December 2024

UCCS Faculty Representative Assembly Meeting

Friday December 13, 2024

Attendance: Joel Tonyan (President), David Havlick (President Elect), Monica Yoo (Past President), Kylie Rogalla (Secretary), Lynn Vidler, Kathy Kaodis, Laura Austin-Eurich, Melissa Benton, Dylan Harris, Susan Taylor, Cathy Simmons, Les Tekamp, Douglas Risser, Sara Hagedorn, Todd Endres, Assma Sawani, Robert Mitchell, Henriikka Weir, Markus Moeder-Chandler, Margaret Harris, Marina Eckler, Aaron Corcoran, Michelle Dorne, Gabriel Martinez Mercier, Catherine Simmons, Rosely Conz, Matthew Beckwith, Douglas Risser, Colin Mahoney, Suman Lakkakula, Zhe Li, Evan Taparata, David Weiss, Jian Ma, DAvid Moon, Birgitta de Pree, Gordon Stringer, Jennifer Zhon, Janet Giddings, Mark Ferguson, Solveig Olsen, David Anderson

Call to Order / Approval of Minutes

Motion to approve October 11 Minutes

Moved by: Les Tekamp

Seconded by: Laura Austin-Eurich

Motion passes

Reports of Visitors:

Jennifer Sobanet, Chancellor - Presented by Interim Provost Lynn Vidler

Commencement: Thank you Joel and FA for working with the Chancellor's office on finding more space on stage for faculty who would like to sit on stage. It is first come, first serve so if you would like to sit on stage, please be sure to sign up.
Board of Regents: The January retreat will include two new regents. In 2025, President Saliman will be working with all four campuses to work on the Strategic Plan. Lynn Vidler will be sitting on this group.
Vice Chancellor of Strategic Initiatives/Chief of Staff: The last finalist is on campus today. Please send your feedback on the candidates. Thank you to the search committee and the co-chairs and everyone who has been a part of the search process.
Provost Search: Thank you to everyone on the search committee and who participated in the search. We will be looking into what the search will look like after the winter break.
Budget: Thank you everyone who has been working with us on the budget. UBAC is next week and we will be reviewing the 3 scenarios for the budget. At this point, it is looking like we will be lucky to come in at a flat rate for the spring semester. Thank you for all of your work and support of our students.
New Administration: The Government Affairs Team in the System Office is providing updates on changes and expected changes coming with the new administration. Lynn attended a meeting about this topic yesterday
- Todd Saliman said that the system legal team is preparing for the expected changes. Currently the team is tracking nominees and approvals as they go through and preparing for predicted scenarios. They will be tracking the executive orders in the first weeks and providing legal analysis for the campuses. There will be weekly meetings with system leaders about these updates. They will be working to give legal analysis in a timely manner. CU has a mission and will continue that mission to our students and our researchers. We do have a responsibility to follow the law and CU will advocate for things that they may be concerned about such as anything impedes local control, research funding, Colorado and all Coloradans. Diversity officers also met from the campuses.
- Question: Is there a timeline for any significant changes?
  - Answered by Lynn: It will depend on the new administration. These meetings are currently about how we should get feedback and how you all would like to be involved. We want to work smartly to protect the mission of UCCS and the work that is being done on campus.
- Question: In terms of preparation for the new admin, what is happening at the state level to mitigate?
  - That is a great question that has come up. Todd and legal's approach has been to think on a national level. This is going to happen to everyone and it is more effective to collaborate with universities across the country and the various groups that have the capacity to work on the national level. These are constitutional issues and will require bigger solutions.
Happy Holidays! Thank you for all that you do for your students, your research, and the campus.

Lynn Vidler, Interim Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs

We are really excited that Jacqueline Rearick has now started as the Executive Director of the Office of Sponsored Programs. She is very excited to be here and we are excited to have that office fully staffed again. Thank you everyone for your patience as we got her in place.
Policy – making slow progress on moving some policies forward. Next week we will be looking at differentiated workload and SOMETHING ELSE. The grievance is on pause until we get a meeting scheduled with legal. That will come up next week or the week after.
State wide conversation of the option for a reduced credit bachelor’s degree. This would not be a BA or BS, it would be something else. It would be 90 credits. Right now there is some question about weather that is legal under Colorado statute. These conversations are happening so think about how might that look in your area.
Compensation Task Force – Did want to point out that one of the bullet point is defining the definition of teaching, research, and service. These are very different across disciplines and wan t you to keep it in mind

Kathy Kaoudis, Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance

Thank you to everyone that has participated in the budget transparency sessions. We have had great conversation about about the budget and will continue to offer these sessions.
UBAC is next week
Sustainability: Polly Knutson is the new Sustainability Director. They are really going back to what the Sustainability House was structured to be. There is a new Go Green Newsletter that you should check out. There is another volunteer day coming up for the garden. They are also continuing Michael Brubaker's work on the technical side of sustainability.
Clean Room Project: We are going to the legislator next Wednesday and presenting for our Clean Room project. This is a $14.3 million project to put a Clean Room in the Cyber building. We are looking to use $3.6 million of a combination of reserves and hopefully some grant money and will be asking the legislator for $10.7 million for the project. Our current clean room is in the Engineering building and is about 50 years old. This space combines teaching, research, and community collaborations. These founds would give us 4 modern clean rom bays and offices. This has been a project that we worked with students on and they will also be helping us present.
Cyber Security: Our cyber funding has been pulled out of the budget so we will need to go back and ask for that funding again.
Budget: We do have our data for our 3 budget scenarios that we will be looking at for this year.
- Scenario A:
  - Includes the Governor's budget that was release on Nov. 1st.
  - Tuition Increase of 2.3% for Resident; 2.4% for non-resident students
  - Does include a 2.5% merit pool
    - Required to fund that for classified employees and have put into planning that amount for all employees. We will be having that conversation with UBAC over the coming months
  - Includes a 6% increase for health, life, and dental. We know we will fund that as we don't have a choice. This will be a mandated cost
  - 9% increase in utilities this year which we must do
  - 5% increase in funding for library materials. This is important for our R2 status and providing the materials that we need.
  - Includes a $1 million adjustments pool
  - Includes $2.4 million for new programs
  - There is a decrease from the state of about .9%
  - Deficit would be between $5-$8.5 million
- Scenario B:
  - Includes a 1.2% increase in state support
  - Tuition increase of 2.7% resident and non-resident
  - Everything else included would be the same as Scenario A
  - Deficit would be between $3.2-$6 million
- Scenario C:
  - Includes a 2.2% increase of state support
  - Tuition increase of 4.5% resident and 2.7% in non-resident
  - Everything else included in Scenario A
  - Deficit would be $1.3-$4.7 million
- All Scenarios will depend on the funding for cybersecurity. These cuts will come from what we want to prioritize as a campus. Last year, the $4 million in budget cuts did go to fund $1 million for the adjustment pool and $1 million for 2% merit pool for faculty and staff making $85,000 and below. It also included an increase for lecturer pay and minimum wage adjustments for student and non-student hourly employees. It also funded 2.8 million in performas. That will be the same thing that we will need to do if these are the things continue to be our priorities.
- Basing our budget projections on flat enrollment. Thank you everyone for working on adding students from waitlists.
- Wishing you all a wonderful and well deserved holiday break.

Reports of Officers:

Report of the President – Joel Tonyan

My President's Report has been sent out to the listerv
Provost Search: An offer was made to a candidate but negotiations did not work out. Right now the Chancellor considering what next steps will be. I'm really proud of the work that the search committee did to bring our candidates to campus. I know that it can be frustrating to have a failed search with these big searches
Constitution Task Force: Norah Mazel has hit the ground running with this task force. We may have a revised constitution in February. It will be red-lined and we will vote on each individual change to the constitution. I want to thank everyone on that task force for working on this.
Dean of Engineering: Putting together a committee to look at intellectual property policy on campus. Joel will connect to see how this policy relates to the policy changes at the system level.
Pride Committee: Looking for another co-chair for the committee. If you are interested, please let me know.
Grievance Committee: Needs another co-chair for this committee. If you are interested, please let me know.

Report of the President-Elect – David Havlick

Nothing New to Report

Report of the Past-President – Monica Yoo

Nothing New to Report

Committee Reports

Committee on Educational Policy and University Standards
Committee on Personnel & Benefits
Faculty Advisory Committee on the Budget
Committee on Disability
Committee on Misconduct in Research, Scholarship & Creative Activities
Committee on Research
Educational Policy & University Standards Committee
Faculty Assembly Committee on Teaching
Faculty Assembly Grievance Committee
Faculty Assembly Women's Committee
Faculty Equity & Inclusion Committee
Instructional, Research, & Clinical Faculty Committee
Intercollegiate Athletics
PRIDE
Sustainability Committee

Representative Reports

No Reports

Unfinished Business

Any updates on the 90 credit degree?
- UCCS has added our signature against it. If passed, it will be up to us to provide that degree or not.
Any updates on the proposal to build a hotel on campus?
- No new updates on this. We have suggested to do another survey to campus about it
In regards to the Provost Search, it seems like we are regularly not getting our first choice. Are there things taht we should be doing differently moving forward? Is there a way we can learn why they decline our offer?
- There are a lot of factors that go into an executive level search. They are looking at everything. How much it costs to move, what is unique about the institution, cost of living, etc. We do try to get answers but it is completely up to the candidate whether they tell us or not. We do try to move quickly with these searches so that we can give an offer before another offer comes up.

New Business

Guest #1: Angela Bender & Andrew Archuleta - HR: Faculty Qualification

The mission of this project is to get clean data for compensation and pay analysis. It is important to have updated information to be able to determine this. We started the project by getting information from staff last semester and we are going to be launching this process for faculty next week. There is a Microsof Form that you will be sent. It is very short (7-8 questions). Questions include your time at UCCS in your current role, your previous CU roles, and your experience outside of UCCS. You will also be able to upload any certificates or anything else that you think should be included. We are not asking for you to update your CV. We don't need to know publications or presentations or anything like that. We are going to have a short CV template that you can use if you would like. We just need very basic information. We will then integrate that data into our HR system and have accurate reporting in our compensation system to do pay analysis. There are a lot of benefits of this on the HR sides of things. There will not be any immediate pay changes but it will help us get accurate information. We will not be asking for transcripts.
This is important as we look into the deep pockets of compression on campus. We want to see things in our system so that we an start working on compression on campus and it will give us a better picture for the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act.
We can come back in February to talk more about the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act and to go over compensation in more detail.
- Question: What is the priority for campus? Is it compression or pay structure?
  - The more data that we get, the more recommendations we can bring to you to discuss. We know that compressions is an issue. With this data, we will be able to make data driven recommendations on how to address this compression for faculty. We will also be able to help with retention and mechanisms we can use. We cannot address compression without the data first.
Comment: Faculty Qualification Survey name may be a bit off-putting. Some may feel that they need to justify what they are qualified. It might be good to take a look at the name of the survey to get a better response.
- We will certainly take a look at that and what we can do to make it more audience friendly.
Guest #2: Diana Cooley - UCCS Campus Policy Chief
- Emergency Management Plan: Working on making changes, plannings, table-top exercises, and trainings. We are going to be asking about what you would like those table top exercises to be for your areas so that we can help educate everyone on campus on what to do in case of emergency.
- Staffing: Currently working on filling some vacant positions so that we have enough people on campus
- Dispatch: Pushed out Prepared 911. It is another tool that everyone can access to be able to report any type of crime. It has a texting ability and also has the ability to live stream. There will be more information about consent and the new system communicated. Encourage everyone to get the Safe App and utilize it.
- We are collaborating with the CARE team and ensure that we can assist students and faculty
- I am limited on what I can talk about with the recently released report but I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
  - Question: Can anyone schedule trainings for their areas?
    - Yes. Please send a request to our office and we will work with you to provide a training. We are looking at some kind of material that you can then look back on after these trainings.
  - Question: Can you help us understand the relationship with CSPD and UCCS PD? Specifically about funding?
    - I believe that all parking money goes to UCCS PD. On campus, we are limited in our investigative capacity so when we need more resources, we work with CSPD. We will hand off larger investigations with them. We will retain our relationship with CSPD. I would like for us to have more trainings with CSPD and our officers. We have a very good relationship with CSPD. I will follow up on the funding question.
  - Question: What is the relationship with the community service officers on campus?
    - A community officer are not sworn officers but a person that helps us with patrols. We currently have one CSL that patrols and gives another set of eyes in housing and someone else who can assist. It is a cost saving and is a supplemental position to our staff. The hope is that they can assist on things that are not criminal and give officers the opportunity to address criminal instances.
  - Question: When we call 3111, will we get a CSL or an officer?
    - It will go to our dispatch and they will assess if it will be an officer or someone else based on the situation.
  - Question: Can we go over the structure that you mentioned?
    - We have different levels of officers such as sergeant. We are currently missing some of the mid-level positions and are working on hiring those positions.
  - Question: Do you have sense of how many people have the Safe App installed?
    - Not sure about how many people have downloaded the app. I will look into that and follow up. The app is free and doesn't need a log-in to use.
    - Joel: I will send out a link to download the app
Guest #3: David Weiss - UCCS Policy 200-024 Revisions
- Policy 200-024 Revisions
- This policy was last approved in 2015.
- This policy has been reviewed and approved by EPUS. They will vote on it at their next meeting and we are gathering feedback from FA.
- Biggest change is the policy on remote workers and what we do about their office space. A lot of this goes through the deans and the deans work with facilities to find the space.
- Remote/Hybrid may be assigned a suitable space. It is up to the dean or vice chancellor to decide.
- Full-time faculty and staff should have an office space
- Question: It seems that many of the offices around campus seem to be empty. Can we implement a minimum number of time that faculty must be on campus?
  - Every department has their own culture. There is nothing in this policy that says one way or another. It will be up to the departments to decide. This committee did not choose to address that.
- Comment: I would add that office spaces must have good Wifi in order to be used.
- Question: Does it explain hoteling?
  - No. It will be up to the deans and colleges on how they would like for that to work.
- Question: So can 2 full time faculty are assigned a shared space?
  - There are times when shared space can happen. It will be up to the deans and the college
- We will vote on this policy in February
- If you have specific comments, please send them to Mary Ann Cutter

Motion to Adjourn

Les Tekamp motioned to end the meeting; Evan Taparata seconded; passed.

Next meeting: Friday, February 14th, 2024, 12:00-2:00 pm in Hyflex Format; Dwire 103 or MS Teams