September 2024

Faculty Assembly

September 2024

 

UCCS Faculty Representative Assembly Meeting

Friday September 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 Hagehorn, 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 May 2024 Minutes

            Moved by: Les Tekamp

            Seconded by: Melissa Benton

            Motion passes 

 

Reports of Visitors:

Jennifer Sobanet, Chancellor - Presented by Interim Provost Lynn Vidler

  • Welcome to the fall semester and the new academic year. Chancellor Sobanet sends her regrets but is currently at the Executive Session at the Regents Meeting right now. 
  • Enrollment Updates: We have determined definitively that we are coming in flat, and slightly up by less than one percent at .77%. After 5 years of enrollment declines, this is exciting news. Wanted to thank everyone. This was a huge team effort with the enrollment management team, all of the academic teams that have worked with departments to get every credit hour that we possibly could. Personally want to also thank Kathy for supporting these efforts with some extra funding. We have learned a lot and have some great plans for the future. We will continue to work with enrollment as well as work on retention. Our current retention rate is at 67% and we’re shooting for 73% retention which is what CU Denver’s retention rate is. 
    • While we did achieve a .77% increase in SCH, we did not hit the target 1.5% increase that would have triggered the merit increases for those making above $85,000. Merit will still happen for anyone making $85,000 or less. We will have to do more to reach that higher SCH goal and we can looking into that during the spring semester and to help continue your upswing in enrollment and address retention as well. 
  • Monday this week, the Chancellor hosted a strategy summit and invited chairs, directors and above. EAB came and spoke about the state of the sector (What is happening in higher education now? How is it different now than in the past? How can we leverage our unique assets?). The morning was a bit of a SWOT analysis for the campus. Would like to send gratitude to everyone who was able to join us. Chancellor plans to continue this each year. 
  • Would like to thank you for your understanding and support as she adjusts the cabinet in order to streamline and elevate the important work of the university. Referring to the division of enrollment management and the division of student affairs being combined in order to boost the continuum of service for our students through the interconnected work; creating a student journey focused on care, resilience, and belonging. Stephanie Hanenberg is the interim Vice Chancellor of this combined division and has done exceptional work bringing these groups together. This division is going to be working with the National Institute for Student Success which is based out of Georgia State University. This collaboration will help us improve our processes and practices to improve our student experience, and that is going to be funded by the CU System. 
  • Difficult decision was made to create a new position from the Chief of Staff position and the Vice Chancellor of inclusive Culture and Belonging. The idea here, of course, is to streamline the cabinet while also elevating DEI into the fabric of all of the strategic work that the campus does. That person will serve as our Senior Diversity Officer for the campus. That search will be starting very soon. I think the committee will be announced in the next few days. 
  • With these reorganizations, the Chancellor is also going to be renaming the cabinet. The new name for cabinet is the Executive Leadership Team. In the spring semester there will also be a Leadership Team that will include the Executive Leadership Team, Deans, and shared governance leaders. Deans will continue to meet with the Executive Leadership Team once a month.
  • Chancellor kindly thanks Lynn Vidler for serving as Interim Provost. 

  • Wants to thank everyone for your service. Thank you for all that you do. This body is incredibly important to the excellence and functioning of the university. 

     

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

  • Started in the position on June 3rd and has been working through the summer trying to target a lot of the projects that were ongoing. The big thing when I got in was to carry out the end of the cut plan especially related to the volunteer retirement incentive program. We had 41 individuals retire from the campus. The bast majority of those were actually from Academic Affairs (33 out of 41). All of those positions were replaced to some degree. Eight lines were eliminated and of the other replacements, many of the Tenure Track positions were replaced at assistant professor and some individual lines were replaced at the instructor level with a few being replaced at the lecturer level. The saving of this totaled about $1,000,000 which is $1M we don’t have to find from somewhere else. There were a lot of strategic decisions that needed to be made for these replacements and I’m very proud that of the lines that were replace, almost all of them were realigned strategically either by sub discipline or completely reallocated or just new positions. This allowed departments to updated their programs in the way that was needed. Want to thank all of the governance in all of the departments and all of the colleges for helping think through these decisions.
  • Been working with representatives from FA on policies. A lot of the policies were in a kind of pause and so I’ve been working with different committees to help work through some obstacles and get them moving forward again. 200-02 – Academic Year Policy and 200-015 – Faculty Assembly Policy have ben fully approved. Will be continuing to work on policies to get them moving forward. 
  • Possible College of Education & College of Public Service Merger: After discussing with people and reevaluating, I have decided to put this on hold. The important thing to note is that those colleges are not going to merge in the way that they were going to be merged doesn’t mean that there won’t be any reorg of the units in the future. As of right now, there will not be a merger of the colleges. 
  • OSPRI Vacancies: So the Office of Research and Office of Sponsored Programs has had a lot of change happening. With Nancy gone and me taking the Interim role and with Jessi Smith taking on a prestigious role at the NSF for the next year, there has been a lot happening in the office. Hillary Fouts, in addition to her role as Graduate School Dean, will be the Acting Vice Provost for Research. We have created a couple of faculty fellow positions for both Grad School and OOR to help support her in this role. Our R2 status is a huge differentiator for us and an important part of the university. This makes it very important to help support a search for a new Executive Director for the Office of Sponsored Programs and the Office of Research Integrity. The previous Executive Director, Gwen Gennaro, retired from her position over the summer and there have been some other positions that became vacant in the office. We are working hard to make sure that OSPRI is fully staffed and we are also about to embark on an analysis of that area to make sure that it’s sufficiently staffed. We want to make sure that all of our processes are function appropriately in that area. Searches are currently in progress for those positions in OSPRI.
  • Other Campus Vacancies: There are a lot of interim positions recently. In addition to me as Interim Provost, there is Stephanie Hanenberg as Interim on the Executive Leadership Team. There are also three interim Deans as well. In order to really make progress on the rest of these searches, we need to prioritize the Provost search and the Chief of Staff/Inclusive Belonging searches. The Provost search is already happening and open for applications. 
    • Questions:
      • How will Session B Classes impact our enrollment?
      • Session B classes will be counted in our spring census.

 

Kathy Kaoudis, Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance

  • Welcome back everyone. I want to start off with an update on our fiscal 25 budget. So our FY’s budget was approved at the June Board of Regents meeting and at yesterday’s Regent meeting. We provided the Regents with an update on our enrollment which has come in flat. This is fantastic news because that is what we budgeted for. We’ve been budgeting very conservatively and right now with our enrollment flat, that is a great thing. So we really appreciate everyone’s work in that area and in filling wait lists and into sections. In June, the Regents approved us for $186.4 million general fund budget and a $358.1 total current funds budget. This is an about 4% increase in our general fund budget from last year and includes a 3% tuition increase for our residential students, a 4% tuition increase for our non-resident students, a 2% merit pool for faculty and university staff making less than or equal to $85,000 a year, a 3% base increase for our classified team members along with step in range adjustments that were effective July 1st for our non-student hourly employees, our lecturers minimum wage adjustment for our student hourly employees, and full funding for new programs with base budget. The key thing to know is that our state funding and our tuition rate increases don’t cover our mandatory cost increases or service level expectations. Costs continue to increase at rates higher than projected revenues and because of this, we did take a $4 million overall budget cut in expense reductions for this fiscal year. The Chancellor was able to trim her cabinet from eight Vice Chancellors to six which really led the work in finding possible administrative efficiencies as we develop FY26 budget. 
  • We are following a really intentional and strategic process as we look at FY26 budget. Monday we had a Strategy Summit where 125 people participated. We did a group SWOT analysis and group analysis of strengths in areas of focus going forward. That was followed with a UBAC meeting on Wednesday and had a great discussion with everyone there. We will be having 3 Financial Strategy Sessions. This is similar but different from the old annual budget review process that the campus participated in for many years. These are focused on the one-time funded ongoing activities. What the recommendation is from the units for bringing those into base budget and what that timeline would look like. Those will be help on September 23rd, 27th, and October 3rd. Those will be open for anyone to attend and they will be recorded. They will be all day sessions. We will have an Executive Leadership Team and Deans retreat on November 13th and a UBAC retreat on November 18th. We are going to use the data from all of those sessions to determine what that glide path would look like and what the timeline is for bringing them into base budget as well as identifying opportunities for shared efficiencies across colleges and units and free up base budget. In the spring will work to determine what our budget will look like once we find out what our state support will be and so that process will continue through the winter months. 
  • We still have our prior police chief Dwayne McCarver on contract and he’s going to provide some ongoing assistance to our new chief. Diana Cooley will start as the new Police Chief on October 1st. We have also made an offer to an emergency manager and we hope to hear back today if they will accept and so we are well on our way to fully staffing those areas. 
  • In collaboration with the FA Sustainability Committee and the Student LEAD Green Action und, this month’s activities include the Creek Week clean up that we’ve participated in the past and we are working right now to build a better connection between sustainability and the farm. If you haven’t to the farm, please do so. You can also integrate the farm and sustainability into courses. 
  • Data & Information: Started a Data and Donuts series last spring and we restarted it this week with a data overview session. Next session will be held on October 8th from 9-10 in UC303 and it will focus on census reporting, student enrollment data, credit hours, and things like that. Bring your coffee and we will provide the donuts. 
  • Human Resources: Working on the qualification data project and the intent of that project is to make sure that the information that we have in HCM is accurate and complete. For faculty, we are trying to pull data out of the watermark system, but for staff we don’t have that resource. So we are asking staff to submit their updated resumes no later than Oct. 15th and this is really important because what we’re trying to do is make sure that HCM has all of an individual’s experience. Please make sure to be updating your resume in watermark. 
  • Accessibility: We are upgrading the crosswalk from Cragmor to the parking lot. And we are also going to be working on the crosswalk going across Austin Bluffs. We have been working with the city on this and will be doing the work ourselves to create a safe way to get across that very busy intersection. We have also added multiple evacuation chairs to campus over the summer to ensure that if our elevators go out, we have a safe way to help people who have accessibility challenges exit our building in the area of digital accessibility. OIT team has completed all the Drupal upgrades to the website so we are about 95% compliant at this point. We have a team of people who are working to finish that work. They always say that the last 10% of effort is where the greatest amount of work is.
    • Question: Are there any plans to hire a new sustainability director? 
      • So we have used that position to provide, in part, a stipend for the Interim Director of Sustainability, Michael Brubaker. What we are looking to do is increase collaboration between the farm and our sustainability effort and really restructure that position so that it’s a better collaboration between the two areas.
    • Question: When will we have an idea about savings related to voluntary retirements? 
      • As of right now, about $1 million in savings from salaries and benefits has been applied to FY25 and actually more savings from the retirements than we needed for FY25 which will roll into FY26. 
    • Question: Are there going to be trainings on how to use the evacuation chairs?
      • Police will actually come and operate those evacuation chairs and assist people. A way for people to get down the stairs if an elevator should go down. 

Reports of Officers:

Report of the President – Joel Tonyan

  • Hello everyone, I’m Joel Tonyan and I’ll be the President of FA this year. I’m a faculty member in the library and I’m really excited to lead you all this year. Before I get into my report, I do want to acknowledge the loss of one of our faculty members, Haleh Abghari in VAPA. Haleh was a long time professor in the music department and was very active. My heart goes out to everyone who knew Haleh and everyone in VAPA. She will be greatly missed. 
  • Faculty Council Updates: The Regents are continuing to review policy 1D which deals with the freedom of expression, not just for faculty, but also for students and staff as well. They are reviewing the latest revisions to this policy at the Regents meeting today so please do keep any eye out for those discussions. One of the things that they talked about in these discussions was the use of digital spaces. 
  • Resolution Accessibility: One of the ways we as a body can express our own point of view on a particular issues is through resolutions. We have passed a number of resolutions in the past and they have typically just lived in the minutes of the meets that they were passed in. I have gone in and made a resolutions page on the FA website so you can now easily see what resolutions have been passed each year and in which meetings they were passed in. Currently through 2017 and I will add more as I’m able to go through. These resolutions represent our voice as a faculty governance group so I want these to be as visible to our campus and to our community as possible.
  • Vacancies: We are looking for three faculty members to join the Faculty Council committees. We need someone for the Pay & Benefits committee, the Women’s Committee, and the Communications Committee. These are all at the Faculty Council level. College affiliation isn’t considered at this level and we are really looking for someone with the expertise and the passion for these committees. Please reach out to me if you are interested in any of these positions.
    • PRIDE is looking for a representative from the College of Public Service
    • Committee on Research is looking for a rep from Arts & Humanities
    • Grievance Committee needs a rep from College of Business & College of Public Service
    • FA Rep from LAS – We will need to have a special election for this position
  • State of the Campus: I have been asked to speak at the State of Campus Address and to talk about the innovative work that you all are doing in your classrooms. Please share those stories with me by the 17th.

 

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 Council Proposal

Representative Reports

  • No Reports

 

Unfinished Business

No unfinished business

 

New Business

  1. Open Discussion: Updating the Faculty Assembly Constitution 
    1. Timely time to look at the constitution as the CU Faculty Senate is actually updating their constitution as well. There will be a vote at each of the four campuses to approve that constitution in the near future. 
    2. This presentation covers some of the areas that I have identified that perhaps need updating. This is not everything though. I would really like to put together a task force to look for other opportunities to update the constitution. 
      1. Need to update “instructor” positions with the new “teaching professor titles”
      2. Right now the Chancellor and the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs are voting member of FA. I’m not sure if this is common practice or not but thought there might be an opportunity to revisit this. 
      3. Article 1.A – Adding Instructional, Research, and Clinical Faculty Committee Chair as an Officer for Faculty Assembly. This is something that we have been doing but is not reflected in our constitution. 
      4. Article 1.A – President & President-Elect. Look at updating to be in line with other CU faculty governance bodies. Use Chair instead. 
    3. Amendments to the Constitution may be proposed by a majority vote of the representative assembly; which means the entire faculty body. So the challenge here will be to get the vote out there for the faculty to vote one before we can adjust. We had 43% participation in the last election. We need 60% vote to accomplish this so messaging is going to be key. 
    4. I would like to propose that we create a task force of volunteers from faculty assembly that’s not just the representative assembly to evaluate the constitution and recommend updates. Then the taskforce will bring recommendations to us and FA would have a discussion and vote on those changes. Then we would need to put it on the ballot in the spring elections. I will reach out to departments to relay the importance of voting in the elections. The taskforce should be made up of different colleges and both IRC and TT faculty.
    5. Motion 1: Motion to constitute a taskforce to update the Faculty Assembly Constitution. (1:00 – 1:05 p.m.)
      1. Moved by: Joel Tonyan. 
      2. Seconded by: Laura Austin-Eurich
      3. Discussion
      4. Result: Motion passes
  2. Guest #1: Matthew Beckwith – Parking 
    1. 4 Big Changes that will be coming that will impact employees. 
    2. There is a New Parking Management System that will provide more robust options and more intuitive.
    3. Single Day Permit Flexibility
      1. There are two permit packs.
        1. 16 Day and 5 Day options with Central & Border Options
        2. You will receive an email when you have used your pack. 
      2. Discontinuing Single Day permits that are purchased by departments
    4. Perpetual Permits for Employees
      1. Permits will automatically renew every month unless returned.
        1. If you want to cancel your auto payment, email parking. If done before the 10th of the month you will get a reimbursement
      2. Payroll deduction or recurring credit card charges will be done monthly
      3. Option is available to set an expiration date
    5. New Expanded Discount for Employees
      1. 20% discount for all permits for employees making under $85,000
    6. The free lot are free to employees and students but there is no free parking for visitors to campus. There is also an issue in lot 540 with people parking in non-designated parking spots along the back. There is plenty of parking in front of the Ent Center. We are working on signage so that will stop. 

    7. Parking is 100% self funded and cannot accept any other form of funding. We do not get general funds which is why we must charge for parking on campus. We are still paying off the two parking garages which is generally about $1.8 million a year and there are lots that need repaired. 

       

  3. Guest #2: Stephanie Hanenberg – Enrollment Management & Student Affairs 
    1. Hello everyone. I am the interim Vice chancellor for the two new merged divisions of Enrollment Management and Student Affairs. Good things are happening in the area. We did a visioning project in the spring with student affairs. With budget cuts, we looked at how we provide for our critical functions. What areas can we cut and how do we realign better. Enrollment Management did the same thing. Focused on how we build teams. Looking at what we may or may not have the bandwidth to continue. Looking at what we are spending money on and if we have two similar resources that could go down to one. We are still going through this process.
    2. Census was yesterday at 5pm and we are coming in at .77% which is the first time in over five years that we are coming in flat and just a little bit over. Previously we have had declining enrollment. There was a large effort in getting waitlist students in classes and increasing our SCH. Kudo to all of you who helped make that happen. 
    3. Big push now to focus on how we provide the student experience even before students are here and how to get them through to graduation. We have rolled out a program called Near Peer. It is like a dating app to make a friend on campus. You list all of your interests and then you are given a list of others who share the same interests as you and then you can message them.
    4. We brought our first concert back with Waka Flocka. It was an extremely successful event and the energy was really amazing. It was great to watch our students engage. 
    5. Athletics is off to a great start. 
    6. Bringing some of the well-being things into the classroom and partnering with faculty to help our students with anxiety and other things be able to manage and help them out. 
    7. Question: So we know that retention is important but asking faculty to accept more students does contribute to faculty burnout in time. So while this might have saved us $3 million now what is the long term solution to getting students off the waitlist? Is it the expectation that we will continue to let more students into our classes? 
      1. So this was very much a solution for this year but we are hoping to add new sections and make it more manageable. The plan moving forward is Wendi is going to work with the Deans and Associate Deans to let them know your trend and what the waitlist has been. That way we are able to invest our resources to the areas that are seeing higher waitlists.
    8. Question: Last year there was a result from the National College Health Assessment that said that a third of our student have suicidal ideation. Can you talk about what is being done to address this?

      1. So we have something called an ASQ when we see students at the wellness center. There are four questions and it is broad. So when students are answering those questions it is for any time in their live have they had any suicidal ideation. It does not necessarily mean that they are having those thoughts now. With social media it is easy to believe that someone else’s life looks better and for students to feel lonely. This really needs to start earlier on in a child’s learning so that they know how to start a conversation and make connections but we can teach them useful skills to help switch mindsets. Last December we rolled out a program called Mindfulness and Positivity. We had some faculty & staff take the lead on this and bring it into their classrooms. It helped them with their own wellbeing and they wanted to share those skills to their students. 

         

  4. Guest #3: Sloan Gonzalez – Inclusive Culture & Belonging 
    1. We have sent out communication about this at the beginning of the semester if you want a full overview. The main thing that is happening is that the Chancellor has created a new position for the Executive Leadership Team which will be the Chief of Staff and Vice Chancellor of Inclusive Strategy. We are combing these previous two positions into one. The goal of this was that the Chancellor was looking at how she could bring down the size of cabinet as well as cost savings. This position will serve as our Senior Diversity Officer for the campus which is required by the CU system. Where as the Chief of Staff position was originally the chief of the Chancellor’s staff and Chancellor’s Office, this position will be the Chief of all UCCS staff. They will be looking at our strategy, our policy, and our culture. They will also be looking what we need to do to recruit and retain our faculty and our staff on this campus. This position will have a lot of support with my team and staff in the Office of Inclusive Culture and Belonging. This position, in addition to looking at the DEI lens of things, this position will also be in charge of overseeing our strategic plan. The search for this position is currently underway and will be starting, hopefully, with the new Provost at the start of the spring semester. 
      1. Question: So is this a common ask to find someone with both the DEI and the Strategic Planning aspect? Is it going to be difficult to find qualified people for this position? 
        1. So HR has done a lot of research into this and how other universities doing for this position? Even when you look at the four Senior Diversity Officers at the four CU campuses, none of them have the exact same role. So we are really looking at how this will work best for our campus. We have historically be very understaffed and not able to create change at a systematic level with how we have had this position in the past. We have had really great humans doing great work but they would all say that they have not had the resources that they needed. We believe that having this position in the Executive Leadership Team and working directly with the Chancellor will improve this. For this position, we are really going to be looking for someone who is a coalition builder and can bring together the amazing people on campus who are already working on DEI initiatives. We need someone who’s going to come in and lift the programs, initiatives, and experts that we already have. Staff Council mentioned that this position sounds like a unicorn position. We aren’t expecting to get anyone that has had this exact same position. Just like the Provost search isn’t going to find someone that has the exact experience that is listed. I am confident that we will find a great candidate. There are people on this campus that we will specifically send the position to and say that they should apply. These people exist. I think this position is going to open up a lot of doors for people who maybe didn’t see where they would fit. 
    2. The CU Social Justice Summit is happening in October. In-person registration is maxed out but you can still attend virtually. 

Motion to add 5-10 minutes to the meeting

            Moved by Joel

            Seconded by: Dylan Harris

  1. Guest #4: Mark Ferguson – Campus Planning & Facilities Management 
    1. Here to talk to walk you through the Master Plan. We have made some changes since we presented it last year. 
    2. Started this process in 2019 and we are targeting to update every 10 year. COVID happened there and we did get slowed down. With new campus leadership recently we took another look at it and adjusted for our priorities. 
    3. Skipped process and moved to goals. The four goals of the facilities plan for the next 10 years are: 
      1. Enhance Student Experience
      2. Create Primary Campus Entry
      3. Consolidate Academics
      4. Strengthen Pedestrian and Vehicular Circulation
    4. 2012 Strategic Plan anticipated enrollment to be up to 15,000 students. We have adjusted to our reality and made some big changes to that mater plan. 
    5. Consolidating College of Education: On the other side of campus you will see that we are looking to create a new facility on the West side that would move the nursing students over to that side of campus. This would leave UHAL to consolidate the rest of COE to that building.
    6. Central Campus Opportunities:
      1. Creating Welcome/Student Success Center in El Pomar: We have gotten feedback that many of staff on the first floor of El Pomar are working remote. We would still have the OIT desk but it give opportunities to look at utilizing that space more.
      2. Consolidating Non-student facing Admin to Cragmor: Opening up El Pomar gives opportunities to utilize Cragmor for non-student facing areas. This includes moving over our areas that are in UOP and be able to use that money that is used for leasing here on campus. No intention of moving the large OIT server room. 
      3. The first three are the main ones. The others are really just looking at renovating what we have and updating buildings that might really need it. 
      4. 11 & 12 are new buildings. These are last on this list depending on what we look like in the future. These are things that we do need to have on the master plan incase we are able to or need to do them. The dorm is something we need to have incase we do need to increase the number of dorms that we have. One thing to note with 12, it looks like we would be getting rid of parking for a building. In reality, the building would have parking below so that we would still have that parking option. 
    7. Alpine Valley:
      1. So one of the big feedback that we have received is that the field on top of Alpine, while cool to look at coming up Austin Bluffs, it gets really hot and isn’t a great place to do workouts because of the heat. Students have said that they would prefer to have a field on the ground that doesn’t have turf. That would make it so that we could make that top level into parking and have a new field on the other side of the parking garage. We have also gotten a lot of requests for a pickle ball court and skate park. 
  • Question: Does this take into account any culturally important sites? 
    • So anything we want to build, we need to go out and do a study before work begins. We take these one at a time. This plan is dynamic and will change as we learn more. We are tracking when a site is significant and will build up as close as we can without disturbing those areas. 
  • Question: How are we planning to fund these projects? 
    • So we are looking at alternative ways to fund as much as we can. We have been pretty successful working with state funding. We are also looking at fundraising and other things that have helped us with engineering. We are making sure to really think about the cost of maintaining these buildings and really being strategic about how we bring dollars back. 

Motion to Adjourn

Les Tekamp motioned to end the meeting; Melissa Benton seconded; passed.  

Next meeting: Friday, October 11, 2024, 12:00-2:00 pm in Hyflex Format; Dwire 103 or MS Teams