are anonymous, and people can donate at will without feeling forced to do so. There

will be collection points centrally located. Doreen will confirm with Angel Hilliard the best areas to put bins.

Perhaps Davol, BOB, 121 South Main Street, the Blue Room, =J. Walter Wilson to name a few. We want to be

consistent in where the bins will be located. University Hall is another possible location for a collection bin. Beth

suggested that maybe there is an outside company that would be willing to donate bins. The bins on wheels would

be perfect. We will contact them.

A memo sent to entire committee, all SPS met with members of Serve Rhode Island about opportunities to

volunteer. We cannot do them all the first year, but there is a lot we can do to market volunteerism in the

Providence community. Everyone at Brown who registers with Serve Rhode Island should register using their

Brown email address and we will come up with recognition opportunities. There is a Presidential Award given to

people who volunteer 100 hours a year. Anyone at Brown that volunteers 100 hours a year will be recognized at

BEAR Day.

Beth suggested that we should partner with staff and students. SAC members agree that it is a good idea. Beth

also suggested that we utilize Serve Rhode Island, for their database for Brown volunteers.


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Doreen said that as long as Brown has volunteers, we will have access to Serve Rhode Island’s list. We could

purchase a license for software that costs $2-3K, but right now it makes sense not to request that money. Michelle

asked when this is going to happen. Doreen mentioned that we need help from O&C marketing this partnership.

Maybe a flyer at first would be a good idea. Sarah suggested putting announcements at collection points with new

volunteer opportunities. Sean suggested that we should have team captains.

Amy asked Joe Gagne about team captains, he said they selected from CIS, HR, some of the bigger areas were in

charge of sending message to their group. Amy asked if we could apply that model to this and Joe said, that was

one of the successes of the program, and there were some great ideas to incorporate next year. Doreen mentioned

that we haven’t made a formal commitment; we are still working it out. We can use this as a model to create a

spirit of philanthropy.

As you are launching this campaign, package it all together to make it comprehensive is essential -- and it gives

the project identity. Tracking the amount of donations (pounds of food, number of coats, etc.) is also important.

Joe Gagne suggested that Staff Development Day would be a good forum to advertise volunteer opportunities.

Beth suggested having a contest for obtaining a slogan or identity, a contest internally perhaps. Doreen asked that

we brainstorm and identity a slogan. Amy encouraged us all to use this time to brainstorm. Joe Gagnon mentioned

that in a previous job they had a contest and it got a lot of people involved.

Joe Sarno would like to incorporate SAC’s name somewhere in the slogan. One idea for a logo was a bear

hugging a heart, or hugging a picture of the city of Providence.

Kristen suggested paring up with student groups for collections too. Doreen suggested getting to the students in

September, when students come back we can link up with them then.

SPS needs to touch base with O&C with information on our first collection site. Doreen will call Janice at the

Swearer Center; maybe have her as a guest at a SAC meeting. It was suggested that food services could donate

food for Rebuilding Together breakfast and lunch. Sean will talk to the director about donating food.

Amy offered congratulations to the Events subcommittee on the success of the Ladd Observatory night, it was

fabulous. Please contact Doreen with ideas about slogan.

We will be meeting back at Hillel House on March 10th.

Meeting adjourned at 1:30.

Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes Hillel House

80 Brown Street March 10, 2009

Present: Karen Asquith,, Patricia Davey, Karen Davis, Sean DeBobes Therese Doyle-Parillo, Ronald Dunleavy, Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Jason Masi, Lori Nasciemento, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joseph Sarno, Lisa Sheehan, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter, Jennifer Whitworth Absent: Beth Murphy, Doreen Burgers, Joseph Gagne, Nancy Magers Guests: Deb Berlo, Director of Graphics Services, Beth Gentry, Assistant Vice President and Director of Financial and Administrative Service, Don Schanck, Assistant Vice President and University Controller, Gretchen Willis, Director of Dining Services Staff Concerns Deb mentioned that there are staff concerns about layoffs, the staff is wondering when will the process be finalized. Joe Sarno said that one of the reasons it hasn’t been finalized is due to severance packages that are being worked out. It may be finalized in possibly in the next few weeks. It was also mentioned that people are speculating. Joe Sarno feels that one of the dangers of letting this drag on is speculation. We have to be sure we are making the right decisions we are working on the best packages we possibly can. We realize that the more time we take, the more anxiety there is. A lot of things will be taken into consideration the layoffs will be case by case. Sean said that people would be more comfortable if they are told in advance.Joe Sarno feels that the more severance that can be offered, the better we will be, they are trying to balance what the university can expend on that, they want to give people as much notice as possible. Jennifer thought it might be a good idea to send notification to the rest of the community after the layoffs. Sarah Peri mentioned that there was staff concern regarding the recent snow storm and that the weather notice was made late. A SAC member also voiced a concern that if it is too dangerous for Safe Ride, then why is it not too dangerous for staff to come to work. Amy noted that many areas were not shoveled and walking was hazardous. Joe Sarno agreed that the notice was issued too late, he looks at weather station predictions and tries to keep people up to date. Joe also said that they try to make a decision at or before 6:00am, to get things posted by 6:15am. There needs to be better coordination between Safe Ride and Facilities there also should be an improvement in parking instructions and getting those instruction out to the Brown Community. Joe Sarno acknowledged that there is a lot of area for improvement. There is a meeting scheduled with all the relevant department heads next week so we can learn from this most recent storm and come up with better practices for the next storm. Amy suggested that perhaps we can post results of that meeting in the morning mail. Therese asked if you could take a sick day if you feel the roads are too hazardous. She didn’t get shoveled out till 3:30. Jennifer Whitworth asked why a delay and not a close down? Joe Sarno answered that there are a lot of factors to consider. The timing of the storm is a big factor. A delay seemed most the appropriate thing to do. In some situations, the timing dictates an early release. We want to make sure not to create a dangerous situation. Deb mentioned that in the past, when there was a parking ban, the University used to be closed to allow the removal of the snow. Joe Sarno said that after last year’s snow, there was a lot of criticism. The city has been quicker to establish a parking ban in the City, we cannot continue to link what the city does with what Brown does. Every time the City has a parking ban, we cannot be held to that. Lori mentioned that the bus schedules are way off on snow days, the bus was 45 minutes late and hopefully supervisors would be understanding of that. Amy suggested to do snow notification by cell phone perhaps. Karen Davis answered that cell phone notification is reserved for more serious emergencies. Sarah Peri said that some public schools set levels of emergencies such as level one, and level 2 and so on, she offered to find out more about that type of protocol and report back to

Joe Sarno. Karen Davis mentioned that SAC would be the perfect group to work on a more effective way to deal with snow emergencies. Brown First Policy Discussion Don Schanck, Assistant Vice President and University Controller: The Brown First program was set up in 2003, a time similar to what it is now, the program was set up to look for ways to save money. We have resources here at Brown and over the years it has worked well. Beth Gentry, Assistant Vice President and Director of Financial and Administrative Services: There have been a number of people that contributed back to the University right now there is 3 million dollars going back to the University from all the auxiliaries. They are given a target to help contribute—Graphic Services $600 K, Dining Services between $50 -‐100 K. Graphic Services, in 2003 was giving $200 K—all of which has grown. Gretchen Willis, Director of Dining Services: How does Dining Services fit in to the Brown First Policy? Since the program started Dining Services gave back $500 K the first year. When we started we looked at how the food purchased through the Purchasing Department, one of our goals was to reduce the outside vendors to a more manageable amount. We accomplished that goal. It is our job to go to a vendor and tell them they will get x amount of business from Brown University, we are then able to negotiate better pricing with vendors. In the past, there were a lot of different pricing schemes on campus, a lot of different prices from same vendor were being charged to different departments. Dining Services tried to get fair prices for every department within the University. We were also able to require vendors to have proper licensure from the State of Rhode Island, also Health Department licenses. This was an unanticipated benefit-‐-‐a lot of vendors around campus did not have that. Deb Berlo, Director of Graphics Services: Deb Berlo gave a presentation and a handout on Why Brown First. The floor was then opened to questions. Deb mentioned that she met with the Vice President of Creative Marketing at RISD, they decided to start with bids previously done, and to look at the difference in prices. The question was asked how many companies could you bring in? Deb answered, RISD and some local schools, churches, along with some private schools. Deb would also like to reach out to the Red Cross and museums, but they have started with RISD. Karen Davis asked, how do we insure that the outside vendors are paying a living wage? Deb answered that we interview them and ask about benefits. It s very competitive market and we want to be considered a resource for Brown University. Metcalf is a division of Graphic Services, Metcalf can sometimes be less expensive on short runs. The Customer Service Staff at Metcalf will advise on the best route, they will tell you to either stay with Metcalf or go to 10 Park Place to get the job done. Amy brought up the question about billing-‐you don’t get a bill, it appears on a ledger, but not everyone has access to a ledger. Deb explained that when you come into graphics you get a requisition number and with that they can follow your job, we do give some departments an itemized bill at the end of the month with all the charges. Request an itemized bill give graphics a call with the requisition number and they can tell you the cost. Gretchen Willis, Director of Dining Services made herself available to answer questions about Dining Services. Karen Davis asked about lead time for a catered event, if we don’t have a lot of lead time, is there something we can do for shorter turnaround time? Gretchen answered that there are different services. There are catered events including labor and linens, buffet style events or an event that is served by a wait person, we like 10 days notice. We do many events with shorter than a 10 day window, however, during very busy times, we may have to stick to 10 days. Sometimes an event can be done sooner than that it depends on how busy they are, Gretchen suggests calling them and they can tell what they can do for you, they will always try to work with you.

A question was asked about vendors, how do they decide to pull in an outside vendor? Gretchen said that we try to do it, if not, we outsource especially when it is very specific ethnic food. They try to augment their list with outside vendors. We tried to look at our vendor list once a year, and we always take suggestions. When it comes to alcohol, we can do it as part of a meal and charge a retail price, if you want a bar, they hire an outside vendor for that. Therese brought up that it seems like a lot of paperwork. Gretchen said that they are trying to work on something better, best would be on line with NO paper. They negotiate price based on volume, they will get 3% back from vendor for administrative work. Is Therese asked if Amos house has been approved? Gretchen said that Amos House does some food production, but they do not know the capacity. Dining Services has very strict guidelines, anything that comes back from an event, they put it out on the service line for students, other things, like canceled events, they do use Amos House and other soup kitchen locations to send food that is overproduced, Dining Services uses software that helps them not to overproduce. Amos House cannot take it if it’s late in the day, we also work with the Rhode Island Food Bank. The floral arrangements that we buy, if you order it, it belongs to you. We reuse them in a couple events if it is possible however, If it is for your event, it belongs to you. Amy asked about price, we are all being asked to cut back, we could use help with price. What can we do to save money when ordering from Food Services? Gretchen said that they do have value menus, but before you cancel your event, call them and they will work with you on prices. Food Services will also work with vendors on asking them to cut prices especially beverages. A question was asked about the new café in the bookstore. The opportunity did go out to bid; Dining Services was a bidder, they were evaluated, but did not win the bid. Sean voiced his concerns about the bookstore café, and that it seems like a bad precedence to bring someone else in on campus when jobs are being cut. Gretchen said that there was a very fair process in place concerning the outsourcing at the bookstore. Karen Leonard said the perception of Brown First, is that “it’s so expensive” what we don’t know is how much money is given back to Brown. Maybe there could be some communication about that, people need to know that. Therese commented that people don’t understand Brown First, maybe if you let people know that when they order from Dining Services that a percentage goes back to the University. Keep the money at Brown. Beth suggested that by sharing information about hiring practices, and health department guidelines we can change perceptions. Beth said that initially a lot of communications went out, but maybe you should be more proactive about getting Brown First information out there. Karen Davis commented that if President Simmons were here, she’d be saying this isn’t just a moment in time, this is probably forever, we all have to think about doing things differently long term. Maybe we should take a look at what we do, Brown First is important this is just the beginning of a longer conversation. Approval of the minutes Correction to the minutes-‐ campus dance volunteers are needed for campus procession, not campus dance. Wiki and Web Post wiki minutes on wiki instead of sending an email as an attachment, it’s easier on the mailbox. There were some inadvertent comment deletions while trying to clear old comments-‐-‐-‐ apologizes!

Amy would like to establish which pages your subcommittee will take responsibility for. Announcements Therese said that she received a thank you letter for jacket donations. There are 80 families, 1500 youth at risk and 500 in case management. The donation center at Roger Williams Park is where anyone can take what they need, they help everyone not just people affected by aids. URC applications – Sean conducted the interviews and the position went to Anthony De Gregorio, he comes from financial stand point Anthony has been at Brown for 2 years he was also in the Ambassadors Program. He said that he likes Brown First, but it needs tweaking. Anthony should be starting in under 10 days. Sarah asked if applicants received an acknowledgement that their applications have been received, maybe there is a way that they can be acknowledged automatically. Amy let SAC members know that we are not sure that we will be doing Rebuilding Together this year, we may replace it with something else. Doreen had a meeting with Serve Rhode Island they give us a couple of options and we will think about it more and talk about it at our next subcommittee meeting. The fee to participate is $7500.00 which goes towards supplies, breakfast and lunch. We will do a service initiative this spring. Meeting adjourned at 1:33 Minutes submitted by Gloria Correara.

Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes 121 South Main Street

March 24, 2009

Present: : Karen Asquith, Doreen Burgers, Patricia Davey, Sean DeBobes, Therese Doyle-Parillo, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne, Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Lori Nasciemento, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joseph Sarno, Lisa Sheehan, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter, Jennifer Whitworth,

Brown is undergoing reaccreditation, which occurs every 10 years. The process starts when an outside team conducts a study, from April 5-‐8 the team will have the chance to meet and talk to people on campus. There will be an open forum for staff on April 6 from 4:00-‐5:00pm. All staff are strongly encouraged to attend the meeting. The team will ask questions and wants complete honesty, no senior administrators will be in attendance, please attend and encourage colleagues to attend.

There was an Administrative Leadership meeting last week; there are 3 capital projects that are going forward and Brown is striving for excellence. Instead of building new buildings they are revamping buildings.

Outreach and Communication We sent our winter poll break letter out to President Simmons, on March 13. The letter went electronically, along with all the results from the winter break poll. We do not know if President Simmons has read it or not. Perhaps we could post the results, along with a pie chart. We need to find out if President Simmons has read the letter before we post the results.

We are thinking about having a questionnaire on the SAC website that addresses staff concerns. We may work on filter system as to what gets posted and what doesn’t. We may also look into getting some real estate on Brown web page about the questionnaire, maybe we can advertise on morning mail, or the Brown website. There could be an option to submit questions with or without giving your name. We will ask SAC before creating a form. One idea about responding to questions would be to handle it like a blog, with question and an answer. All questions will be respectfully answered, if they are respectfully submitted. Questions can cover any range of staff concerns and we could forward the question to where it should go, or answer it ourselves. On Staff Development day, we can set up a SAC booth, just to inform the Brown Community about SAC. Is that a possibility? If we are going to be collecting for a fundraiser, maybe we can also use this opportunity to inform the Brown Community about SAC, maybe hand out pamphlets. Wear name tag at events! Remember…recruit, publicize and lead.

Staff Participation (SPS) Another position will be opening up for the Advisory Committee that reviews Brown’s investments and overall investment policy. SPS met with Serve RI staff to talk about relationship with Serve RI. I think we left meeting thinking this is a wonderful partnership. One opportunity that has recently been presented is a clean-‐up opportunity at Roger Williams Park. We feel that this particular opportunity won’t work for us it’s the week before commencement. We will go back to Serve RI to see if there are other opportunities that will work for us.

Events Committee Upcoming Best of Brown event, May 15 there will be tours of Environmental Plant Center (also known as the Greenhouse). There will be 3 tours with 18 people each; hours will be 12:00-‐3:00. We are going to look into volunteering, possibly helping the community gardens, perhaps in place of Rebuilding Together. Next January

2010, Best of Brown will put together another ice skating party, instead of spooky skate perhaps a disco theme or even a summer in January theme or a luau.

Performance evaluations This year we are not bound by the usual calendar, performance evaluations will be due May 15. More importantly a memo will come out in morning mail. Staff members deserve feedback, and it’s a time to celebrate successes and take a look at what hasn’t worked. The memo will make a pitch for the importance for doing it this year. It is a good opportunity to be open and honest, because the evaluations are not connected to raises.

Staff Concerns There are some concerns about communication between management, staff, and the individuals affected by layoffs. Once a person has been informed about a layoff, should they tell people or not? Karen feels as though that decision is based on unique business issues in that particular unit. Each unit has needs to think about how and when to communicate about eliminated positions. In general, many of the folks have chosen to not communicate broadly once a message has been delivered, but it depends on the situation. The goal is that in short order, we will be done with first round, and then next year is a new situation. The Organization Review Committee wants to use groups that are already in place (like SAC) to help with the review process. In April there will be a detailed communication about the Organization Committee, a lot of data collection will go on over the summer, and people who are away for the summer will be ready and not surprised by budgets for FY 11.

There are also concerns that some people know who will be laid off but can’t say and everyone is on edge. Karen Davis said that you that the University has thoroughly reviewed the circumstances for each position recommended for elimination and Human Resources is involved. The severance being offered to individuals who are laid off is an enhanced package with twice the normal 2 weeks for every year of service up to 10 years. As such, we are offering a maximum of 40 weeks of severance. Everyone will be notified by mid April, jobs will be eliminated by June 30. President Simmons was very clear about doing more than Brown usually does for severance. However, we cannot sustain the work force we have today beyond FY 14. We are trying hard to review our business functions in each unit, and figure out a smarter way to go about the same.

A SAC member asked if the University has looked at openings created from retirements to limit the number of overall layoffs. Karen stated that the Vacancy Review Committee has looked at all vacant positions from the start and has tried to fill positions with existing Brown employees. If we know someone is going to be laid off, we are trying to see where we can make a match. People can be placed at Brown, that is the right thing to do, but none of us would benefit if people don’t have the qualifications for the job.

Risk Assessment At the April meeting we will be talking about Risk Assessment and on Russell Carey’s new position.

Next SAC meeting will be April 7th in the Corporation Room

Meeting adjourned at 1:30pm.

Minutes submitted by Gloria Correra.

Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes Corporation Room, University Hall

April 7, 2009

Present: Karen Asquith, Doreen Burgers, Sean DeBobes Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Lori Nasciemento, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joseph Sarno, Lisa Sheehan, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter, Jennifer Whitworth Absent: Beth Murphy, Deborah Healey, Karen Davis, Karen Leonard, Patricia Davey, Therese Doyle-Parillo Guests: Russell Carey, Senior Vice President for Corporation Affairs & Governance Steve Warren

Staff Concerns A question about mandatory retirement contribution was raised, that question should be directed to Drew Murphy, Director of Benefits.

Re -‐‑accreditation Staff Forum (Debrief) Members of the committee wanted feedback about economic times and layoffs. We felt they asked thoughtful questions. This meeting would have been a good forum to use clicker system for answering questions. Perhaps the clicker system would be a useful tool for Town Hall Meetings. There is training available on the clicker system and its use at training.brown.edu.

General Discussion Open topic about possible speakers for upcoming meetings included:

• Judy Nabb could be a possible speaker to discuss team development training and team building. • Someone from the Public Safety Office could be a guest speaker, what can SAC offer public safety?

SAC can provide input for safety awareness, building security, the Public Safety Office works with environmental health and safety; they are open to suggestions for workshops, and events that cater to staff. A suggestion was offered about a sub-‐‑station that could possibly be shared with the Providence Police in the Jewelry District. Officers are there to support staff at the parking lots.

• Update on restricted areas work being done during summer months, Ron Dunleavy shared a memo with all construction projects and pedestrian detours. Facilities Management website has up to date information on work areas.

Guest Speakers Russell Carey, Sr. Vice President for Corporation Affairs and Governance Steve Morin, Director of Environmental Health and Safety Things haves shifted a bit since Walter Hunter was at Brown. Russell Carey is the Senior VP of Corporation Affairs and Governance and is also the University’s Chief Risk Officer. The Corporation is concerned about risk, how we are thinking about it and responding to crisis.

Russell explained the process by which the University created a list of major risks, as an effort to look at and evaluate all the things that can happen at a University. They looked at probability and responses to crisis. 30+ people were involved and the list does not include everything that the University is concerned about. For example, fire safety is a significant issue on a day to day basis, but it is not included on the list. They went about the process of assigning responsibility to committee members and asked them to get together an action plan for each item.

This list was a very useful tool to get people to focus on risks and action plans. People are changing some of their plans every day, as things come up they go back and update their section of the list. The Risk Management and Emergency Preparedness Working Group is still in place and meets on a monthly basis.

Russell also spends a lot of time on business continuity plans-‐‑ an issue that presents a complex set of challenges. So much of what we do relies on technology and communications. There are particular challenges in the central data center, for example if the data center fails, what is our back up plan? The University thinks about ways to approach problems knowing it has limited resources.

The University hired an outside consultant who helped form our current Crisis Management Plan by talking to business units about their functions and processes. The consultant asked how Brown would manage operations if the data center was not available for some time. We were trying to focus on an overall goal, how they would manage if the system was unavailable, how do we deal with payroll in the event of catastrophic failure? Using the information that was gathered we tried to narrow down a list of systems that we would have to get up and running first, for the dissemination of information such as backing up data for research.

The plan to renovate Faunce House was put on hold due to the economic crisis, now it is back on the fast track, we hope to get the Campus Center Project rolling as fast as we can. We would like to move the Communications Center as soon as possible – it is a high priority. A question from a SAC member was asked -‐‑ do you see a role for individual departments? Russell responded by saying that he sees groups like SAC and staff raising questions about things they are concerned with. He is certain they have missed things, but would like to hear from individual departments.

Steve Morin was involved with interviews to develop a plan of action for how we operate and what will happen should the systems go down. There are things we can do to be prepared, and priorities need to be know should a crisis arise. It is necessary to plan ahead for construction in the Data Center with how to keep things running if an emergency does happen. For example, we have a generator in CIS so that systems won’t be interrupted in case of a of a power outage.

A question was raised as to whether they have to check with the State of RI about construction plans. Steve responded by saying yes, they partner closely about public safety issues, there’s joint training. The relationship between Brown and the State of RI is vital, things changed after 9/11 it became clear that collaboration is important, we continue to be asked to be involved in some of the city planning and hurricane exercises, they have to know how we operate, it is very important to have ongoing communication.

A question was raised about the siren testing exercise and how audible it was at different locations on campus. Steve said that the siren is intended to get the attention of people that are not in a position to get to their phones or other means of communication. It is not designed for people in the buildings to hear, it is for people who are not in the buildings; to notify them of a possible emergency.

They are also trying to develop a clear statement on how to deal with storm closing notification and ways to communicate it (i.e., post notifications on Brown’s website).

Snow removal has been a problem; a SAC member reported that there was an incident where all fire exits were plowed in at Josiah’s he asked what asked Steve the suggested method for reporting such a situation. Steve didn’t know what happened that day, but stated that in the event something like that does occur in the future, employees should call Brown Public Safety -‐‑ they will respond appropriately.

1:05 Meeting adjourned.

Minutes submitted by Gloria Correra

President’s Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes April 21, 2009

11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. 121 South Main, Rm. 247

Present: Patricia Davey, Sean DeBobes, Therese Doyle-‐Parillo, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne, Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Jason Masi, Lori Nascimento, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joe Sarno, Lisa Sheehan, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter (Chair). Absent: Karen Asquith, Doreen Burgers, Karen Davis, Beth Murphy, Nancy Magers, Jennifer Whitworth The meeting began with subcommittee discussions. Staff Participation and Outreach & Communication met together, while Events met as a separate group. Staff Concerns A staff member expressed disappointment with the handling of staff layoffs. There is a feeling by some that senior leadership is out of touch with staff and that suggestions for alternatives to layoffs have been ignored. Sarah mentioned the recent email from David Kertzer as being a good example of communication. It outlined the issues well and the timing was appropriate. Ron noted that this was a personal issue; the affected people helped determine how and when announcements were made to their colleagues. Joe Sarno agreed with Ron. However, he also indicated that SAC can be helpful to the organizational review committee and additional layoffs by advising and providing feedback to senior leaders (e.g., what did and did not work well during this round and where there are redundancies/inefficient processes). This was the first time in recent history that Brown has had to undergo layoffs of this magnitude. The administration had to balance many things, including timing and the best interests of staff affected. In regard to cost saving suggestions, Joe S. indicated that Beppie has received many suggestions and she has/is seriously considering some of them. He also noted that the messages given at the Town Hall meeting in December were appropriate for that time, but a lot changed in a very short period of time. The February Corporation meeting ultimately dictated the administration’s actions. Marla asked about the way in which laid-‐off staff will be told and if supervisors were advised on how best to handle the situation? Joe S. responded that HR provided scripts and guidance for supervisors, and that HR was available to meet concurrently with the affected employees, if requested. Everyone who was laid off received a packet of information, generous severance agreements, including outplacement services. He also noted that these individuals would remain on the active payroll through June 30. However, he reminded the group that every situation and person was different. A SAC member asked Joe S. if HR is planning on helping all staff get through this difficult time. There are many emotions involved in seeing colleagues and friends leave, as well as wondering about what the future will bring. Joe S. did not have an immediate answer, but was receptive to the idea and will talk about it with Karen Davis. Bringing the conversation back to the original staff concern and SAC’s role during this time, Amy asked the group to discuss five core ideas or issues: 1) SAC as advocates; 2) handling rumors; 3) best practices; 4) staff representation on the Organizational Review Committee; 5) surveying staff. On the topic of best practices, a SAC member noted that all situations were different and that as much as is ethically possible was communicated. Kristen agreed, but noted that confusion remains as to why layoffs had to occur or why certain people were let go over others. Most, if not all, of the eliminated positions were directly tied to a program being

trimmed (e.g., construction projects), which makes those layoffs more understandable. However, this message is not being conveyed. Michelle said that more needs to be done to manage the staff who remain in the affected departments. She wondered if the leadership and team building professionals already in place in HR could help the departments that have lost staff. Joe S. was receptive to this idea and also reiterated that career placement services are available to all staff who have been let go. The university has contracted with Right Services to provide help with resume writing, networking skills, etc. This is a service paid for by the university, not by the staff member employing the service. Therese asked if career placement is an ongoing offer. If someone initially declines the service, for whatever reason, can he/she then use it at a later date? Joe S. responded that the service can be started at a later time (within an established number of months) and that staff member will receive the same amount of service as someone who takes the offer immediately. He also said that the president and other senior leaders are doing everything possible to help affected staff. Amy wondered how the university could send the message that our layoffs are minimal compared to other industries or even other universities. Al thought it would be helpful to communicate this, but Ron didn’t think it would be a good idea. Unless a person has been through this before and experienced larger layoffs/minimal aid, that sort of message probably wouldn’t help. Joe S. said that responses to layoffs will be different for everyone. The layoffs at Brown were, and will continue to be, well thought out. They were planned in accordance with the university’s academic and PAE missions. In regards to the rumor mill, Joe Gagne thought that the onus should be on managers. There should be open communication between supervisors and staff to help navigate the various rumors. To this end, Amy said that she would speak to the Administrative and Academic Leadership Groups about rumors and communicating with staff. T he group next discussed the idea of SAC as advisors. Are senior leaders out of touch with staff and, if so, how should we communicate that with them? A SAC member asked Joe S. if the discussions we have in SAC meetings ever make their way to leadership. Is information being kept from senior leaders? Joe S. could not speak for Karen D.; however, he was confident that information gathered from SAC meetings does guide conversations between members of the senior administration. Therese thought that the administration was in touch with staff and that supervisors are the ones who need to communicate directly with their staff. Joe S. agreed with this, but also said that the communication surrounding the layoffs was a balancing act. The people who were being let go were the top priority and all of their situations were different. Sarah suggested that a concrete timeline for the next round of layoffs would help ease tension. For example, “X number of employees will be notified by X date. They will be employed through X date.” While Joe S. agreed that a timeline could be helpful, he disagreed with the idea of providing the number of employees to be let go since this would not necessarily be concrete at first. Amy told the group that the most recent communication from the Provost referred to the University layoffs, but did not actually include the staff let go in BioMed. This led to confusion in that division and a need for additional communication from BioMed’s leaders. Another SAC member suggested that the same issue exists in the Centers. Emails from senior leaders should either clearly indicate that layoffs in BioMed and Centers are included in the counts or that communication to those divisions will follow. Michelle thought it would be appropriate for SAC to draft a letter to President Simmons with staff concerns. She also proposed that a 1-‐page fact sheet to accompany emails from administration could be useful. The emails are often long and verbose, making it difficult for the intended message to reach its audience. Ron agreed that a fact sheet would be helpful. It could be shared with staff for educational purposes. Then, later in the summer, SAC could conduct a survey of staff with focused questions. Feedback from such a survey would be shared with the senior leadership.

Some SAC members thought that questions on such a survey should be focused on supervisor actions. However, others thought it should be focused more on the administration. Either way, we should not ask questions unless we can act on them. A SAC member asked about the emphasis being placed on this year’s performance evaluations in light of the fact that they will not be used for raises. Are they being emphasized so heavily because they will be used next year to determine who is let go? Joe S. responded that this is not the case at all –performance evaluations are intended to give feedback to employees -‐ both positive as well as those areas that need improvement -‐ Moreover, they help employees appreciate the value of their work as it relates to the University’s PAE. Another SAC member asked if union contracts will affect future decisions regarding layoffs? Joe S. responded that union wages are a factor in the University’s budget, but 3 of the 4 union groups on campus have negotiated raises already in place. Renegotiation is not likely. Subcommittee Reports Outreach & Communication: Sarah reported that O&C will be drafting a staff concerns form to be placed on SAC’s website. They will likely put it on the SAC wiki for feedback from the rest of the group. Events: Lori reminded everyone that the next Best of Brown event will be held at the Environmental Plant Center on May 15th. They are hoping to have people register for a tour on the training.brown.edu website. However, its redesign may prevent that, in which case Events will have staff register via email. There will be three tours of the Environmental Plant Center that can each accommodate 18 people. Amy also asked Events about a collection for Staff Development Day. While Events has not made a decision on what will be collected, this led to a brief discussion of SAC using the opportunity to poll staff on the issues surrounding layoffs. Staff Participation: Sean reported that SPS appointed Kathleen Morrissey, Assistant Controller, and Christine Sprovieri, Administrative Manager for Commerce, Organizations and Entrepreneurship, to serve as staff representatives on the Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies. Amy reminded everyone to use the SAC wiki to continue our discussion of staff layoffs. The meeting adjourned at 1:30. Minutes submitted by Karen Leonard.

Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes Brown Bookstore Conference Room

244 Thayer Street May 5, 2009

Present: Karen Asquith, Doreen Burgers, Sean DeBobes,Therese Doyle-Parillo, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne, Deborah Healey, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Lori Nasciemento, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joseph Sarno, Lisa Sheehan, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter, Jennifer Whitworth

Absent: Karen Leonard, Michelle Nuey, Patricia Davey, Jason Masi

Staff Concerns There was an anonymous campus mail letter regarding the overabundance of dog waste on the main green. In a case there an outdoor event, and you notice dog waste in the area, call Patrick Vetere, Ground Superintendent, Facilities Management and he will send someone over to take care of the problem. Staff Development Day (Doreen Burgers) This year there will be an emphasis on service to the community at Staff Development Day. Interested people will be able to sign up for 3 hours of volunteer service from 8:30 am to 11:30 am, at The RI Free Clinic, Crossroads, Community Farm, a couple of schools, Peace Flag Project, along with a few other non-‐profits out there that we are working on, we are hoping for 10 different opportunities for service. In the afternoon, we will have 5 keynote speakers, including Janice from Serve RI. Janice will speak about service opportunities and will be able to sign up volunteers for future Serve RI opportunities. SAC will be there to promote service to the community. Angel Hilliard said they have coordinated a collection on Staff Development Day. Doreen asked if we have any thoughts about that….perhaps adopting a (public, charter or local private ) school or the Food Bank. Most SAC members agreed that we will do the Food Bank again. We will need volunteers to staff a collection site. There will be no breakfast on Staff Development Day, it was not that widely attended, and it was necessary to cut costs. Lunch is inside the Refectory. Food collections have typically occurred outside while lunch was being served, (a half hour before and half hour after), so maybe there could be collection sites all around campus. If near dining services, we could find storage and transportation (Sean DeBobes) and containers or boxes for donations. There will also be a table set up with survey questions -‐ we can use this as an opportunity to inform people about SAC, maybe tables inside the lobby of the Refectory (Sean can get us 2 tables). We will need publicity for donations, Staff Development will include it in their flyer, we will put a sign-‐up sheet on wiki. Next steps on last week questions. -‐ Follow up services for layoff employees, guidance for question 3E-‐HR support of departments who lost staff (morale, team building, work distribution). All staff would benefit from this, maybe if people knew what the severance package was it would help. Advisors Report (Karen Davis) Swine Flu -‐ Some departments have been nervous and worried; good news is things are getting better, not worse. Employers are still taking precautions, but not drastic precautions. We are probably over prepared, what we don’t know is whether this strain may show up again. This was a good wake-‐up call and opportunity to prepare for a more serious event. It forced us to think about what was good and what was lacking. One precaution we have taken is to ensure that students should be 3 ft. apart while taking exams. Karen doesn’t know of any event that will be canceled. If you have questions or concerns you can contact Russell Carey for policy advice or health advice. Students are leaving now and at present, we will not do anything differently. A question was asked, did the 3 ft rule come from Department of Health? Yes. Medical advice has come from the Department of Health and CDC. Staff Concerns and revisit of previous meeting discussion about layoffs Professional Development – Is it being cut? Karen answered that nothing is being removed across the board. It is a department to department issue, going to conferences and training is so essential, going to meetings and seminars for

professional development are very important. But maybe we can suggest some guidelines or rules. Training seminars are not being cut. In fact, staff should be looking at cross training. SAC is seen as advisors – Ruth Simmons reads the minutes, and there are ongoing conversations about staff issues, student issues, and faculty. Karen presents items to Beppie and she presents them to Ruth. Ruth values the role of this group; it is not an afterthought for her. You can be assured everything from double sided copying to more dramatic reorganizational ideas are looked at. Controlling the rumor mill – HR did a lot of coaching with managers. We encouraged a more systematic sharing of information. You can never get rid of grapevine chatter, but providing enough facts can also control rumors. Amy added that part of this was a staff concern about sharing savings suggestions, is there a way we can disseminate information on a webpage? It may be a good idea if we wrote something (coming from Beppie) at the end of the year about the savings suggestions. Amy feels that we have discussed how difficult it is to give the amount of information that people want. It is challenging to get the word out without breaking confidences. Sometimes the best practice is different from standard practice. There was some question about how and when managers give news about layoffs. Human Resources worked with each manager to make sure they were prepared. Sometimes managers will ask someone from HR to be at the meeting (layoff meeting) depending on circumstances. Some people were asked to leave on the day that they were notified about their lay-‐off, depending on the circumstances and Security risks are taken into consideration. All laid-‐off employees will be treated as active until June 30, 2009 for wages and benefits. Perhaps a letter from HR to the Brown community would help. Karen said that if anyone knows of anyone who needs assistance, Karen will talk to anyone on a one on one basis. A SAC member offered that emails from University Hall tend to be very dense and “lofty”, and asked if there is a way to simplify or make the emails more digestible. Karen said that they have heard this before, and perhaps it’s something that they could look into. Guest: Beppie Huidekoper Executive Vice President for Finance & Administration This presentation covered the FY11 process. Beppie asked for feedback on her presentation, how we can make the process better and manage our way through. Maybe if we understood more, we could work together on the solution. Beppie is looking for SAC’s advice and perspective. In sum, we need implement significant savings over the next several years. The market value of endowment has dropped. Fundraising has also been affected. Families and students are facing greater employment and earnings uncertainty. Despite this, we still remain focused. E&G revenues to increase by 2% per year vs. the 5% anticipated last year at this time. Instead of revenues in FY14 of $695 million we are now projecting revenues of $600 million; as such, expenditures will need to be reduced by approximately $95 million. The FY10 E&G and affiliate budget adjustments have addressed $35 million of the $95 million in required reductions ($30 from E&G and 5$ from the affiliates). Remaining $60 million reductions needed to balance budget in FY14. Impact on the Division of Biology and Medicine The economic crisis is having a different impact on the division. The division is more dependent on sponsored funding as a revenue source, less dependent on endowment, current use gift and student fees than the E&G. E&G FY11 We intend to achieve $30 million of additional E&G budget reductions in FY11, at this point in time we do not intend to reduce our commitment to faculty, financial aid or graduate students. As a consequence we need to be more aggressive in other areas. The ORC will oversee a process that obtains input and advice from the community through the fall. The final $30 million of budget reductions, if required will be achieved between FY11 and FY14.

FY11 EG budget Remaining reductions needed by 2014: $60 million Target reductions Revised capital plan $5-‐7 mil Org review /reorgs $10-‐20mil Operating exp. $5-‐10 mil Other tbd $0-‐10mil including: Compensation Net tuition (tuition less aid) Net faculty Net grad student Other (programs RIPTA, TAP seed funding) Total $20-‐45 million $143 million for staff possible reductions $10-‐20 million Operating /program expense $83 mil possible reductions $5-‐10 million Bio Med They think they have accomplished all the budget reduction that they need to. Organizational Review Process We got a lot of input from campus. The Organizational Review Committee, facilities utilization -‐ those are the ideas that will be challenging. Are there things we do that we should just stop doing? Business processes, training that we should be focusing on, provide better skill development. Can we be all together more efficient? We need input and feedback. There are about 3 thousand endowments at Brown, individual endowments. We are bound to use it as it were intended. When getting feedback, we need more concrete ideas. How can we be more active? Beppie suggested eliminating travel expense reports; let’s look at what is burdensome? Stupid administrative tasks, and how we can eliminate them. We have to think of ways to make work less burdensome and more rewarding, more interesting. Perhaps focus groups around that? Staff expenditure is a lot of money, reductions in salaries, does that make financial sense? Is that a viable solution? Beppie would like to hear from us. About our pet peeves, and what we are going to replace it with. Most of our peers are freezing salaries, so we are not lagging behind on that issue. Is there a lot of information sharing between institutions? There’s a lot of sharing information, there are list serves that keep up with this. Next meeting will be held at South Main Street. 1:41 pm, meeting adjourned.

Minutes submitted by Gloria Correra.

Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes 121 South Main Street

May 19, 2009

Present: Karen Asquith, Doreen Burgers, Patricia Davey, Sean DeBobes, , Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne, Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Lori Nasciemento, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joseph Sarno, Lisa Sheehan, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter, Jennifer Whitworth Absent: Karen Davis, Therese Doyle-Parillo, Kristen Soule, Subcommittee meetings held first hour. General Announcements/Discussion

• Subcommittee and Collaboration Agenda items will be circulated to all members at each SAC meeting, • Please wear name tags to Staff Development Day (email Gloria if you don’t have one). • It is Lisa Sheehan’s last day today, thank you for serving SAC. • The next SAC meeting will be on June 2nd at Watson Institute on Thayer Street. • Subcommittee chairs will be named in June, the nomination process for chair will begin in early June.

Also start to think about “bring a friend to SAC day,” which will be a late summer meeting. In order to be a member of SAC one must be a Brown employee for 2 years (by November), think about who we is rotating off the committee, talk to people to see if someone is interested in joining SAC..

• Safety information is on wiki, how can DPS enhance offerings for staff? Under “general discussion” give Michelle some feedback.

• Possible questions for a Staff Survey -‐ Place emphasis on how to handle things in the future, i.e., type, frequency and modes of communication.

Group Reports SPS -‐ Doreen Burgers Staff Development Day update; we have a great committee this year. There are public service/volunteer opportunities available for full morning session. Staff Development Day website has many projects for people to choose from. There will be a SAC-‐sponsored collection for RI Food Bank. Sean will supply a table at Sharpe Refectory, Dining Services will bring collected food to food bank for us. SAC needs food collection bins, and a collection tub to put in the vestibule of Sharpe for drop-‐offs. Joe Gagne will pick those up at the food bank. We would like to send a thank you note to Dining Services from SAC for all they have done. O&C -‐ Sarah Peri We have been working on creating a form for the website; it will be on the wiki too for your feedback. Joe Gagne put together a pulse survey for distribution on Staff Development Day (SDD), June 4th, to let people know who SAC. Plan is to have distribution of survey at the keynote speakers, printed on colorful paper, and have someone collect them at the end of the keynote speaker meeting. We are not sure if there are going to be any questions about communication of layoffs, we don’t want to waste the opportunity to get feedback from staff. On the back of the survey there will be space for staff concerns and questions, it is still in the developmental stage. Maybe we can put a link to the staff concerns website on the form also. Some members feel we have a responsibly to address concerns about the layoff process, but a second survey is fine for that. This first one on SDD can be used to get feedback on volunteerism. For the second, we would like

to have feedback ready for the President in early fall. The President has expressed that we should take the summer off regarding layoff talk, which we will consider that when thinking about the timing of the survey. The intent of the Staff Concerns section of the survey will be to inform the President about staff impressions and how it affected people, asking about the communication process. It was suggested that any such survey should be forward-‐looking and should not be sent until the end of the summer – once people have had a chance to recover from this past round f lay-‐offs. Events -‐ Lori Nascimento Best of Brown in August we will have library tours. We need Staff Development Day volunteers for tables and to hand out the survey, we need 2 people per keynote lecture, there will be a sign up sheet on wiki this week. For a Fall project, staff can sign up to sort food at the Food Bank for a couple of shifts, 10 people per shift. Get together with Doreen Burgers. Meeting adjourned at 1:20 Minutes submitted by Gloria Correra.

President’s Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes June 2, 2009

11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Watson Institute, McKinney Conference Room

111 Thayer Street

Present: Karen Asquith, Doreen Burgers, Patricia Davey, Karen Davis, Sean DeBobes, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne, Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Beth Murphy, Lori Nascimento, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joe Sarno, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter (Chair) , Jennifer Whitworth

Absent: Therese Doyle-‐Parillo

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Staff Advisory Committee and Sub Committee Chair

Anyone can nominate someone to be the next Staff Advisory Committee Chair. Members can even nominate themselves! Just email Amy within the week and she will contact the nominees and ask if they are interested. If more than candidate is interested, all SAC members will get the chance to ask the interested nominees questions. At the end of the meeting there will be a vote by secret ballot.

The newly elected chair will serve as co-‐chair from July until January when he/she will take over as chair. Amy will remain on as past chair for advice. Sub-‐committee chairs should be decided upon soon also. Joe Sarno and Amy will look into revising the nomination portion of the SAC bylaws. There needs to be flexibility with subcommittee chairs-‐-‐don’t feel that if you are nominated as subcommittee that chair you cannot also still be nominated for SAC chair. Being chair for SAC is a very rewarding experience; it is also a great opportunity to learn more about the University and to meet people.

Staff Concerns/General Discussion

A note about the dog waste issue, Patrick Vetere, Ground Superintendent, Facilities Management was contacted but he relayed that he was not the person to contact for waste issues. Joe will find correct contact person.

Cost Savings Suggestions /Recap of Discussion with Beppie — Karen Davis

The website to submit Cost Saving ideas is still up, and ideas can be submitted anonymously. A summary of some of these ideas has been put together (see attached). There is an interesting range of topics covering policies, services and supplies. These ideas continue to help and guide the University and we are thinking about how to implement some of these ideas going forward. It takes time to implement changes, most cannot be done immediately. It was not a surprise that there weren’t any specific organizational suggestions; it can be uncomfortable to make suggestions that could impact your own department and co-‐workers. We have to try to figure out how to get the word out about saving issues.

One saving options was to limit staff parties, and make Staff Development Day the summer event for the whole university. We would need a community wide communication about that. We would like to try to send some of this information out to empower other departments to do something. Still to this day, for FY10 and FY11, there is no intent to do university wide messaging to tell everyone to cut 5%, 10%, 15%. Instead, we taking a more strategic approach, as every situation is different.

An idea was raised about perhaps admitting more students. Karen stated that the size of our student body today will bring in more income, but it will strain other areas. Last year’s class had about 50 more students than anticipated, which cost more in financial aid, dining issues, housing issues. As a community, it would work against other values the university has. There is also the real estate issue-‐-‐ In the long term, there are some concerns that we may not want to hang on to some of our properties. We also may choose to use buildings in different ways than what was originally intended. There have been some savings achieved by choosing to repurpose existing buildings. Also, estimating total cost for a project is sometimes difficult. Take the HR payroll system for instance, we knew what the software would cost a lot, but the training and staffing would also represent a significant cost. Hence, the HR payroll change is on hold.

Q:Has there been discussion about how cost savings ideas are being vetted? Who see’s it first? Will the information ever been shared to the staff as a whole?

A: Karen said, nothing in the handout is secret, what we are thinking about is putting up a website that says what the teams are doing, and each area that is being looked at. Harvard has a website that says every category where someone is doing something, I think we are headed in that direction. With respect to the cost savings suggestions, it hasn’t been quite that official we review it periodically; the bulk came in at the beginning. We are considering how to best communicate to the community. We need to pay attention to communication when we get to the organizational review. Send an email out to the community with handout and let committee know that website is still active.

Organizational Review Information — Karen Davis

Karen Davis discussed some key slides from Beppie’s May 5th presentation to SAC (on handout). A reminder, this started with the drop in the value of our endowment, which we relied on for 15-‐20% of our budget, but we are suffering from other effects of the down economy (i.e., there has been greater demand for financial aid). With that said, we are still focused on the Plan for Academic Enrichment. In May and June of 2008, our Plan said the projected budget for education and general would $695M. As a result of economic downturn, the numbers were recalculated for this year; we estimated that we have to drop our operation expenses down to $630M. The Corporation said we were being too optimistic about our numbers and asserted that $600M is a more appropriate target -‐ which means we will have to cut $95 million by FY14. For FY10, we have already cut $30M-‐ which means we have to cut an addition $65 million by FY14.

The Division of Biomed (under new leadership) has a similar set of challenges, though they have a lot of research income. The division has cut about $10Mthis year and may have to cut another $10M over the next 5 year period.

With the cuts we will try to achieve between FY11 and FY14, a good chunk for the year ahead will come from the Organizational Review process, but not all of it. We know that the Controller’s Office is looking at cutting operating expenses; for example, vendor relationships and travel guides. A question was raised about the job audit process -‐ if there are staff members who have taken on more responsibility to maintain efficiency, will the organizational review process ensure that their pay remains equitable and if there should be a modification of their PCD? Karen Davis answered that there will be modifications in some cases, things change, someone leaves and the position is not refilled and people take on more responsibility. The Compensation Department is still open for job audits, but unless a change has been dramatic, however, we will not perform a job audit. Some have resulted in status or change of pay. At the end of the organizational process, we will take a look at audits. There are some special situations, and we try to think about special compensation for some projects.

Organizational Review Committee (ORC) — Karen Davis

ORC was a relatively small group, so we added other people, for example, a couple of faculty, department administrators and students. Why students? Students are an important part of our structure, we need to consult the people who deliver the service as much as people who receive it. A student may ask, what does it mean for me as a student? We tried to have a diverse group.

Karen said the expanded Organizational Review Committee will launch a number of teams focused on particular areas. IT is an example, how can we do that more efficiently? In addition we want to gather data about customers and how they use that service, and are there other models to look at for doing business at Brown. People are concerned about how we can share what we know, so we are trying to make sure that everyone has the same information from thew

start. (Sarah Peri) A common question that comes up is if the presentation be put online somewhere? Communications about changes may come out in late March and April. President Simmons does not want to not speak about layoffs over the summer; we will go full tilt again in the fall. Would there be a newsletter? Betsy has been working with academic departments. One of the thoughts would be an “in the loop” newsletter, which may be a “how to” about communication. Perhaps share a draft of “in the loop” with SAC to get some input.

Surveys and Staff Development Day

Gloria will check the SAC mailbox and bring the surveys to June 16 meeting at 121 South Main. O & C will calculate the survey. The collection bins are all set. The small boxes will go on SAC table at lunch time, large one will go in vestibule of the Sharp Refectory. SAC Minutes will be posted by Marla.

In our summer survey we would like to ask staff about layoffs and the communication process. A compromise may be that we all do a departmental survey, it would give us an interesting core sample it would give us a decent size sample. SAC members can hand out a survey within their own department. We can obtain feedback about the rumor mill, what to do about communication and best practices. Questions must be crafted carefully. This will be discussed over the summer.

Next meeting, June 16, at 121 South Main Street

Meeting adjourned at 1:33 p.m.

Minutes Submitted by Gloria Correra.

President’s Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes June 16, 2009

11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. 121 South Main Street, room 247

Present: Karen Asquith, Doreen Burgers, Patricia Davey, Karen Davis, Sean DeBobes, Therese Doyle-‐Parillo, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne, Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Beth Murphy, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joe Sarno, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter (Chair) , Jennifer Whitworth

100% attendance today!!! Well done!

General Announcements

July 14th will be our next meeting and will be held at the Orwig Music Center, One Orchard Avenue. Gloria may need some volunteers to help move tables.

Our August 11th meeting is our Bring a Friend Meeting. We should start to think about bringing a person we think is interested in joining SAC. We will answer their questions and they can see what it’s like to be a member of SAC. As of today, we don’t know where that meeting will be, please give suggestions for a space that will accommodate 4 round tables of 10. We can start by calling the Scheduling Office to see what might be available. I would also like some suggestions for an for that meeting. Some suggestions from the committee for an invited speaker were, the director of volunteer food bank, someone from the archives, SAC alums-‐ maybe a former chair, Gillian from CIS is a good speaker.

Chair Nomination Update

We have received a handful of nominations and we are thrilled with response, next week we will have an official list. We will have at least 2 nominations and 2 people willing to accept. The bylaws concerning the nomination process need to be looked at and changed. Perhaps we should have a Q and A session and submit secret ballots, if there are more than 2 nominations, it may make sense to narrow it down by having a Q and A session with all the applicants. We must have questions prepared to ask the nominees, and then have a secret ballot. There should be a policy for 3 or more candidates, either way we should develop new bylaws. If there are 4 people who want to be chair we need some criteria to get it down to 2. SAC hasn’t had 2 or more candidates for chair in the last 4 years. Ruth Crane went through the Question and Answer process. We need to create a process that will work. We can have a Q & A, but we will not know how many candidates until Friday. We should at least come up with a process, we need a nominating committee. Kristine Soule offered that if we have 3 candidates we skip the nomination committee, if there are more than 3 we use the nominating committee.

Amy suggested that all subcommittees should meet on their own, before the July 14th SAC meeting.

Staff Concerns

One staff member recently purchased a scooter, the scooter cannot go over 20 mph. The scooter is one step above a bicycle. The scooter can be locked in a regular bicycle rack. When the employee contacted the Brown Transportation Department he was told that if he put the scooter in a bike rack he could receive a $100.00 fine. He was told that he needs to park in one the Brown parking lots, but then the scooter could be easily stolen because it is not chained down. He was hoping SAC would contact the proper official to clear up the confusion. Maybe the University could designate a rack for scooters or put new scooter racks in parking lot so they can be locked. A SAC member noted that the

Transportation Department is researching options. Karen Davis volunteered to talk to the Department of Transportation to address this issue.

Custodial Services is changing its trash pickup schedule for the BOB; it is considering installing hand dryers in bathrooms in order to eliminate the need for paper towels. However, many people use paper towels when opening the doors as a sanitary measure. Some bathrooms have no space for hand towels. Perhaps a solution would be to install automated paper towel dispensers or a kick plate so that you can open the bathroom doors hands free. Sara suggested that we can use automatic hand dryers as a cost savings measure.

Sarah has received some staff concerns and she met with some of the folks at University Hall regarding the cost savings website. She received a few comments about the membership of the ORC. There are students on the committee and no one from the administrative level. Karen Davis noted that there will be more varied representation of the ORC teams. Sarah sent an email to her floor about the cost savings website, letting them know that it is still active. The cost savings form is still on the web, we received 19 responses, 10 were about parking, 7 had to do with Staff Development Day. There was also interesting feedback about Staff Development Day, Sarah will send those responses to Angel. 2 issues additional issues were raised (1) why faculty can’t voluntarily give back part of their salary?; and (2) why aren’t the cost cutting measures being acted upon more quickly?. Karen Davis said regarding faculty wanting to give back salary, Ruth Simmons suggests giving to the Brown Annual Fund instead. Karen was hoping to set up a summary of responses on the website, maybe once a week or once a month. Refer people to the website for the answers to many of these questions. Karen Davis also said that we have all ready implemented some savings ideas and that communication is key to letting people know what SAC is doing.

There was concern by a staff member about EPP rules and regulations and that her confidentially was breached when her supervisor told co-‐workers that she was taking classes. If you take a course you need a supervisor to sign off on it to make sure it’s job related. The confidentiality breach seems to be the issue more than anything, it sounds like an employee relations issue. Send a letter to Michelle Wise about that person’s concerns. Maybe an overview for managers would be good, explaining the value of the EPP program, also mention the importance of confidentiality.

The increase in the parking rate issue (especially with no raises this year) has generated several concerns. We need to acknowledge and explain it, make sure everyone has all the facts. The email from the Transportation Department was an excellent email because it explained that the money for the Safe-‐ride and RIPTA subsidies has to come from somewhere.

Doreen got a lot of feedback about volunteering – we will talk about it that at the July meeting. Next meeting we will talk about a volunteer page on our website. The food drive went well, collection bins will be at all Best of Brown events, Staff Development Day and Bear Day. There will be no December bazaar this year as a cost savings measure. Perhaps we can ask people to bring canned goods to all events.

Best of Brown functions as a kind of admission fee Sarah said that people wished we could have sent a morning mail reminder to bring canned goods to Staff Development Day.

Meeting adjourned at 1:30, next meeting July 14th at Orwig Music Building.

gcorrera � 7/14/09 8:20 AMDeleted: .

Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes Orwig Music Building, Room 109

1 Young Orchard Street July 14, 2009

Present: Karen Asquith, Doreen Burgers, Patricia Davey, Sean DeBobes, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne, Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Jason Masi, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joseph Sarno, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter, Jennifer Whitworth

Absent: Therese Doyle-Parillo, Nancy Magers, Beth Murphy, Lori Nasciemento and, Michelle Nuey.

Staff Advisory Committee Chair Election Amy commented that she is thrilled with the outpouring of leadership and for people who offered questions to ask our two candidates. We will go through questions in order, and try to keep to ½ hour per candidate. Ballots will then be passed out and we will have a chance to vote. Chair Candidate Joe Gagne Opening Statement Joe offered that he is very proud and honored to be here and views this as a great opportunity. He is looking forward to representing the committee. He has been working in Human Resources for a long time and said that we often forget the people who are doing the work, this committee puts a face on everyone that is doing work for the University. Joe has worked for corporations in the past and some companies may have social committees, but he has not experienced many committees that advocate for the staff. Questions and Answers Q. SAC has started creating a “brand” for itself with the Best of Brown series and the soon-‐to-‐be enhanced volunteering relationship with Serve RI. Do you have any additional ideas for the committee that could expand our “brand” or perhaps ideas on how we can further expand the two initiatives we currently have? (question submitted by Sarah Peri) Answer highlights ·∙ SAC logo should be on the main website page ·∙ More recognizable logo, perhaps a contest for a new logo ·∙ Get more involved with Brown Gives Green drive

·∙ Continue to sponsor event activities to utilizing local parks and zoos to emphasize our sense of community ·∙ SAC is a place for staff to bring up issues and concerns, we are here for them

Q. What are your thoughts/ideas on getting more staff members around campus to know about SAC, attend SAC events, and apply to serve on SAC? What will you do to raise campus awareness of who we are and what we do? (question submitted by Jennifer Whitworth) Answer highlights ·∙ We need to put the word out, same people show up time and time again

·∙ Go out and introduce ourselves, hold an open house, go to CIS go to University Hall go to them rather than they come to us

·∙ Promote the idea that we are a conduit between Senior leaders and staff and that we can bridge the gap between the two

Q. When you joined SAC, was there a specific topic or issue that you hoped to address, and has that changed since beginning your SAC membership? (question submitted by Roberta Swanson) Answer highlights ·∙ Staff moral, which will be a big issue in the coming year ·∙ Getting people involved ·∙ Concerned with the rising cost of things ·∙ We can change things by taking baby steps, and we can enhance things Q. What experience are you able to bring to the table to be the voice of SAC, and why do you want the Chair position? (question submitted by Marla Pearsall) Answer highlights ·∙ I bring compassion and approachability

·∙ I have learned that it is not necessarily about the person in the corner office but the people along the way that are important

·∙ My ability to communicate on several levels will benefit this position ·∙ I like to cut to the chase ·∙ I think being the face of SAC is a great opportunity ·∙ Will seek Amy’s guidance

Q. What do you feel is the most important task at hand for SAC in the upcoming year? Do you see the role of SAC changing the next two years, and if so in what way? (question submitted by Therese Doyle-‐Parillo) Answer highlights

·∙ These are unprecedented times, Brown may look a lot different in the years ahead which may cause anxiety to some, SAC will be a listening ear to the Brown community

·∙ Would like to see more academic departments involved in SAC ·∙ Would like to see a member from campus life or an academic department, we need a little more balance

Q. What does leadership mean to you? (question submitted by Karen Leonard) Answer highlights ·∙ In a former employ, I worked for a man who made a great impression on me. He would ask how people were doing and what the latest rumors were, making a connection with all employees

·∙ Being approachable and respectful of all levels is key ·∙ When respect is lacking, you lose something

Chair Candidate Sean DeBobes Questions and Answers Q. SAC has started creating a “brand” for itself with the Best of Brown series and the soon-‐to-‐be enhanced volunteering relationship with Serve RI. Do you have any additional ideas for the committee that could expand our “brand” or perhaps ideas on how we can further expand the two initiatives we currently have? (question submitted by Sarah Peri) Answer highlights

·∙ The Best of Brown series is in a good spot at this point ·∙ Perhaps some lunch-‐time workshops ·∙ Bridging the gap between faculty and staff ·∙ Serve RI is a great framework for team structure

Q. What are your thoughts/ideas on getting more staff members around campus to know about SAC, attend SA events, and apply to serve on SAC? What will you do to raise campus awareness of who we are and what we do? (question submitted by Jennifer Whitworth) Answer highlights

·∙ SAC needs a better marketing plan, a lot of people have no idea what SAC is ·∙ Asking President Simmons to put together an email if there’s an event we want a large turn-‐out for ·∙ SAC Facts are really great and people like them, expand upon that Highlight an employee along with SAC Facts

Q. When you joined SAC, was there a specific topic or issue that you hoped to address, and has that changed since beginning your SAC membership?(question submitted by Roberta Swanson) Answer highlights

·∙ I feel that it is important that the University takes on an active role and that the staff involves themselves in the community beyond College Hill

·∙ SAC provides an excellent opportunity with ways to get more involved ·∙ The desire to be involved is there, we need to harness it

Q. What experience are you able to bring to the table to be the voice of SAC, and why do you want the Chair position?(question submitted by Marla Pearsall) Answer highlights

·∙ While working at Brown for over 5 years I have had the opportunity to work with a lot of different staffing pools such as intern, exempt staff and union employee

·∙ I have had exposure to a lot of different groups of people and he feels he can balance the needs of groups of individuals

·∙ I take the advocacy role Q. What do you feel is the most important task at hand for SAC in the upcoming year? Do you see the role of SAC changing the next two years, and if so in what way? (question submitted by Therese Doyle-‐Parillo) Answer highlights

·∙ Most important is to engage staff in one way or another, this can be achieved in a number of ways ·∙ Layoffs are on everyone’s mind, this affords an opportunity to see that information is delivered ·∙ Involve people in service efforts, once people work with us, they will want to join SAC ·∙ Be flexible and willing to change when necessary, willingness to take on different things

Q. What does leadership mean to you? (question submitted by Karen Leonard) Answer highlights

·∙ I think leadership is an easy concept. It’s the ability to see how you can best drive and motivate people them to achieve a common goal

Thank you Joe and Sean!! Amy passed out ballots, there will be an envelope by the door, please sign a paper saying that “I voted”.

Subcommittee Report Events Jennifer Whitworth is lining up the John Hay Library and Ladd Observatory as possible venues for future events. SPS Doreen Burgers will advertise for Computing Advisory Board position, hopefully we will have someone in place shortly. O&C Sarah Peri-‐ We are still seeking SAC Facts, I encourage you to submit SAC Facts to the wiki, we would like to have a fact from each member and we can highlight each member. Marla has tabulated and will send out poll results, A lot of people do not know about the Best of Brown series but would like to attend, and there is an interest in volunteering. We received a general response from the Department of Transportation regarding the increase in parking rates, it has been posted on the SAC website. Amy suggested that answers to staff question should be highlighted on our website, make the website more visible. Karen Davis suggested going through the website and making sure all information is still accurate, HR policies are updated as needed. Updating staff concerns, now that staff questions are coming in more often, we can consistently look at the page and if there’s something that needs updating let us know. There was a suggestion to refresh the SAC website to create more traffic on the page. Amy and Sarah had a meeting about Serve RI. Are there any projects that they have come up with? Doreen -‐They want us to tell them exactly what type of projects Brown would be interested in, how much time we can devote and how many people would be interested. Other questions include: should there be teams or not? (This is something that we need to discuss); can we use Rebuilding RI as our benchmark, are we willing to do an outdoor project?; what do people want to do? (Sarah suggested that doing something in the community to improve a location, as opposed to just cleaning it up. The improved location can be a resource for the community. What is apparent to Sarah is that there are ample opportunities with Serve RI. Look at the Serve RI website. Ron suggested that perhaps something that would have a definite impact right now, to improve people’s lives. Karen Davis thinks that we would all get something out of it, to really make a difference that is fairly immediate that would provide a base for improvement. Joe Gagne asked if we want one thing as the fall event, or a lot of individual things. Karen Leonard suggested that we should promote a day of volunteering and everyone can do different projects. Amy asked, How about if we see how many hours Brown Staff can log in as part of a 30 day kick-‐off? Maybe we can have SAC members on different committees so we have some representation. Sarah Peri suggested that maybe we can tell Serve RI to give us 10 opportunities that could take up to 20 volunteers each. Then SAC can narrow it down to 10, and get SAC representation on each team. Have a kick-‐off event.

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Doreen said, for example, to have select events each weekend throughout the month of September, we should target a month rather than just a day. Amy suggested that we should look at undersubscribed events also. Karen Davis During the recent manager’s meeting, we discussed that at least once a year they should have joint meetings of chair, all faculty and staff within a unit. Within the academic group, people seem to be most comfortable with their home crowd. Karen Davis said that we have been getting staff concerns, I understand that, but let’s be careful with certain kinds of information; there will be plenty for us to do in the fall. We have pulled out some principles that we have put into a single document. We want to build a new website that will house a lot of information. Betsy asked if she could come to this group again to get feedback about website. We are trying to launch a communication campaign, we would like to take the news and be able to make it more user friendly. Maybe Betsy could make a presentation at the SAC Bring a Friend Day meeting, that way we could get more voices, hear from some people that are not in the loop at all. Feel free to bring one or 2 friends. Amy will start something on wiki for attendance. Contact the people who expressed an interest in SAC. Amy asked that groups please schedule a subcommittee meeting before next meeting in August. Staff concern Sean DeBobes heard from a staff member that she and her husband work in the same area at Brown using Brown Day Care. Brown/Fox Point Day care has changed their hours during the summer and it adversely affects her schedule. Brown Fox Point Day Care goes to summer hours and some people don’t anticipate that. Brown Fox Point Day Care is not part of Brown University. The center is not exclusive to Brown University employees; instead, it is a mix of people from outside the Brown community. Time to mark ballots and sign “voted” sheets. Amy will send out absentee ballots and will tally the votes. Meeting adjourned 1:30pm.

President’s Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes August 11, 2009

11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Sharpe Refectory

Dinning Rooms 8 & 9

Present: Doreen Burgers, Patricia Davey, Karen Davis, Sean DeBobes, Therese Doyle-‐Parillo, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne (Co-‐chair), Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter (Co-‐chair) , Jennifer Whitworth

Absent: Beth Murphy, Joe Sarno, Karen Asquith, Lori Nascimento

Meeting Introduction

Co-‐ chair, Joe Gagne opened the meeting by addressing SAC members and guests. Joe asked for current and visiting SAC members to discuss why you joined SAC and what you have learned thus far. If you are a guest, talk about an experience at Brown that has made an impression on you.

Amy then took a couple of minutes for an overview about SAC explaining to the group that the Presidents Staff Advisory Committee (SAC) was established in 1998 by then President Gordon Gee. The purposed was to provide a voice for staff at Brown. He wanted a forum for staff input as well as a liaison between administrative offices and staff. We have 28 members, 10 rotate out each year and 3 extra positions, Gloria Correra, Recording Secretary, Joe Sarno, Ex-‐Officio Advisor and Karen Davis, Ex-‐Officio Advisor. We meet twice a month at various campus locations, occasionally we have guest speakers or we have a working meeting. Some of our guests have included people from the offices of Brown First, Risk Assessment and Notification Processes. We also talk about general staff issues and staff concerns that we get from our website. We try to filter in questions about working at brown, if we don’t have the answers we seek the answers out. We also have a Call to Action meeting with Ruth Simmons, one of the things she spoke about was what we can do to help the Brown Community. One of the ways to give back to the community is through Serve RI, which is a volunteer organization that has a list of volunteer opportunities that we will be able to log onto in order to see where the greatest need for volunteers lies.

Karen Davis

Karen addressed the committee: I am happy to have opportunity to have friends come today. As I think about all the things she wants to cover today, we would like to start with the values document and the website where we really, really, need input. The university has a financial problem what hasn’t changed; we are on a 5 year path to get ourselves back in shape. The endowment has contributed to our financial woes, tuition this year did not rise a lot. For Fy11 and beyond we need to think of whatever we can to decrease costs, the Organizational Review Committee is a big piece of this process, but not the only piece. Human Resources and some of the other units are also involved and are thinking of ways to get through this period. Karen asked us to pull together the values document, this is the document that we are going to be guided by, how to organize, how we are going to cut. None of what you are seeing in that document is new, but it has never been pulled together, SAC is the main group that we wanted input from. They need to hear from us, did it set the right tone, what additional input do you have?

Betsy Warner

Betsy addressed the committee: We are using this document when doing leadership training, we kept looking to this document for guidance. In general, any thoughts or reactions? Sean DeBobes offered that this document would work better as a digital document, a little more detail perhaps, maybe with a hot link to other websites. The document gives us a perfect lens and provides guidance. It was also said to make sure you stay focused on the business at hand, the document could prove useful in writing reviews and in conjunction with other documents.

A guest added that losing key employees may end up costing the University money, and where are key employees that we don’t want to lose. Karen Davis suggested addressing this in a separate document, she was uncertain as to whether that additional language belongs here, or in a parallel document. Joe Gagne suggested a compact document stating this is what the University is committed to, and as an employee, this is what you need to be committed to.

Feel free to send Betsy Warner or Karen Davis any additional ideas. We would like to have this project completed by the new semester.

Angel Hillard

Angel addressed the committee: We are in the process of designing a website as a communication tool so we can communicate information about the budget to the staff. We have looked at other websites from various universities and we are looking to take the best ideas to put into our website. While Brown has done a good job with communications, we have heard that the communications were too long. The website is still in the construction stages, we are open to suggestions the site has undergone several revisions all ready.

There will be some changes made to the homepage, there will be more of an overview describing what has been done so far, such as putting a halt on capital projects, salaries and staff. Perhaps we can look at all of the campus communications and post a “readers digest” version. Another idea would be to describe exactly what an endowment is, what it does, and how much we depend on it. People really don’t know what the endowment is, basically and Endowment 101. We have a set of FAQ’s one for staffing, one for budget, and one for the endowment, we are in the process of building them and will add to them. We also have a section about the Organizational Review Committee with an overview of what the committee is about, the actions of the ORC and who is on the committee. There will be a section on policy program changes, this will be a way for departments and department heads to submit policy changes such as the BOB is now going to 2 times a week trash removal which is just an example of a policy change that will go on this website. What we would like to do is send out an email notifying departments that there is a new way to publicize policy changes. Also, there will be a link to HR where you can submit job vacancies for review. There is also be a webpage of resources for faculty and staff created by Karen last March with information about loans, retirement planning, athletics etc.

Perhaps we can upload different presentations about budget planning, we may have some budget interviews on line.

There is also an Ideas in Action page, which will be a page that recalls some of the cost saving ideas that were sent to us from faculty and staff. Here, we can tell you what we have done with your ideas (feedback).

There is a link to advisory boards and committees including SAC. There are also links to the ORDC and the budget process to create endowment basics. What is the timeline for budget planning for the next 3 yrs? There will be cost savings tips, which will link to Facilities Management.

This is all still in the construction stages, what is missing? Is it clear? How’s the layout? Are there duplications? What do you think?

Suggestions

·∙ Sarah Peri suggested that a section on training or stress management will be under Resources at Brown, maybe you should make this more visible? Also, highlight a portion of the website, every month.

·∙ A guest suggested a section with revenue generating ideas.

·∙ It was mentioned that the Med School is different in terms of budget, Beppie did whole section about the Med School. There is a need to treat the Med School a little differently; we need to bring Med School issues up front.

·∙ Ron Dunleavy suggested an inventory of videos for people to watch to make website more dynamic. For example, a video from President Simmons, maybe one from HR, Finance etc. maybe just a 2 minute video. We can use the video archive or library to use as a “hook” to get people interested in the website.

·∙ A page for “One stop shopping” when it comes to the Brown budget and understanding budgetary issues.

Amy asked how much discloser will be involved? We are still meeting, but there will be information about the review process and who is leading it. There will also be key dates and a timeline so people will know what is going on, but no action statements.

The vast majority of the information is not department specific. There’s a group that will look at HR, Finance etc., there is a group on events, one on communications and graphics.

Karen Davis stated that every time we have a chance, we want to put up as much as we possibly can. We have to decide how much information is helpful, the issue is, what are the dollar targets, we are hoping to get 15-‐20 million in savings. Each group will have its own wiki, but will not be public. Developing the policy process, setting some standards, and best practices.

Suggestions continued

·∙ Ron Dunleavy asked if they had a webmaster. Instead of having links, you need to be coping and pasting rather than all links. Make it easy for the reader to stay where they are and not having to go to links, not everyone has a fast internet connection.

·∙ One of our guests suggested that in an effort to get ideas processed, there are some really great tools available, interactive tools that would be essentially brainstorming on line.

·∙ Maybe it would be useful to have 2 websites, one site geared toward students, one for staff and faculty.

·∙ Acronyms, some people are not aware of what the acronyms mean, spell it out.

·∙ Most important items should be at the top of left hand menu. Reorder the left hand menu. People will come back if the place has life.

·∙ Find a way to let people know who is involved. There are no persons names involved. Bridge the communication, the website is being updated by whom? Give a name, humanize the website. Maybe you can put something like “the website is a partnership between ________ offices, and being maintained by __________.

Karen Davis knows that people are mindful that this is a painful time for many. There is some good news however, such as getting rid of stupid business processes, let’s be smart about our dollars. The other thing is the vacancy review committee, plods along, there are other groups that are trying to think of ways to save money. Would this be a good place to share that information? A possible launch date for this site would be the beginning of September.

A question was asked of the group, “how should we get the word out that the website is live?”

·∙ Perhaps utilizing Morning Mail

·∙ Have Beppie send email

·∙ Having Portuguese translations about doc that are on this website.

·∙ Put information some place where staff congregates.

·∙ Maybe a webcast on how to use the site.

·∙ Getting in touch with people who don’t have computers, have a kiosk with a laptop for people to have access to.

Karen Davis said that in the spirit of communications topics, the website is a key component but just a component of a broader communication strategy that we have to work on. How do you like to get information? People who are on the run, or English is not a first language. You need to do a little bit of a lot of things. As much as we appreciate all the detail, not everyone can read the emails and get the key points. Another thing we have begun to do is to write up a one pager to remind department chairs and mangers to share the information that they are hearing. What Karen would love to hear in terms of advice, is for things to do or not to do, should we use listserves or a news blast? In terms of your preferences should we have large meetings or small meetings, we need a similar set of messages for everyone leaving little room for interpretation.

Suggestions

·∙ A member suggested more Brown Bag Lunches from managers.

·∙ Having the emails going out earlier in the day and earlier in the week. Not Friday at 5:00.

·∙ The last communication came out at lunch time, kudos to Beppie, the timing of emails certainly have a psychological effect.

·∙ There is a lot of repetition from message to message, but keep in mind that others may not have heard it, it is very intentional. Maybe these suggestions will help Beppie with her emails and to get her point across.

Our next meeting will be on South Main Street with our subcommittee groups, Staff Participation, Events and Outreach and Communication

Meeting adjourned at 1:35 pm

Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes Corporation Room September 8, 2009

Present: Doreen Burgers, Karen Davis, Sean DeBobes, Therese Doyle-‐Parillo, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne (Co-‐chair), Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Jason Masi, Lori Nascimento, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joe Sarno, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter (Co-‐chair) , Jennifer Whitworth

Absent: Beth Murphy, Nancy Magers, Patricia Davey

Joe Gagne

The nomination process for new SAC members has begun. I would like all nominations in by the end of September and then will open up the process to people to have applied. That process will begin on October 16. I am asking sub committees to please think of one person who you feel would be beneficial to sit on that committee. We will hold meeting of the selection committee those members will be Joe Sarno, Karen Davis, Karen Leonard, Amy and myself. We should have the selection wrapped up in late October and then have an orientation session. The nomination form is on the web. Member selection is an interesting process, last year we have 30+ applications, we are hoping to have another good year, we have 5 nominations to date.

Amy thanked us for “bringing a friend”, please see if they are interested in joining SAC. If anyone feels that would like to nominate someone that would be great.

Faculty /Staff Football Game

SAC has a table at this event and part of our role is to hand out free tickets to anyone who wants to go if they show a Brown ID. We need volunteers to man the tables 2 or 3 SAC members at a time. In addition to the tickets there is usually a hand out, hats, whistles a fun hand out. We have a table at the Brown/ URI game. Therese advised that we check on the placement of our table due to a number of tents and tables that will be there also. Please start sign up on wiki for that game. Sean DeBobes suggested that this would be a perfect time to publicize SAC’s food drive.

SPS, Events and Communications have gotten together to improve the SAC website, make sure you take a look!!! Thank you Marla for all the work you did! Our on campus food drive has 8 volunteers, the Hasbro walk a thon has a lot of volunteers as well.

Food Drive

The first day of the food drive which is September 17 will be at the gate at Alumni Hall, we need volunteers to help staple flyers to bags that will go out to the departments. We are hoping to get a logo from the Food Bank for our flyer. We will assemble bags, and then bring the bags to a particular department to hold donations. We need a contact person in the department to talk to about the food that has been collected. We will pick everything up and bring it all to the Food Bank. If we have many people interested, we may set up a table outside of the Brown Office Building. This can be done on campus, during a lunch hour. For people who are not available for weekend work, this would be a good opportunity to volunteer. This event will last the entire 30 days and an announcement will be made on morning mail.

30 Days of Service

Doreen has a list of who has signed up so far. We would like a SAC member to be at these events to take a few photos, we would like at least 2 members at each event. For the walk-‐a-‐thon the maximum number of participants will be about 20. The farm chores event is also well subscribed. On the web site, is there a place to have a notes option such as “do you plan on bringing a family member?” This way we know how many people will attend. Sometimes there are age restrictions at some of the farms. There may be things on the farms that are dangerous for children. It was suggested that we send an email to all farm volunteers the week before the event asking if they are planning to bring family members, and to please let us know. It would be a good idea to send email reminders for events for that weekend. If it rains both farms said they would cancel. Al Tente will be in contact with them about rain policy.

A blue sign-‐up sheet was then circulated for SAC members so we can have a SAC presence at the events.

Amy is meeting with Hanna, from the BDH about the volunteering effort. Hanna is very service oriented and very excited about SAC, they are meeting on September 18th. We would love for President Simmons to endorse this initiative in some way. We need some sort of identity for Brown Gives. One idea was to locate a vendor for buttons with the Brown Gives logo. SAC members can wear these buttons at events to continue the promotion. Book marks are also a good source of promotion, book marks can be used as a “give away” to people that donate food. Plastic wrist bands is another idea, they are made out of recycled materials and are also inexpensive. It would be great not to have to ask for more money, as it stands now we are way under budget from last year. Our food budget was cut by at least 30 percent.

Advisors Report Karen Davis

Last week’s meeting was very interesting, Russell Carey talked about H1N1, Brown is disseminating information very well. They turned 45 minutes of doom and gloom into a very interesting informative meeting. Sanitation stations have been placed in all public areas of campus, the regular flu vaccine will be given on campus. There will be a website that addresses what the symptoms of the flu look like, and what actions should be taken. Brown is on top of it and a system is in place. If anyone has questions look at the new website, be prepared are the buzz words!

Brown and the economy

Beppie said we did better than expected but we are still under budget, she gave some interesting analogies. She talked about the cost savings website she put numbers behind the ideas that were sent in. She mentioned that ORG review may be coming back to SAC in December. We still have a savings target of 30 million dollars. The org review will be set to launch this fall. We still have more communication planning to do. Things we thought we were ready to say and do had to be shifted to mid October. We will lunch 10 to 13 review teams, the teams will work over the course of a year to rethink how we do things. We thought we were up against a clock to get things done before February, we will take the time to do things right. We can expect a communication by the end of October. Organizational review is important but that is not the only thing going in terms of the budget. We have been working on a new website that will launch mid to late September, seeing it as a way to consolidate communications. The question of communication kept coming up, more, simpler, easier. To take

everything we are doing and put it all in one place, it will have a summary of suggestions to date and what we are doing. We want to show the website to SAC to get some more input.

Doreen had a question about communications to staff regarding swine flu. What most people want to know is if there will be any flexibility, maybe work from home, will there be a communication coming out? Karen Davis responded, Joe and I are not ready to loosen up the sick policy. But we are concerned about people who come to work when they are sick. We are aware that absenteeism is likely to be higher. We are starting to think about plans regarding working at home and how to keep departments moving if a lot of people are out sick. We are working on something now, we are also trying to coordinate messages to departments. The sick note notice is out for the students all ready, but that does not apply to staff yet. A suggestion was made that maybe a good idea would be to hold open forums for the community about H1N1.

Meeting with President Simmons Amy

The last thing I would like to talk about is our meeting with President Simmons. The meeting will be November 10th, which is the second Tuesday, in the Corporation Room. We want her to know about our work this past year. I would like each subcommittee to put together a presentation. Talk about what we have done and the things we are looking forward to next year. Please record that and put it together for me to look at. So be creative with your presentation! Now I would like for us to meet for a half an hour in subcommittees to discuss what we would like to include in a presentation for to Ruth Simmons.

Highlights of subcommittee meeting

O&C-‐Sarah

As a committee overall we feel that we should continue utilizing morning mail as a excellent source of communication, as well as the wiki.

SPS-‐Doreen

We are happy about external relationship with Serve RI. We hope that volunteerism increases with continued use of that site. There has been an outreach to a number of farms. Can we quantify the work that has been done? Every farm has given Al Tente some type of yield, statistics would be great to give in our presentation. We have placed a lot of people on a lot of committees. The food drive is a collaborative effort.

Events-‐Lori

We will continue the Best of Brown Series. We have the attendance numbers, and hope to get some quotes from people, personal reflections on the events they have attended. We plan on discussing future events with President Simmons, we are also hoping to tie in a collection (food) with events.

Please send subcommittee notes to Amy and to each subcommittee chair. Please email nominees for subcommittees to Joe Gagne for the next class!

Meeting adjourned at 1:15p.m.

President’s Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes September 22, 2009

11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. 121 South Main Street, room 247

Present: Karen Asquith, Doreen Burgers, Patricia Davey, Karen Davis, Sean DeBobes, Therese Doyle-‐Parillo, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne, Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Beth Murphy, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joe Sarno, Kristen Soule, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter

Absent: Roberta Swanson, Jennifer Whitworth

Amy-‐Right now I would like to break up in to subcommittees to review the goals we set back in January, talk over what we have achieved and not achieved, and make a plan for the next couple of months.

Events, please go on line to see if there are any volunteering opportunities during the months of November, December and January. Try to find one event a month that we can target as a “Brown event”. We are looking for something for evenings during the week, not a weekend.

·∙O&C-‐ photos and testimonials about service and Best of Brown events

·∙SPS-‐ take a look at people who have been selected to serve on various committees throughout the university, see if they can come and talk to SAC about what is like to serve on that committee.

Question -‐ how long does a SAC member need to be off the committee before they can get on SAC again? Karen Leonard answered that former members do not get precedence over new people, we encourage new participation.

There are a few things that are unclear in the eligibility requirements. Can any staff member with 2 years of service be a member of SAC? No percentage of weekly time is mentioned in the bylaws, it does say pay grades 12 and below. Joe Sarno will review By-‐laws and update if needed.

Updates So Days of Service

Farm Chores Al Tente worked breaking down the farm, normally they do not work Saturdays but they did for us. Working at Magaziner Farm was very enjoyable. They want to continue the volunteer relationship next year. They were pleased with the people and the way the system worked, all in all they were very impressed. Building a relationship with farmers is important, they want to continue in the spring. Al is not interested in giving awards for service, it’s kind of a personal thing. Al was assured that there would be no award, but more of a recognition. Amy asked about Magaziner Farm, what should we encourage people to bring, maybe we should contact the farm and ask what people should bring with them such as gloves, special clothing etc. A new morning mail reminder will be going out about upcoming events.

Therese-‐ Franklin Farm really needs people and will take them whenever someone is available. Franklin Farm is 100% non-‐profit. They have historical buildings for which they received grants for restoration. Last weekend we got a tour, including a history of the farm. By 11:30 we harvested all the crops that were left-‐-‐ they were so grateful.. It was a very interesting and rewarding experience.

Food Drive Sean said that the food drive went well. Today Sean will be giving out some bags and flyers for your department. The

general idea is to put bag out in your department for donations. Most offices will be ok with one bag to start with, you can use a box instead of a bag if you think you can fill it. Once bags/boxes are filled, you can store them in the department. If there is no storage, bring donations to Josiahs, or call and someone can drop by and pick the bags up, there is no specific pick up day. The Food Bank wants at least 500 lbs of food before they pick it up, which will not take us too long to collect. Sean will leave bags and extra sheets for us to bring our departments.

There will be a food drive associated with the Faculty/Staff Football Game. We need a couple of parking spaces on Saturday, October 3rd because there will be a food collection and we need access to cars to transport food.

It is also Alumni Fall Weekend the alumni group is approximately 300-‐500 people, a lot of people will show up at the SAC tent, we need to make sure that we direct people to the proper place. We do need help next Wednesday and Thursday from 11-‐2 at Nicholson House to hand out tickets. In the past it was unlimited tickets but this year there will be a limit of four per person. The 4 ticket limit was not mentioned in the morning mail -‐ more than 4 tickets may be issued on a case by case basis. Amy asked that Therese write a memo including who should stand where and what needs to be done.

Nominations Joe Gagne sent out a nominations reminder yesterday, we have 12 nominations, mostly by SAC members. He will be meeting with managers and hopefully will have a nice pool to choose from.

Karen Davis A reminder about flu season will be in a morning mail soon, it will include information about the on campus seasonal flu vaccine clinics. In the past, the vaccine was given during the Benefits Fair only. This year there will be several clinics -‐ the first clinic will be the September 24t h.

Beppie, as spokesperson for the financial situation in the University, will be talking to department managers. The message is not so different than before. Basically she will say here’s how we endedFY09; here’s what we need to do in FY10, and how we need to act on for FY11. What is different is the numbers have gotten more specific. We are going to be on her list maybe for this fall. In October, Beppie and the ORC will be moving forward, the website Brown and the Economy, is a broad based site, organizational review issues will be there we plan on going live the end of October. As soon as the final report comes in, Karen will bring it back here and hopefully will be more specific. You identify the problems and then you are asked to supply solutions to the problems.

Joe Gagne Betsy Warner wanted to offer the group a 2-‐hour seminar on managing change. Maybe in October, doing it in this time frame with the ambassadors, it will be offered to several groups on campus. The other issue is training.brown.edu putting out a bulletin, training express, training will be very important next year in developing skills, they want to make training for staff meaningful, encourage people in the department to participate. Beth Murphy asked, are all training sessions free for departments? There are only a couple of thing that the charge back, the majority of them are free. CIS offers free training, if you don’t show up there’s a $25.00 fee to the department. But most of the sessions are free, the ones that cost are in the descriptions. Training and professional development is always important; we need to figure out how to do better and more.

Amy Amy met with Hanna for lunch, she will be at our SAC meeting with the President on November 10th. Amy said that Hanna is very interested in learning about SAC. Amy talked about staff members who have managers that are not coming forward with information, T how Brown will do all they can do with the morale issue and training issue for people who are left after there have been layoffs. It was a great meeting and we will enjoy her visit.

Events

Lori-‐ We have some good ideas for the next Best of Brown, we plan on doing another Ladd Observatory event, we will contact them about that. Under consideration is to possibly partner with RISD Museum. We have been looking on line for some volunteering opportunities for week days and there is not much available for November for during the week. They need help with Thanksgiving baskets at Salvation Army but that is during working hours. Doreen suggested that if you see something on there that is close to what you’re looking for, maybe they will work with you on setting up a better schedule. Doreen suggested that some gift wrapping tables need volunteers. The next Best of Brown will be likely be at Ladd Observatory in January. Are there any Brown events that we can piggy back on? The Holiday Bizarre is not being offered this year but maybe we could have something then. Maybe Beppie could host a Holiday Tea, a come together time, part of what was nice about the bizarre was that the community was part of it. Maybe an event with some music or a reading or something like that is a possibility.

O&C Biggest thing we would like to focus on is the process for Morning Mail, if you need a morning mail to go out, the bones of the announcement should be sent to Jason and Roberta with a copy to Marla, always as much in advance as possible. We would like to spice up the SAC home page, we need some testimonials, we want to get more traffic on the SAC website, we need a more interactive website. If you have pictures of some of our volunteering efforts, please send them to Marla. Sarah mentioned that for our future goals we want to focus on the ”traveling SAC show”. Some departments are limited in leaving their offices. We can go to them and get people involve with SAC that way.

SPS We talked about, the diversity advisory board and they have requested some new members. The current members have been there a long time, we have an opportunity to recruit some new members. We will send out a notice (using the proper channels of course). The new committee members will know what the process is. Also, we talked about the goals that impacted SPS this year, we made some good headway. We don’t have volunteer ads on our website but we do have links. One of the things we want to do is send out a survey to the volunteer participants to get some feedback, or a general survey, asking things like, did you participate? Why didn’t you participate? So the group can continue to look at events in the upcoming years. SPS is also working on guests from some of the committees to come talk to SAC. We have 6 names hopefully they can all come on October 6th (get extra food and drinks and cookies)

Therese said that Serve New England is an organization that rewards volunteers, if you volunteer 2 hours a month you are entitled to purchase food at a discounted price. It’s a great benefit, it’s all fresh food, if you volunteer you would pick from various food packages, perhaps we could recreate this at Brown this could also be a benefit for dining services. Go to their website and look around. Sean said that he would have to learn more about it and suggested that maybe we could become a pick up location for Serve New England.

Meeting adjourned at 1:30pm

Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes 121 South Main Street, Room 247

October 20, 2009

Present: Karen Asquith, Patricia Davey, Karen Davis, Sean DeBobes, Therese Doyle-‐Parillo, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne (Co-‐chair), Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Beth Murphy, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joe Sarno, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter (Co-‐chair) ,

Absent: Doreen Burgers, Lori Nascimento, Jennifer Whitworth

Amy

Our “Brown Gives” pins have arrived!! Please give a pin to people who have volunteered.

Joe Gagne

Nominations are closed. There are a couple of people Joe may want to contact. 17 people were nominated, 14 people have applied. There are a total of 23 applicants. We will be holding an orientation on December 15, 16 or 17. There are still spots open for the Wellness Fair, please go to the wiki to sign up, it’s only a one hour time commitment.

A question was asked if the flu shots are still available. Karen Davis answered that the 30th will be the last time for flu shots. The shots will be available at Wellness Fair. OMAC was cancelled due to date mix up.

Amy

The awards and recognition ceremony discussion last week was cut short due to time constraints. If anyone has any other suggestions please send to Amy or Angell.

I just wanted everyone to know that SAC has been considering a new logo . I have asked Kevin in graphics who is the same person that designed the pins for us, to come up with new logo. He thinks he will have something to show me by the end of the week.

Karen Davis-‐Advisors Report

The Administrative Leadership meeting was held October 7th -‐ Beppie gave her FY11 budget process update, there is a version of her presentation on the Brown and the Economy website. Beppie spoke about how we got to this place, our deficit reduction plans, and the budget process. The URC is a mixed group of faculty, staff and students, in past years people would make their budget case to that group. Beppie spoke about how we are still growing in some areas, URC is looking at areas where we want to grow. The President will ultimately make the decision. The other big issue is the Organizational Review process. In the last 2 weeks, Beppie publicly announced the 12 areas under review which can be seen at the Brown and the Economy website. Beppie talked about 6 areas that are cross functional all the teams, all the membership lists will be on the website, and we have an aggressive time table. The Organizational Review teams will have recommendations by early to mid December, so Ruth can have time to look at it before the Corporation Meeting in February. Back to Administrative Leadership meeting-‐ regarding stimulus money, Brown like many, is the beneficiary of additional

research money. We are getting a lot more money, the government is under pressure to distribute the money. The scary part is that there’s a lot of reporting requirements that goes along with this money. The American public needs to know where the money is going and how it is spent. It is requires reporting that we are not set up to do, very detailed reports that need to be done and this has staff concerned. This money has a 2 year span, it is not money we can count on forever.

Open enrollment 2010

This year we are doing an active open enrollment. No matter what your benefit status is with us, this year you must go into the system and choose them again. The main reason is that things change as time goes by and maybe you haven’t kept up with the changes. Having an active open enrollment will force all of us to go in and pay attention. This is also a chance to review exactly what a dependent is. Sometimes the rules change and things can get complicated. The Benefits Fair is still on, pay attention and don’t let the date slip by. Between close of open enrollment and January 1, we will do an outreach and make sure people have addressed this. Close of open enrollment is November 13. Sean asked if there will be a follow up message, Karen answered that there will be a one page note that will go to everyone’s home address which will be going out later this week. There’s also an email message going out late this week. When you go back to the office, ask colleagues if they know about the new process. Amy asked, what could be done to make you NOT ignore the email or voice message? Maybe a statement like ACTION REQUIRED. Karen mentioned that on the letter being sent home it will say something like, “what will happen if I don’t enroll by?” Hopefully that will make people stop and notice. A question was asked if it will be interpreted into other languages. We will encourage people to go to Human Resources to look at computers for help with translations. Joe mentioned that at the Benefits Fair we will have some computers set up for people to use to register.

Amy

I would like the subcommittees to meet now for an hour. We want people to work on their slides for the upcoming presentation. The slides should be based on things we have done in the past year. The bulk of information will be in the spoken presentation. Please work on adding or changing the slides, start planning what you are going to say. I would like SPS to please talk about a survey that concentrates on what people who volunteered thought of this year’s 30 days of service campaign.

Staff Concerns-‐Morale boosters We received a staff concern about things we can do to boost morale, something to energize staff, little things that departments can do to boost morale. Perhaps encourage Wind down Wednesday. Kirsten requested that the BURPERS come over for an hour to her department to give shoulder massages. Joe had a Hawaiian luau, complete with smoothies, Hawaiian music and hula hoops. Someone suggested a cookie swap, you can buy or bake cookies to swap. Marla suggested a type of trophy award that would go to a different person every week because that person was particularly helpful, the award then gets passed on to the next person. Talk to people about what would motivate or energize them, send a morning mail, just to share positive thoughts of what departments can do for each other.

Subcommittee Report

O and C

Sarah, O and C will track the thank you notes to send out to the volunteers, we want to send out a form to all volunteers to fill in. We want to add 2 slides to the presentation, any last minute changes, please send them to Amy. Regarding SAC Facts, we were doing those bi-‐weekly, we will probably include that in our presentation, we have decided to do SAC Facts during winter break and summer months only.

Events

We have spent all of our time on the presentation. We need to clarify once a month service projects. We should try an event in November (for volunteering) Sean mentioned that the background work to do it once a month is burdensome. Maybe once a quarter would be more feasible. We could use serve RI and then we can send out a notice, it’s an all ready established event. We should try and do something quarterly, using the on line system. Our goal was to try to find some volunteering opportunities on a weekday evening, we had trouble finding anything. For a Best of Brown event we are working towards the Planetary Center for December, and maybe the RISD Museum.

SPS

Sean reported that they talked about the slides. We would like to expand the program next year. Anyone who ran a group in the last 30 days send and anecdote to Sean in the next day or so he can include it in the presentation. Amy suggested that anyone who hosted an event should say a few words about the event. Amy wants to add some variety to the presentation, just a sentence or two, would be good. Don’t forget, we need your slides by next Wednesday or Thursday, please send them to Amy


Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes 121 South Main Street, Room 247

October 20, 2009

Present: Karen Asquith, Patricia Davey, Karen Davis, Sean DeBobes, Therese Doyle-‐Parillo, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne (Co-‐chair), Deborah Healey, Karen Leonard, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Beth Murphy, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joe Sarno, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter (Co-‐chair) ,

Absent: Doreen Burgers, Lori Nascimento, Jennifer Whitworth

Amy

Our “Brown Gives” pins have arrived!! Please give a pin to people who have volunteered.

Joe Gagne

Nominations are closed. There are a couple of people Joe may want to contact. 17 people were nominated, 14 people have applied. There are a total of 23 applicants. We will be holding an orientation on December 15, 16 or 17. There are still spots open for the Wellness Fair, please go to the wiki to sign up, it’s only a one hour time commitment.

A question was asked if the flu shots are still available. Karen Davis answered that the 30th will be the last time for flu shots. The shots will be available at Wellness Fair. OMAC was cancelled due to date mix up.

Amy

The awards and recognition ceremony discussion last week was cut short due to time constraints. If anyone has any other suggestions please send to Amy or Angell.

I just wanted everyone to know that SAC has been considering a new logo . I have asked Kevin in graphics who is the same person that designed the pins for us, to come up with new logo. He thinks he will have something to show me by the end of the week.

Karen Davis-‐Advisors Report

The Administrative Leadership meeting was held October 7th -‐ Beppie gave her FY11 budget process update, there is a version of her presentation on the Brown and the Economy website. Beppie spoke about how we got to this place, our deficit reduction plans, and the budget process. The URC is a mixed group of faculty, staff and students, in past years people would make their budget case to that group. Beppie spoke about how we are still growing in some areas, URC is looking at areas where we want to grow. The President will ultimately make the decision. The other big issue is the Organizational Review process. In the last 2 weeks, Beppie publicly announced the 12 areas under review which can be seen at the Brown and the Economy website. Beppie talked about 6 areas that are cross functional all the teams, all the membership lists will be on the website, and we have an aggressive time table. The Organizational Review teams will have recommendations by early to mid December, so Ruth can have time to look at it before the Corporation Meeting in February. Back to Administrative Leadership meeting-‐ regarding stimulus money, Brown like many, is the beneficiary of additional

research money. We are getting a lot more money, the government is under pressure to distribute the money. The scary part is that there’s a lot of reporting requirements that goes along with this money. The American public needs to know where the money is going and how it is spent. It is requires reporting that we are not set up to do, very detailed reports that need to be done and this has staff concerned. This money has a 2 year span, it is not money we can count on forever.

Open enrollment 2010

This year we are doing an active open enrollment. No matter what your benefit status is with us, this year you must go into the system and choose them again. The main reason is that things change as time goes by and maybe you haven’t kept up with the changes. Having an active open enrollment will force all of us to go in and pay attention. This is also a chance to review exactly what a dependent is. Sometimes the rules change and things can get complicated. The Benefits Fair is still on, pay attention and don’t let the date slip by. Between close of open enrollment and January 1, we will do an outreach and make sure people have addressed this. Close of open enrollment is November 13. Sean asked if there will be a follow up message, Karen answered that there will be a one page note that will go to everyone’s home address which will be going out later this week. There’s also an email message going out late this week. When you go back to the office, ask colleagues if they know about the new process. Amy asked, what could be done to make you NOT ignore the email or voice message? Maybe a statement like ACTION REQUIRED. Karen mentioned that on the letter being sent home it will say something like, “what will happen if I don’t enroll by?” Hopefully that will make people stop and notice. A question was asked if it will be interpreted into other languages. We will encourage people to go to Human Resources to look at computers for help with translations. Joe mentioned that at the Benefits Fair we will have some computers set up for people to use to register.

Amy

I would like the subcommittees to meet now for an hour. We want people to work on their slides for the upcoming presentation. The slides should be based on things we have done in the past year. The bulk of information will be in the spoken presentation. Please work on adding or changing the slides, start planning what you are going to say. I would like SPS to please talk about a survey that concentrates on what people who volunteered thought of this year’s 30 days of service campaign.

Staff Concerns-‐Morale boosters We received a staff concern about things we can do to boost morale, something to energize staff, little things that departments can do to boost morale. Perhaps encourage Wind down Wednesday. Kirsten requested that the BURPERS come over for an hour to her department to give shoulder massages. Joe had a Hawaiian luau, complete with smoothies, Hawaiian music and hula hoops. Someone suggested a cookie swap, you can buy or bake cookies to swap. Marla suggested a type of trophy award that would go to a different person every week because that person was particularly helpful, the award then gets passed on to the next person. Talk to people about what would motivate or energize them, send a morning mail, just to share positive thoughts of what departments can do for each other.

Subcommittee Report

O and C

Sarah, O and C will track the thank you notes to send out to the volunteers, we want to send out a form to all volunteers to fill in. We want to add 2 slides to the presentation, any last minute changes, please send them to Amy. Regarding SAC Facts, we were doing those bi-‐weekly, we will probably include that in our presentation, we have decided to do SAC Facts during winter break and summer months only.

Events

We have spent all of our time on the presentation. We need to clarify once a month service projects. We should try an event in November (for volunteering) Sean mentioned that the background work to do it once a month is burdensome. Maybe once a quarter would be more feasible. We could use serve RI and then we can send out a notice, it’s an all ready established event. We should try and do something quarterly, using the on line system. Our goal was to try to find some volunteering opportunities on a weekday evening, we had trouble finding anything. For a Best of Brown event we are working towards the Planetary Center for December, and maybe the RISD Museum.

SPS

Sean reported that they talked about the slides. We would like to expand the program next year. Anyone who ran a group in the last 30 days send and anecdote to Sean in the next day or so he can include it in the presentation. Amy suggested that anyone who hosted an event should say a few words about the event. Amy wants to add some variety to the presentation, just a sentence or two, would be good. Don’t forget, we need your slides by next Wednesday or Thursday, please send them to Amy


President’s Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes November 10, 2009

11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Corporation Room, University Hall

Present: Karen Asquith, Doreen Burgers, Patricia Davey, Karen Davis, Therese Doyle-‐Parillo, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne, Karen Leonard, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Beth Murphy, Lori Nascimento, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joe Sarno, Kristen Soule, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter, Jennifer Whitworth

Absent: Sean DeBobes, Deborah Healey, Kristen Soule, Roberta Swanson

Guests: President Ruth Simmons, Hanna Rodriguez-‐Farrar, Assistant to the President

Amy Welcomes guests President Ruth Simmons and Hanna Rodriguez-‐Farrar, Assistant to the President, to our Staff Advisory Committee Meeting. We started this meeting with around the room introductions of SAC members. Highlights from slide show: Staff Advisory Committee Mission: To facilitate active and direct communication between University staff and senior administration, including the President, and to provide a forum for input and discussion of issues important to the staff and the University. At the beginning of calendar year 2009, SAC set goals for ourselves, and these were based

• on our guiding principles • staff concerns we had received • the interests of our team members • ideas and charges we discussed at our conversation with you and Brenda Allen in the fall of 2008.

To accomplish these goals, we needed a plan…and since the Plan for Academic Enrichment has been so successful, you can probably guess what I like to call ours…the Plan for SACademic Enrichment. Our key objectives were to:

• We approached these goals with enthusiasm and creativity in a variety of different ways-‐-‐-‐one of which was by sharing our thoughts.

• First meeting of each month discussing issues that affect staff. • Guest speakers are often invited some who have visited us in the last year. • After each presentation on there is ample time for our guests to solicit feedback from SAC members

and for SAC members to present additional questions. President Simmons asked, What was the opinion on weather? Amy answered that there were concerns about the shuttle and no service, there were comments about the sidewalks not being cleared of snow. President Simmons asked, Was anything done? There’s a group working on the alert system, Joe Sarno offered that we have been working on refining the policy, we are prepared to make notifications on timely fashion this year. Another way that we support the Brown staff community is by providing various avenues –anonymous and not-‐-‐ for staff members to voice their concerns on any topic throughout the year. As you can imagine, the economy was and is on everyone’s mind, and here are some of the reoccurring themes: Communication. We heard that there is great unevenness how managers relay information to staff– and we found academic departments were especially at risk of staff members feeling uniformed and/or disconnected.

Economy updates from senior leadership that are emailed to all staff are good, there can never happen often enough. Creating a condensed, bulleted version of these communiqués would go a long way toward ensuring that the information is read and digested. We heard a lot of ideas from staff throughout this crisis -‐-‐very strong indicator of what a powerful collective Brown Staff are. Many had an overwhelming desire to help, which manifested itself in a variety ways...one of which was offering up possible cost savings measures. This evolved into the creation of the savings suggestions website, which was GREAT. Giving staff a venue to share their thoughts is a hugely positive communication step because everybody wants to feel that they are being heard. Even more encouraging is that some of these suggestions have recently been implemented. Another common theme this year is morale, and how staff layoffs create a ripple effect that is extremely emotional. When our colleagues leave or are let go -‐-‐ the folks that remain experience a combination of feelings including fear, sadness, guilt, anger and confusion. We learned that going forward, it will be critical to overall morale that departments who lose staff get the support they need as far as rebuilding and repairing their teams and managing their new and different workloads. Hopefully-‐-‐ one of the things we will discuss later today is how SAC can help HR and senior leadership think this through.

• With all these concerns in mind, we spent a great deal of time discussing what SAC could help and who at Brown we needed to connect with.

• To that end, under the leadership of Karen Davis, the Vacancy Review Committee and particularly the Organizational Review Committee have been frequent topics. Understanding the creation, composition and mission of the ORC was critical, as was making sure that staff were adequately represented.

• As far as communication about the status of Brown’s endowment and reduction plans for FY11-‐FY14, we spoke with Beppie and Karen about our concern that a lot of information was getting lost in translation and that making the messages simpler would ease some of the anxiety and confusion that staff were feeling.

• To help with that, we met with those creating the new Brown and the Economy website and offered our opinions about how the information might be presented, what we as staff members would find helpful, and what links should be included.

All in all, I hope that our communications with HR and senior leadership have helped inform some of their actions and decisions and thus, had a positive impact on staff relations. We are certainly grateful for the opportunity to share our ideas and impressions with them and hope to continue these relationships. Another strong trend in 2009—also related to the economy—was community service. Since the unemployment rate in Rhode Island is one of the highest in the country, SAC though a lot about what we could do to help our neighbors. That is how our newest venture came to be. In an effort to engage Brown staff members in serving the Rhode Island community, SAC created Brown Gives. For this initiative, we organize opportunities for Brown staff members (and their families) to volunteer for activities and organizations in the areas of education, health services, and food distribution. Service projects vary in terms of day, time, and type of activity, so we hope there is something for everyone. These activities are also a great opportunity to meet and network with other people from Brown! Our hope is that this will be an ongoing effort, for years to come. You will hear more about our first Brown Gives event, 30 Days of Service, in a few minutes. So, that is a general overview of the last year, and now I am going to shift gears a little bit and talk about how we work.

1. SAC is a truly collaborative effort between all members, subcommittees and our advising team. Each time we are together, we allow time to discuss any new staff concerns and we hear an Administrative Leadership update from our Advisors.

2. As I mentioned earlier, we have one monthly meeting dedicated to large-‐group discussion. Our second monthly meeting is where our three subcommittees meet to work on small group projects in the areas of Outreach and Communication, Events and Morale, and Staff Participation.

3. At this time, I would like to turn over this presentation to my colleagues who have the critical and challenging responsibility of chairing one of SAC’s three subcommittees.

4. I am ever-‐grateful for their leadership—for their hard plays a huge role in SAC’s initiatives becoming a reality.

5. We are going to start with Sarah Peri, who is the chair of out Outreach and Communication..or as we call it..O&C subcommittee. I hope you enjoy these great highlights from the last year.

Sarah Peri -‐ O & C

1. The O & C subcommittee’s last charge before the previous committee ended their tenure with SAC, was to update our mission statement to make sure it included the constant changes that the Outreach and Communication subcommittee is continually going through.

2. SAC’s overall communication has increased to the Brown community through several domains: 1. Increased communication through Morning Mail 2. SAC Facts 3. More frequent updates on SAC Event updates

3. As a result of our increased communications and need for continued technological updates, ONC created a brand new position within our subcommittee this year-‐Technology Coordinator. This position helps us to update the SAC website with announcements, pictures, committee applications, and its overall design. Starting with the next incoming SAC class, the Technology Coordinator position will actually be 2 people; one veteran SAC member and one new SAC member. This year Marla Pearsall has been our one go-‐to lady!

4. ONC also created and trained all SAC members on the WIKI interface. The intention behind the wiki, was for the committee to be able to more easily communicate with one another, post comments/questions to one another, and sign up to volunteer for our own SAC events.

5. This form allows staff to anonymously, if they choose to submit a comment, question or suggestion to SAC and we receive the form via email to our SAC Inbox. Certain members of our committee have access to this email address and we reply and/or forward the comment/question/concern to the appropriate person at the University so if necessary, we can provide a response back to the concerned staff member.

Looking to the future, ONC would like to: 1. Create a blog – This would give an ongoing summary and updates on past and future SAC events and

announcements 2. Since we do so many surveys, we have identified the need to utilize a survey tool such as Survey

Monkey and would like to possibly get a subscription for future surveys and polls 3. We’d like to create a SAC member profile on the webpage. This profile would include a brief summary

of who the SAC member is, the number of years at Brown, and any other interesting info. on that particular SAC member.

4. Continued work on revamping website with new logo; new pictures; new pages 5. And also continued improvement of SAC’s exposure and promotion of the committee itself with the

idea that we want to recruit the most diverse group of staff to our committee so we need to get out there and let people know who we are and what we are all about!

Lori Nascimento -‐ Events In 2008 the Events subcommittee created the Best of Brown Series. The mission of this series to host events that will inform, entertain and engage the University community by highlighting all things uniquely Brown.

1. On a chilly night last January, the LADD Observatory was filled to capacity with approx. 150 staff and their families to view “The Crescent Moon is Closest to Venus

2. SAC also held a consecutive coat drive at this event and collected over 50 winter coats to benefit AIDS Care Ocean State.

3. This past spring 34 staff members experienced Brown’s collection of beautiful and unusual plants at The Plant Environmental Center. Everyone who participated received a geranium plant as a give at the end of the tour. This Best of Brown event was offered during the afternoon to allow staff to attend during their lunch

4. Brown Staff toured the Anne S K Brown Military Collection at the John Hay Library with its 6,000 miniature toy soldiers; the Hoffman Napoleon Collection, which includes the death mask of the emperor; and the McLellan Lincoln Collection devoted to the 16th President of the United States.

5. In December, we will be pleased to introduce staff members to the Brown/NASA Northeast Planetary Data Center is operated as cooperative effort by NASA's Planetary Geology and Geophysics Program and Brown University.

Another way that SAC serves the University community is by volunteering for various campus events throughout the year. The Events subcommittee coordinates sign-‐up s for event like:

• Staff Development Day – Where we do a collection for the RI Food Bank and coordinate Staff Surveys • The Faculty, Staff and Family Football Game – combined effort with FEC and MFEC where we do

another food drive, as well as staff an information table, and hand out event tickets. • The Benefits and Wellness Fair – Where we staff the Information/greeting table and track

participation. SAC members also volunteer to help out with the procession during Commencement. Doreen Burgers

1. SAC Advertized opportunities for staff to participate on ten different committees. 2. Contacted staff representatives at the end of their committee term to discuss their experience. All said

it was a positive experience and that they would serve again if the opportunity arose. 3. One of the things we did was go back and ask how they like serving on these committees, they would

all do it again. We invited 6 people to our meeting to speak about the committees that they served on. President Simmons commented, the committees that are not staff and benefits related committees, for staff to be in the conversation is extremely important BUCC for example, the way you demonstrate leadership is that, for example, if you are in the French Department are you going to things outside your department, you want to push people outside their comfort zone. Doreen continued that the URC and the UCC were here at the meeting both members are pleased with their ability to input. One concern is that the URC membership should be 3 years instead of 2 because of a steep learning curve. President Simmons asked who set the term? Doreen answered that the term was set by the Provost Office. President Simmons said that the only thing to consider is the limited number of people that get the experience. So should there be more staff added to the committee, you may want more people to have the experience.

4. Serve Rhode Island shares our institutional visions for promoting service in Rhode Island. We are building a relationship with them in an effort to provide some infrastructure for Brown Staff to volunteer in the local community.

5. Staff Development Day 1. Serve RI gave a seminar about the needs in RI and volunteer impacts. They also had a table

during lunch where staff could sign-‐up and ask questions

We are using Serve RI database to find and develop some of volunteer opportunities: 1. RI Free Clinic during SDD,

2. Jaycees Toys for Tots

As part of our new BROWN GIVES initiative, we Kicked-‐off SAC’s first 30 days of service campaign and involved staff in opportunities at five different non-‐profits as well as a food drive on the Brown campus.

1. School One 2. Hasbro Children’s Hospital Walk 3. Magaziner Farm 4. Franklin Farm 5. St. John Vianney Farm

Al Tente • Brown University employees rolled up their sleeves, put on work gloves and boots and in some

cases had to wear rain gear to go work in 3 of the 7 community farms spread out around Rhode Island during the “30 Days of Service.” These community farms are associated with the Rhode Island Community Food Bank and are dedicated to growing fresh vegetables for the Food Bank. The community farms are run by very small groups of volunteers and annually produce approximately 500,000 pounds of vegetables for the Food Bank.

• Brown employees were grouped with other Cumberland volunteers on this day to help “break-‐down” the garden. The “30 Days of Service” came after the growing season was over for the Vianney Farm.

• Brown employees were the only group to work at the Magaziner Farm in Bristol Rhode Island on two Saturdays in September. Brown volunteers saved the Magaziner Farm weeks of work just by our 2 volunteer Saturdays. One of our Brown volunteers has continued to help out at the Magaziner Farm and what a big help he has been to the farm and their plans to expand next year.

Therese Doyle

§ Franklin Farm is in Cumberland, there was so much to do but we finished the work. We started out getting a tour of the barn and got a history lesson about the farm. 4 people volunteered. We harvested all the crops and at the end we pulled crops out and dumped them into the compost pile, we finished all the work, it was a good feeling.

Sarah Peri § Hasbro Children’s Hospital had a walk a thon we were there handing out tee shirts and registering

walkers, directing people. We met a lot of nice people, had a lot of fun. Doreen Burgers

• There were seven volunteers at School One. SAC member Ron Dunleavy was there for a weekend of painting at School One. Ron painted a chain link fence, 3 of us stained a stockade fence, 3 others went into the darkrooms to re-‐paint them. We heard that when the kids came in they were happy to see all the work we had done.

• The final program was the Campus Food Drive which was totally staff planned. Sean DeBobes gathered 9 people to deliver brown bags. We collected enough food for 3300 meals, they did a great job.

• We met to go over goals as well as determine locations and hand out supplies • Participants assembled bags with flyers and distributed them to predetermined

locations • Collection points were set up in 45 Buildings around campus. • Participants had a point person at each location for urgent pick-‐ups or to refill supplies • Participants picked up donations and dropped at 2 major collection points (The Gate

and Josiah’s), after consolidation the Food Bank picked up 1,101 pounds of food Amy I’d like to close with a few statistics about 30 Days of Service. We did a follow-‐up survey of those who participated in the program and learned that we are on the right track.

• Thanks to the good work of our SAC hosts, an overwhelming majority of those who participated felt welcomed and informed at their sites.

• Everyone rated their experience as either good or great! • We also asked what types of volunteer work staff were interested in doing. We heard that

opportunities for environmental clean-‐up and providing administrative support for non-‐profits would also be well received. Brown Staff members and their families contributed 191 Hours of Service

We also hope that the relationships we have forged-‐-‐on Brown’s behalf-‐-‐with community organizations around Rhode Island, will be longstanding. I’d now like to introduce Joe Gagne who will be taking the reigns as SAC Chair in 2010. Joe Gagne Amy was phenomenal this year and put so much effort forward. We had a great exercise in selecting the next class we looked at applications, their grades, work experience, we selected 10 new members, we have just welcomed them on board and elected 5 alternates. Thinking about the economy and how it has had a profound effect on us all we thought we should be a presence at Brown, we need to be available, a sounding board or conduit, the only constant in life is change. How will we do this? We need to be the welcome wagon here at Brown University. We should go to the staff if they can’t come to us, we need to go to places like Davol Square, Butler Hospital, and places outside of campus. Perhaps we can form a service to go out to introduce ourselves, I am suggesting a meet and greet as well as another Town Meeting, the panel format was great, maybe we could do that after the Corporation meets. We need to continue our volunteer initiative and the Brown charities drive. I was also thinking about a community calendar, where people can post all events. I also think recognition is great, often people like to be recognized in small ways, sometimes just a simple thank you. We can bring ideas on how to boost staff morale that don’t cost much, bake sale, pot lucks within departments, how about Sundaes on Thursday. Also, it’s a brand new day we are looking to update the SAC logo, we may change the name, instead of Staff Advisory Committee (SAC) maybe something like Staff Advisors at Brown, let’s get some ideas coming. We have a lot of discoveries and challenges for the next year, it’s all about attitude. Thank you President Simmons for being here today, and thank you Karen Davis and Joe Sarno for your guidance. Amy We like to use the remainder of our time together to talk about goals/initiatives you would like to see SAC take on in the next year

President Ruth Simmons That was very comprehensive, thank you for all your hard work. Reflecting on our last meeting we have done a beautiful job incorporating the concerns about outreach, thank you very much for that. In terms of the year ahead, I think we are headed for a tough year, we have lost a lot of money and we cannot pay for some things, we have to make cuts, it’s just that simple. We are not making across the board cuts. I think that one in difficult times should not lose sight of who you are. We ask people to participate in solving the problems; the organization is quite elaborate, some would say too elaborate, we fought the impulse to make cuts immediately without much thought of the consequences. We said last year, that at the end of the Corporation meeting, that there would be no cuts until the end of the year. I am satisfied about the way we are going about this. What does this mean in February? The Corporation asked us to come back with a plan. It’s a bottom line plan, how can we pay for the things that we are doing. Here’s the crucial piece, as you point out most don’t understand the endowment, money has been given to the University it is illegal for us to use that money for something different. We are forbidden to use that money for anything it was not intended for. Most of the revenue does not give us the flexibility. Managing within those constraints is challenging, we want to preserve as many jobs as possible, we have to have classes, we have to support research, those recommendations will come to me in December and January. Then I have to tell the Corporation what we should do. The Corporation will then decide if they will accept my recommendations. Second point, you have come so far as a group, it’s time to look at the name of the group. Our task is to work with the University, look at the name. The second thing is to get off this campus, much of what we do is internal, if you have the ability to link up with other organizations on other campuses to see what they are doing, that might keep the ideas going, I would be happy to fund that. Students and faculty are always at other universities. I think you should have the same opportunities, have a high level conference with staff at other locations. It takes a lot of work to do that but it would be beneficial. The final piece I would add, something more regular in the current environment, the opportunity for misinformation is more prevalent, I value the input. Hanna Rodriguez-‐Farrar Regarding staff recognition, while I was at Harvard Business School, at Thanksgiving the Dean would give thank you notes to staff to hand out to other staff members. I thought it was simple but very effective. It is something that I still think about, given the context, I feel it could make a big difference. President Ruth Simmons Are there any questions? Amy asked if President Simmons had some ideas for reaching out to academic departments. President Simmons answered that she has principles when it comes to communication, the first is that one should refrain from communicating constantly, people become immune. The website is excellent, but the more you send out the less impact you tend to have. The second, communications that are overly long, dense and complex are not effective, she edits down to shorter versions if she can. In terms of the departments, one of the basic messages you want people to know a lot of people feel that a lot of communication is not necessarily good communication. You want people to know you are here, and where they can find you. Sometimes it is more important to send an embrace, which can be the most meaningful thing in this environment, how you are relating to things that are happening. Communicating that as an organization, that you are involved, invested, is a very good thing to do. Be active in feeling, in touching people. I was standing outside Hillel one night, when I saw students running toward me, and I was somewhat alarmed, they got up to me and they said we need a hug, they lined up, I hugged them and they took off, I think a lot just about that. It’s not just Brown, it’s everyone. This is in a sense a haven, by and large we are in a humane environment where people respect each other, it is a safe and extraordinary community. I get to

travel and hear this all the time. I was at a Brown event in New York and generally I know what I will hear, anxiety about these times. I talk with emotion, that we are privileged that we are attached to something that will last a long time. We can think about the privilege, about being associated with something that will last. Even when everything is chaotic, we know that Brown will be here. I received a call from donor, and she said that the reason she was gifting was that she wanted to do something that was lasting, she knew that whatever happens the University will keep going. Give people a sense that they are part of something like that. Most people don’t have a chance to experience something like that. Hopefully things get better, I value how SAC asks questions. Go out to other places to see what others are doing. We take our time with our decisions, trying to preserve the core of the University going forward. Thank you for everything you are doing we will try to do this again before February. Group photos were taken. Meeting adjourned 1:39pm

President’s Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes November 17, 2009

11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. 121 South Main Street

Present: Karen Asquith, Patricia Davey, Karen Davis, Sean DeBobes, Therese Doyle-‐Parillo, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne, Deborah Healey, Jason Masi, Beth Murphy, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joe Sarno, Kristen Soule, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter,

Absent: Doreen Burgers, Roberta Swanson, Nancy Magers, Lori Nascimento,Karen Leonard, Jennifer Whitworth

Amy Subcommittees should meet first today. SPS please discuss Toys for Tots and instituting a quarterly event. O and C, please discuss logo and identity items. Then we will reconvene. Therese-‐Toys for Tots I received an email from the Jaycees and our time on the 29th has been canceled. Perhaps we should take the link out of morning mail and take it off of the website. They are giving us Saturday the 21 and the 28th. So far 10 people have signed up for the 29th so we will have to give people who signed up alternate dates. Amy suggested that we change the date on the website and advertise the event for the 28th. Therese also said that children 13 years of age and above are welcomed to attend the event. On the Jaycees website there are a lot of opportunities under the “opportunities” link, at least 6 or 7 things people can get involved with. There is nothing for December right now that we can do as a group. On December 9th Best of Brown will sponsor an event at the Planetary Data Center. Lori will create the information that goes out in the morning mail; a sign-‐up sheet will be placed on the wiki. Along with this event, we will be having a hat, mitten and scarf drive, people who staff this should wear a tag or their pins. O and C Sara: There has been some discussion about changing SAC’s identity, this year changing the actual name may do more harm than good. There was a suggestion to change the name from Staff Advisory Committee to Staff Advisory Council.

(A sheet with sample logos was passed around for members to look at). We need to think about this as external and well as internal. We liked the “Brown Gives” logo, we also liked the sample with SAC on it, do we have an option on the brown and red color? We were also thinking about having business cards printed. If a SAC member attends a committee meeting we could leave a business card next to the agenda, and they will know a member of SAC is present. One option might be to stamp our SAC logo on the back of a business card that we all ready have and use that. The new SAC logo should say “Brown University” on it somewhere as well as “President’s Staff Advisory Committee” use of the word “President’s” carries a lot of clout. Karen Davis mentioned that the sky line logo was wonderful, and was wondering if there is a variation on that? Someone suggested that perhaps the Van Winkle gates can be incorporated into our logo. It was mentioned that other logos don’t have Brown identifiers, but if we feel strongly about that, we need to choose what the most important images are, we can’t have it all! Sean suggested that we bring “Brown” into the logo, because we

serve Brown. Amy likes the cityscape, it was used as an image for the community, however, it does implicate urban. Amy will ask for variations of brown and red logo. “President’s” needs to stay, established 199-‐ needs to leave, Amy will take the next step, when ready, Amy will send a PDF or put it on wiki. Staff Concerns Sean De Bobes said that some of staff members were put off that Brown has asked for donations especially in light of the fact that we didn’t get a raise. Some staff members also asked him about the cost to Brown associated with launching the Health Promotion and Wellness program. Sean explained to staff that it is voluntary. A question was raised about the cost to send out mailers? If you send out a mailer during a fund raising event people are more apt to donate. Joe Gagne mentioned that Brown is the largest company in the state of Rhode Island that gives to the United Way and The Fund for Community Progress. We have streamlined some things, but these organizations count on our contributions. Karen Davis said that the world needs us, the community needs us. Beth asked for feedback about charity drive, in particular, what the participation rate was last year. The Committee was astounded as to how low the donation rate was last year. Karen Davis said we had 345 donors, last year and raised $180,000.00. In addition, the campaign added the Bookstore Round Up and the Change for Change jars around campus. Karen mentioned that the Administrative Leadership meeting featured a representative from the United Way and someone from the Fund for Community Progress to garner support for this year’s compaign. The Fund in particular said that if you can’t give money, volunteer opportunities exist. As far as the Health Promotion program goes, it means we are doing things that are making you healthier, its part of a longer term strategy, to get people to take care of themselves. It is voluntary, and entirely up to the individual to participate. Blue Cross paid for the cards, not Brown. Advisors Report A question was asked about the early retirement package, people are going to take it and what will happen with these vacant positions? Customer service may take a hit. Karen Davis answered that packages went out to 264 people who were eligible. A lot of suggestions to the Cost-‐Savings website suggested offering an early retirement package. The more we thought about it, the more we realized that people want this, and it’s voluntary. We played around with the criteria, Since Brown doesn’t have a post retirement health plan, we tried to think about the eligible work force, and came up with a year’s salary, plus $15,000.00 to help bridge the move to retirement. People have 45 days to make the decision to sign the contract before Wednesday, December 23rd and have 7 days to change their mind. By end of the 2nd week in January we will know who is going and who is staying. It is up to the employee to choose which day they want leave – April 15th or June 30th 2010. We did this to save money and create more vacancies to be used in reorganization. By doing this we are hoping not to have to eliminate as many filled positions that we would otherwise have to. Some positions will need to be refilled, and the Vacancy Review Committee will still look at this. We think we will not have to fill 70-‐80 % of the positions. Managers, will need to begin to think about what to do long term as well as short term, maybe some hiring temporary help to bridge the gap The Organizational Review Committee has just begun to think of the need to plan now for implementation. For a short time, we could redistribute work to people who are here. It will play out differently in different

places, we will all have to work through this. The Org Review teams have been asked to submit recommendations, some teams are ahead, they should all be ready by late November early December then they will present to the Organizational Review Committee. Many teams have met and will share their thoughts with other groups. The Committee has met with academic department teams, they’ve talked with people from Human Resources about what works and what doesn’t work and how can we do this better. The problem is, not everything results in savings. We are struggling with a better way to organize ourselves. Speaking about Open Enrollment, each staff who has benefits needs to enroll on-‐line and we were worried that people wouldn’t do it. No more than 100 people as of Friday at 5:00 were still outstanding. In case anyone knows anyone who has missed it, have them call the benefits office. Amy During our meeting with President Simmons, she talked about SAC having the opportunity to get together with staff at other universities, giving us a chance to see how other SAC’s work. President Simmons said she would fund it. It would be beneficial to have a joint meeting, Ohio State has a “SAC”, Smith has one, Penn State and so does Harvard. Joe G. is interested in seeing what has been done locally. Karen Davis, is on board with the idea, to share ideas about issues that we are all worried about. Having staff talk about it would be great. Karen Davis feels that our presentation for President Simmons was excellent, the slides were great, she hopes everyone felt the same way. When you see it all in one place it was really good. Ron enjoyed the humanity and the jokes -‐ it’s great to be professional yet humorous. Amy wanted the slides to reflect what the meetings have done, if we don’t add fun, it would be boring. The power point is on the website. President Simmons had a lot fewer suggestions for us to work on which was a good sign that we delivered! We are on the right track. We will call and try to get on her calendar for February. I will talk to Hanna about what she may like us to focus on, maybe send her a report. Our last meeting will be December 8th in McKinney at Watson. Don’t forget to bring white elephant gifts! Meeting adjourned at 1:30 p.m

President’s Staff Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes December 8, 2009

11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. McKinney Conference Room, Watson Institute

Present: Karen Asquith, Patricia Davey, Ronald Dunleavy, Joe Gagne, Karen Leonard, Nancy Magers, Jason Masi, Beth Murphy, Lori Nascimento, Michelle Nuey, Marla Pearsall, Sarah Peri, Joe Sarno, Kristen Soule, Alfred Tente, Amy Umstadter, Jennifer Whitworth

Absent: Doreen Burgers, Karen Davis, Therese Doyle-‐Parillo, Roberta Swanson

Amy

Today’s agenda includes feedback on Toys for Tots, Best of Brown event at the Planetary Data Center and the Beyond the Bottle Project and of course our annual white elephant gift exchange! First, Deb, what can you tell us about the Toys for Tots event?

Deb Healy reported on Toys for Tots-‐there were7 volunteers. T Their task was to wrap boxes to be sent out and were finished within an hour. Toys for Tots has the possibility of becoming an annual event that Brown can become more involved in.

Amy asked if we had enough volunteers for the Best of Brown event at the Planetary Data Center. There were 2 volunteers so far, and more volunteers are needed for this event. Morning Mail notification announcing the event was rejected, reason given was too many emails for the same purpose.

Beyond the Bottle Project

Sean DeBobes will be attending a meeting to speak with undergraduate student Paige Kirstein who has been involved with this campaign, Sean is all ready involved with the project. Sean has been trying to convince dining services to discontinue use of bottled water for some time. Dining Services stock pile an enormous amount of water (disaster readiness) and we sell the water to keep stock rotated. The Tetra pack is becoming popular right now, which is similar to SIPS which is cardboard packaging that is lined. Not a lot of schools are thinking about this; we may be the forerunners in this effort. President Simmons has asked that bottled water not be sent to any of her events. There are water pitchers and cups and people seem fine with using them. You are welcome to email Sean your thoughts and he will compile the information.

December 15th will be our New Member Orientation, this meeting is for new members and supervisors, it’s a chance for supervisors to learn more about what we do. Once we finalize the bylaws Joe will make packets up for distribution.

Staff Concerns

Michelle Nuey has a concern about catering costs and the use of university space. The scheduling office has a hard time scheduling space. There seems to be a lack of space to hold university programs without a large cost. An event may get bumped out of a room if students need it. Andrews is usually available but feel that we should not have to pay when the room is not being used. This is an ongoing issue with extreme costs for our events, they should relax their costs a bit. Amy said that those are valid points, and if you get bumped to a space that charges a lot of money, you may be able to negotiate the cost. Sean said that things like tablecloths and napkins are ordered from an outside vendor. Brown Dining does not the infrastructure right now to provide linens, so renting linens is the only option. It is very expensive, a napkin is .50. Dining Services does not make money on this, they really just passing on the cost. Amy will contact Beth

Gentry or Don, Joe Sarno will talk to Karen Davis to see if these issues will be addressed at the next Organizational Review Committee meeting. Sarah Peri, is on the ORC and said that this issue is being discussed, and suggested that sometimes clean-‐up costs can be waived.

Beth Murphy asked a question about health insurance. If there is more than one family member working at Brown, there used to be a buyout plan, but that has changed, and they didn’t have advanced notice of this change. Joe Sarno answered that this is one of the things we looked at as part of the Review Committee. Joe S. doesn’t know how and when this was communicated, he will look into whether there was advanced notice. If communication was an issue that is an important concern.

Kristen Soul-‐ regarding the holiday bazaar. Why did the university do away with that event? Staff members participating as vendors were essentially being paid by university and making money selling items at the bazaar. There seems to be conflicting messages provided to Staff and Faculty. Staff were told it was a cost savings measure, but Faculty believe it was a bout liability. People seem upset about it. Joe Gagne said that they are going to keep Staff Development Day and Bear Day which are two very unique Brown events that staff really value. He suggested to look at things that you can do within your own department to do, something that doesn’t cost a lot of money and builds morale like potluck lunch or breakfast gatherings Bylaws and Name Change

Amy said that the only changes we would like to make are regarding “eligibility”. I Eligibility was confirmed at least 2 years of service and status of at least 80% time. Sean was curious about the rational behind 80%. Amy answered that time away from one’s job is a factor. The logic is that we ask people to spend a lot of time here and we feel it would not be fair to ask an employer to let someone go to the meetings if they only work 50%. We didn’t see 80% as being such a hardship for the department or the managers.

The Committee unanimously voted to adopt the proposed change to the eligibility requirements as described above.

Article 5-‐ Elections -‐about creating a nomination committee when more than 2 people are nominated for the chair position. Everyone would get an opportunity to submit questions, like we did this year. And then candidates answer the questions. The presentation worked well this year. Section A –Karen Soule-‐ the final sentence -‐the chair then notifies the nominees and invites them for a discussion, she gives nominees time (a week) then gives them a few days to decide. The chair shall notify the nominees and nominees have a week to accept nomination. Sarah-‐ after Section E, what if there is only one nominee and we don’t feel that person is an appropriate chair? Joe Sarno said that it’s hard to capture every contingency. We would get the nominating committee together and then cast a vote. If we are faced with that situation, we would then talk about it. A written clause may avoid an awkward situation. If for some reason no nominees were put forward, then the committee will reinstitute. Joe Sarno said that there needs to be some clarification on this. The Committee unanimously voted to adopt the proposed changes (as described above) to the co-‐chair selection process.

Name Changethe Committee was interested in changing the name from Staff Advisory Committee to Staff Advisory Council to reflect more of the group’s purpose. Karen Leonard sent a formal email to Catherine Pincince, Associate Secretary of the Corporation. In her email she outlined the following: {Simply looking at the dictionary definitions of the words “committee” and “council,” the latter more accurately reflects SAC’s mission and guiding principles, particularly in the realm of advising the President and senior administrators. A committee is: “a body of persons delegated to consider, investigate, take action on, or report on some matter; a self-‐constituted organization for the promotion of a common object.” A council is: “an assembly or meeting for consultation, advice, or discussion; a group elected or appointed as an advisory or legislative body; an executive body whose members are equal in power and authority.”} The name change does not change the SAC acronym which we have built as a recognizable entity at Brown over the past year.

The Committee unanimously voted to change name from the Staff Advisory Committee to the Staff Advisory Council.

We have to amend the bylaws to reflect our name change. The amended bylaws will be will go into effect in January 2010 and will be posted on the SAC website at that time.

Amy-‐ Please give a round of applause to Marla and Al who have had perfect attendance this year!!!

Awards were then given out and white elephant gift exchange began.

Meeting adjourned at 1:12

president’s staff advisory committee - brown university · absent: karen davis, lori nascimento...

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