-: Who's new, welcome to stock council.
And it is my one speaking role to do right now
that I never, ever, ever get correct, which is funny.
So it is approving the minutes.
And so Alan sent everyone a copy of the minute
and a lot of actually, a lot of documents this past email,
but we are gonna approve the minutes.
So would someone make a motion to approve the minutes?
-: I wasn't at the meeting so I can't approve.
-: Yes, you do have to be present.
-: I'll make a motion to approve the minutes
of the last meeting.
-: Thank you.
Will anyone second the motion?
-: I'll second the motion.
-: Are there any objections to the minutes?
-: Well, any discussion?
-: Oh, it's discussion first, see?
-: Yes.
-: Is there any discussion about the minutes?
And then do we just say,
everyone raise their hand to approve them?
-: All those in favor, raise your hand.
-: Okay, if there's no discussion,
then everyone who is in favor of the minutes,
please raise your hand.
Someday I'm gonna get it right, the last meeting.
-: That's cool, okay.
-: Thank you.
-: Any opposed?
-: Is there any opposed?
(council member speaks indistinctly)
Yeah.
-: Okay, you did it. -: Great.
The minutes are approved. -: Minutes are approved.
-: Thank you.
-: Thank you, Jen.
-: Yeah.
-: Always keeping it fun, love it.
-: So next on the agenda is our public comment period.
This public comment period is specific
for non-council members to bring up business
they wish to share with the council.
We have added a council member spot
at the back of the meeting.
So I think everybody in this room is on the council.
Do we have anybody on meeting?
-: I am new.
-: You're new.
-: Hi, I'm Doug. -: Hi, Doug.
-: The new employee with SGA in the business office.
-: I'm also new, but familiarizing
with the university relations and the president.
-: You're new to UVM but not on staff council.
-: I'm new to everything.
-: Yes, but you're not on staff council.
-: What's that?
-: You're not on staff council.
-: I'm not on staff council.
-: Okay, so you would be the person
who could talk at this time.
-: All right, anybody else online?
-: It sounds pretty good.
-: So would you like to get in the ring?
-: I'm just here to hear what's going on.
-: Okay.
-: Glad you're here, thank you.
It's an opportunity that I feel we could maybe do better
with communicating because usually we just have
mostly representatives and it would be really nice
to build up other staff members.
And we'll get more to that in a little bit later.
So we'll just dive in with new representative introductions
and we have one, two, three, four, five, six new members
starting with us, so welcome.
-: Are they six?
-: All right, one, two, three, four, five, six.
(council members chattering)
-: Let's ignore the number, what's important is the people.
-: Yeah, more than the levels last year.
-: I sent you the list.
(council members chattering)
-: All right, so you're Billy, welcome Billy.
-: Thank you.
-: Anything else you'd like to tell us about
or how you got involved with staff council,
what some of your goals are with serving on the council?
-: Well, I guess first, I'm also a twin,
there was a lot of-
(council members chattering)
So I'm an identical twin, my brother lives in Virginia,
which is where I'm from.
I am really excited
to be on the community engagement council
and part of the government relations office.
This past year, I helped support
the Together Vermont Day of Community Service in Burlington.
So I'm also part of that for this coming year
and excited to find other ways to engage
with the UVM community,
but also the greater Vermont area representing UVM.
-: Fantastic.
-: That's awesome.
-: Make a connection with Liv
who does a lot of work with human resource partners for us
and is also a council member.
-: Great.
-: Cool, got your back.
All right.
Can I guess that you're married?
-: I am.
(council members laugh)
I'm married, so I have identical twin daughters,
they're sophomores.
I work in the college of nursing and health sciences
and I'm Dean Anderson's executive assistant.
This is probably going into my third year here,
first time here, obviously.
Just excited to learn more about it,
not sure of everything yet so bear with me.
But I'm excited to be here
and to see what happens in the next coming year.
-: And are you gonna be on the professional development-
-: Oh yeah, sorry, that too.
-: Okay. -: Yeah.
-: Yes, and CBB. -: And CBB too.
-: As co-chair.
-: Yes, that's, yeah.
-: Jumping right in.
(council members chattering)
All right.
-: Well, JP did a lot of great work
with the community last year, so sure.
They'll come up with lots of new initiatives
and bringing a lot of things.
-: One day.
-: One day, good, so welcome.
-: Thank you.
-: Hi Meredith, you and I email each other all the time.
-: Oh, I'm sure you do.
(Jennifer laughs)
-: Never met face to face though.
-: Hello, whoever you are.
-: Yeah.
(Jennifer laughs)
-: Who do we have next going here?
Richard, would you like to go next?
-: Sure.
Hi, I'm Rich.
I'm in institutional research and assessment,
I'm the assessment coordinator.
I was involved in staff council last year
just as an at-large member, I joined CBB,
so this year I'm a rep from the provost's office
and I'm continuing on CBB.
I just had my one-year anniversary at UVM last month,
so I guess I'm about 13 months in.
-: Fantastic, that's really nice that you're joining.
That's all, thank you.
-: At my previous institution, I was a faculty member
and I was used to participating
in only about a gazillion committees.
So as a staff member, I had no committees to be part of
and I was having committee envy,
so I needed to get involved somewhat.
No, but I just really wanna learn
about everything going on at UVM and get to know people.
-: Great, thank you, great to have you.
-: Amanda? -: Hi, Amanda.
-: So I'm Amanda Duling, I'm the HR coordinator
for the Department of Residential Life, just part of DOSA.
And I haven't even reached one year yet,
I was hired last October.
And I, again, committee envy.
I work in the beautiful Robinson Hall
way on the other side of campus
and not really have much interaction outside of my office.
So with this, I really wanted to engage more
with the university,
engage more with other departments and staff.
And my life outside of my job
is very community engagement focused.
And I've had previous positions that were very training
and PD focused.
So it's nice to kind of be able to bring those in
to my experience here to benefit staff council.
-: And you're gonna be on PPD as well, yes?
-: Okay, well, getting a lot of great staff there, JP.
-: Hand it to Sawyer.
All right.
-: Hi, everyone.
-: Welcome, Sawyer.
-: My name is Sawyer Zundel.
I'm the events administrative support coordinator
with the Grossman School of Business.
I'm a very new employee here,
I actually just started the day after the eclipse in April.
But my role as events administrative support coordinator
is very cross-functional where I'm working
with all sorts of different departments
and units around campus.
And my supervisor and I just both agreed
that it would be great to just get involved in staff council
and learn about the many, many moving parts around UVM.
So I'm really excited to get involved,
and I'm gonna be a part
of the professional development committee.
-: Yes.
-: Well, good to meet you.
(council members chattering)
-: Do we have an equal distribution
among the committees going here?
What's happening?
-: It's fairly equal, yeah.
I don't think one has more than others,
but it's not necessarily PP`D.
-: So next I'd like to introduce Jonathan
with the president's office,
who joins our meetings and supports us.
So I'd like you to take a second
to introduce yourself, Jonathan, to the group.
-: Hi, everyone, welcome to all the new members.
It's Jonathan DeMoor, I'm the chief of staff
to President Garimella, work in the president's office.
Really appreciate my connection with Monika
and Jen and Alan.
And yeah, like Monika said, I join these meetings regularly.
Happy to be a part of the discussion,
mostly to stay out of your way,
but also happy to answer questions or weigh in as necessary.
But greetings to y'all.
-: Thank you.
One of the things we talked about in our year-end meeting
is how we can share some of the information
from the council further down to our constituents,
so we'll talk a little bit about that more later.
So next up,
we have a council member who serves as parliamentarian,
and that means they serve on the executive board.
The executive board is made up of the chairs
of the different committees and the parliamentarian.
I just wanna point out that
if you're interested in this role,
this has an added responsibility this year
because in the spring of this year
will be an election cycle
for the president and vice president,
and the parliamentarian serves
as the chair of the nominating committee.
So keep that in mind if you're interested.
And is there anyone
who would like to put themselves forward for that role?
We do have one member who has served in that role,
that's Lindsey Moore who has thrown her hat in the ring.
So do we have anybody online who's raising their hand?
Okay, so it looks like we're gonna go
with Lindsey Moore again.
Yay, Lindsey.
Lindsey does a very good job
so we're happy to have her back.
All right.
-: Oh, yay.
Let's see.
So as Monika just said, the executive board is comprised
of the co-chairs of all the committees,
the parliamentarian, of course, Monika and Jen,
and then two at-large members,
not to be confused with an at-large member of staff council,
which we just discussed.
But they're at-large members to the executive board,
but they come from staff council
as representatives from staff council.
Executive board meets once a month at the last,
or the second of the last Monday of every month,
something like that.
And generally speaking is the guiding body of staff council
since all the leadership gets to meet
in one place at one time
and discuss what each committee is working on
and how to suggest or maybe make cross suggestions
between committees and so forth.
So it's just another opportunity to engage
at a little bit more higher level,
if that's something that interests folks.
And this is an opportunity for actually people,
you're voting on these two people here,
it's not appointed by Monica or Jen,
it's a vote of people who are interested.
So I did send out some information
regarding additional responsibilities
if you had a chance to read that,
but does anybody have any questions
about that particular role?
If you're on the fence or even not on the fence.
Should also mention,
if you didn't catch that in the email and the materials,
if you're considering running for co-chair
of your standing committee,
you would not be able to be the at-large member
on the executive board
since the co-chairs serve on the executive board already.
So they're mutually exclusive roles.
Do we have any questions about the at-large?
-: Well, two people.
It's fun.
-: Well, what's really nice
about being on the executive committee
is that you have that representation
from each of the committees on a smaller level
where you can have those discussions
and where we approve.
Like last year, the Community Engagement Committee
took on reviewing their charge with their purpose, right?
And what are we doing?
And so that was discussed at the executive board
and approved before it went out to vote at the council.
So it's just a little more closer
to the inner workings of the council.
And if you're brand new, that's okay.
It's really good to have fresh ideas and thoughts
and some opportunity.
-: In that case, yeah.
-: Yeah, I'll also raise my name.
-: Okay, one, two, there you go.
I wanted to thank you all-
-: Katherine.
-: Katherine too, so we'll have-
-: So we have three people
who have put their hat in the ring.
That's unusual.
(council members laugh)
So I guess normally we would vote in the meeting.
I will do it, yeah, I'll do it electronically,
I'll send out a ballot for that.
And what I can do is I'll do it this week
and I'll include your bios as well,
just so people have a little bit better idea,
especially the folks that aren't here.
So I'll send that out probably tomorrow to get that voted on
in terms of those three people.
And then we'll have, okay, there we go.
-: Do we have a conflict of interest
since the committees haven't voted for their chairs
or vice chairs yet?
-: Nope. - Okay.
-: If they're interested in being co-chairs,
that's Katherine already sitting.
-: So it's a free pass.
You don't have to be a chair or co-chair,
but you get to be on the executive committee.
-: So I'll get that out tomorrow.
-: Great, thank you for putting your hat in the ring.
Okay, the second item that's for me on the agenda,
number six, is the Professional Development Fund Committee.
And again, just to review the materials
that were sent out in the packets,
the Staff Council Professional Development Fund
is a fund where non-represented staff can apply
for funding to professional development.
Just kind of went around in a circle there.
Up to $500 to help fund professional development.
It's done on a quarterly basis.
So therefore that particular committee meets
on a quarterly basis only,
generally for maybe an hour at the most,
unless we've got a whole bunch of applications,
but it usually doesn't run for much more than an hour.
You review the applications,
determine their relevance and their applicability.
There's a rubric and a scoring mechanism already in place
so it's pretty objective and not too subjective
for the most part.
And then you'll vote on which ones you wanna approve.
I send out the email to the people,
say you're approved, good for you.
And then we start the whole process over again.
Jen Main, the Vice President of Staff Council
serves as the chair,
and she's automatically on that committee.
It does not take the place of a standing committee.
So you're already on community engagement
or PPD or CBB or whatever you're already on.
This would be something in addition, as I said,
just four times a year, so about one hour,
and then maybe an hour's worth of prep work
to grade the applications.
We do need to have a minimum number on the committee,
just like any committee for it to be viable,
so it needs six total members.
If anybody's interested now
and you'd like to raise your hand
or just email me by the end of the week.
-: Do we have anybody returning on that committee?
-: Well, it repopulates every year.
-: It repopulates every year, okay.
-: Yes, it's not that type of thing.
-: And I just wanna take a minute
to clarify for anybody on the council
that here at UVM we have Staff United
is representing most of the staff.
There are close to, or just a little bit over 600 staff
that are not represented by the union,
and we have the committee here on the council
that does represent them.
And these funds are for those individuals,
for members of Staff United or who are represented.
The professional development funds come from the union.
So I just wanna make that clear
so that you can also bring that back to your departments
and your divisions.
And if you know of people
who are seeking professional development opportunities,
you can have better clarity
on who do they go to for those funds.
-: So Nicole, I saw your hand up.
Was that to be on the committee or did you have a question?
-: Oh, I think she wanted to volunteer.
-: Yeah.
(council members laugh)
-: I did.
I did, I just wanna be on the committee again next year.
-: Okay, great.
-: I'll rejoin.
-: Maureen, okay.
-: I'll join.
-: Ooh, who was that?
-: Melissa.
-: Melissa, great.
Anybody else that I can-
Cindy: Alan, this is Cindy Lee, I'll join as well.
-: Cindy, great.
Thank you, Cindy.
Need one more.
-: It really is a light lift, Alan.
-: Do you need to give money away?
-: Yeah, it's great to.
-: It's always great to give money away.
Okay, that meets our minimum.
That doesn't mean to say that anybody else interested,
you can't put your name on your ring.
There's no limit on the number of people,
I just need to have a minimum of six.
So if you have any other questions or concerns
or comments about serving on that one,
shoot me an email, connect me in Teams.
I think we've got nine or 10 applications I think right now
for the first quarter of this year.
Application period is already closed,
so there'll be about nine or 10 applications to review.
It was a really reasonable number.
-: All right, next up is the officer's update.
So I mentioned a little bit earlier in the meeting
how we're looking to do better with sharing the information.
As a governing body, we have the privilege
of meeting with senior administration on a regular basis.
This means we get to share our concerns,
our pearls of wisdom.
And I think that Jen will support me in saying
that we have worked hard to foster these relationships
and build upon the relationships
that were worked so hard to be created in the past
in a time when there's been a lot of change
at the university,
and specifically we have the development of the HR partners.
And we really leaned into this past spring
when we had different activities happening on campus
that some people were really unsure of,
like, how do I respond to this as a department leader
or as a staff person?
And so we were able to reach out to the HR partners and say,
no, we feel like we could use some guidance
or that people are unsure of what to do.
And we were successful in getting some framework around that
that helped people,
and we had a lot of people attend the webinars
that were held.
So I would just encourage everyone
to really take the time if you have a staff meeting,
find out if you can get 10 minutes on the agenda
to do staff council updates.
We get information from the president,
from the chief of staff, from the CHRO,
we built a new relationship with strategic communications.
These are all arms of the university
where we can build partnerships to get actionable items
to serve and benefit staff,
so participating in a staff meeting,
providing those updates, like sharing these updates
that we send out about what happened in these meetings.
Because I think it's really helpful for all of us
to have an understanding of not just our little world,
but our department, our college and the university.
And thinking about part of being viable and sustainable
is about, what kind of change do we need
to be here five years from now, 10 years from now,
and 15 or 100 years from now?
And how do we take that information from our areas
and share that with the president
and share that with human resources and communication?
And Jen and I are also interested
in coming to different meetings
so that we can share about staff council,
but you're welcome to do that as a member as well.
Any questions?
Although I'm just trying to give a higher overview of,
and I will say that my experience in the past year
is that senior leadership was incredibly responsive
to the suggestions and thoughts that we shared with them.
So we wanna make sure that we're doing right by the staff
that we represent in bringing those forward.
And then I just wanna touch on some details,
and if you have any questions
about anything that's written here, please feel free to ask.
One of the main efforts
that's gonna be taking place this fall
is a policy review, I guess we'll call it.
So just thinking about the different events
that are happening on campus and around the world
in our country,
how that brings about a lot of emotion in people
and a lot of action sometimes.
So one thing we wanna just make sure,
and what the president is working on specifically,
is they've reviewed the policy
to make sure they have policies in place
that are sufficient to meet these different challenges.
And then just educating everyone.
We don't all, we might look at it or are a bit familiar,
but I don't think any one of us has these memorized,
but codes of conduct, behaviors that are acceptable,
what we can and cannot do,
sometimes we just need a reminder of that.
And if there's any question,
like if you feel uncomfortable
or you have people in your department
that are uncomfortable
with the way people are interacting with you
or things being posted on your wall,
just nothing's too small to bring forward
to be like, hey, I'm just curious, is that okay?
Should we be doing that?
Should we not be doing that?
So that is something they're working on.
Do you wanna add anything to that?
Or Jen, do you wanna add to that?
-: No, I think it's perfect.
-: Any questions?
-: Is it an internal policy review across staff council,
or is it, 'cause I work in that department
and if it's helpful,
I can see if Tessa, Lucie would wanna come
and be more directly involved.
We can talk about it offline
as far as policy review as a regular kind of activity
that happens to update policies.
And then there's a sort of like,
hey, did you know this policy exists?
And here's what it means for you.
-: Yeah, I might defer to Jonathan here.
It's a global overlook of existing policy
and do we have the policy we need?
And then what kind of reminders
and refreshers do we wanna provide?
Jonathan, do you wanna add to that at all?
-: Yeah, sure.
I think that's a very good summary, Monika.
Because probably what the president charged people
with this summer was to take a look
at the policies that exist and see are there gaps?
Are there things that aren't clear?
Are there ways that things need to be articulated
or areas that need to be covered?
And without giving away the conclusion first.
The conclusion primarily was that the policies
that exist are the right ones.
They say the right things, they cover the right areas.
And that it's less a matter of,
there are a few little parts of certain policies
that need updated or need language
that just didn't exist before,
and they'll go through the policy review process
that Tessa is responsible for.
But by and large,
the conclusion is that the policies are correct.
And it's the understanding of policies,
it's the way we communicate them,
it's how people engage with processes
that are based on the policies
that need refinement, improvement, and bottom line,
just easier access and sort of plain language explanation.
A policy has to be kind of policy language-ish,
but we need to be able to say, this is what that means.
And especially to students
who don't engage with policy directly.
I mean, it's not really,
and I don't wanna speak for all students,
but it's not their way to say like,
oh, what I'm gonna do is go look up this policy
that I know will apply to this thing
that I'm about to do, right?
It's rather, where can we guide students and our colleagues
to understand what the policies are
and how you engage with them and what the expectations are
for how one goes about the regular and irregular business
of being a college student or a university employee
within that policy framework.
So it's not that we need a new policy on this
or a new policy on that
or need to go and rewrite the whole policy
on campus events or something like that.
We need tweaks here and there
that'll go through the policy review process,
and more importantly, we need,
how do people see, understand, find the policies?
And I will say connected to policy
is university operating procedures,
which are not exactly the same as policies,
but both of those things,
we just need to collate, educate, and explain better.
-: Yeah, thanks.
So one of the things is that HR partners
has been able to hire in some key staff members
that are, I think, deeper connections for staff council.
So we might come up with a lot of the ideas
and then working with human resources,
we're able to put things, and Liv is one of the individuals
who does a tremendous amount of work with that,
focusing on retirees, employment engagement and recognition.
And this has been a topic that we've had,
I think, almost every meeting,
how do we recognize our staff in a big way
and in little ways?
It's just having that feedback,
like you're important, your work is important,
just goes a long way to make people feel happy
in the work that they're doing here.
I think we all like that little pat on the back.
And I think in a time when we have a lot of vacancies
and where people are being expected
to do more than their position description,
that's even more important to take the time and saying,
your extra efforts are appreciated.
So always interested in feedback
on how to build up those programs,
and sometimes simple little ways go a long way
and can be implemented very quickly, right?
So that being said, we are going to have,
our Common Ground Award
is gonna be awarded during Staff Appreciation Week.
And that was built out in a way
that encouraged a greater number of nominations
and was successful.
We had over 36 nominations
and this is the biggest staff award we have
from the president.
And just any feedback you have on that,
maybe your college or department
has a Staff Recognition Award that we can spotlight
or that we can piggyback off of,
or you wanna share that with somebody else
and that maybe they wanna implement it in their department.
Lots of room there.
-: Liv has her hand up.
-: Go ahead, Liv.
Liv: Hi there.
Sorry I wasn't able to make it in person today.
I just wanted to piggyback on that, Monika,
and just say that after Staff Appreciation Week in September
I'm hoping to do more of a comprehensive review
across campus of awards and recognition that exist
just to get a feel of what's out there already.
And so I'd love to work with you all
since you're embedded in your units
and probably know what awards
and recognition opportunities exist more
within your departments, units, et cetera.
So hopefully looking to start that later this fall.
Just wanted to give everyone a heads-up.
-: Thank you.
And I just wanna point you to the bottom,
the conclusion of the senior leadership meetings,
we like to give you a heads up of when the next ones are.
So we're gonna be meeting with Human Resources next week,
and then Strategic Communications.
And I really, I wanna bring stuff to this meeting
so please email me or Jen or Alan.
Anything you hear around the water cooler
that you think should be brought up or mentioned,
any and all feedback is welcome.
-: Can I just mention one other thing?
-: Absolutely. -: Okay.
Towards that end, at our next full staff council meeting,
Bettyjo, what's her last name?
-: Bouchey. -: Bouchey, thank you,
from PACE will be, she's the director of PACE,
will be at the meeting to give a brief overview
of what PACE is up to and how staff council can engage.
So we regularly have that type of leadership
coming to these meetings,
either at the executive board level
or at the full staff council level
to engage and talk about what they're doing across campus
and what staff council can do to support that.
-: And if you have individuals,
people that you would like to have come to the meetings
to speak about their work,
please share your suggestions with us.
I don't think we have too many people scheduled
for the upcoming year.
-: Nope, not yet.
-: Oh, okay.
Open slate.
And then communications is a big one.
This is a new relationship, and we just have a world
in which there's so many communication tools.
Sometimes it seems like,
which one do you pay attention to for this day?
I have three teams accounts, UVM, LCOM and the hospital.
And can I have all those windows open at the same time?
Even if you're instant messaging me.
And I think one of the things we've realized
in the past year is that the intention can be good,
but then the execution falls short.
And so if we can provide feedback on,
thanks for trying or like the cat got let out of the bag
before you were able to execute
your carefully planned communication strategy.
And then there's also the reality of what works, right?
I mean, something may look great on paper,
like, oh, we provide this information in this format,
but in reality, nobody goes there to look at that,
so then that makes it useless in a way.
So I think this is a really key area,
we're getting very specific feedback
from everybody across campus about like,
what are you reading?
What do you have time to read?
What do you have open?
The College of Medicine don't use a lot of Teams,
but I'm starting to in interactions across campus.
And then I found out when I used my hospital account,
I would get my chair saying,
Monika, are you gonna let us in the meeting?
And I'm like, I didn't even know I had that.
You have to turn things off and on.
So just the tools of communication,
the expectations on how they get used
and our expectations from the university,
what do we want them to be sharing with us?
And I think there's still a lot of feelings across campus
about how the logo information was shared and why, right?
So again, inviting people and sharing that message
and what is the purpose?
And so I think we're gonna hear more about our planet
and the new kind of vision, mission in the coming year.
I think it's important because we interface
with other staff, we interface with students,
and we wanna be clear on what we're all about, right?
'Cause we're in the point of contact on that.
Any questions on that?
I don't know what to do while we're talking.
Getting a dry mouth.
All right.
And I think we touched on the communications.
This will probably be a much shorter meeting
since we don't have a guest speaker today.
-: Or report outs.
-: Or report outs, yeah, thanks.
So what I would like to ask is for each of you
to think about,
what are some new ways
that we can communicate with our constituents?
Share with us ways that work.
This feels like something we bring up
but we haven't really had any traction on moving forward.
And I would like to see some real change in that area
for the next year, mostly because I feel like
it's been an incredible privilege
to interact with senior administration.
And I feel like I don't want that information
just to be reported out here
and that's kind of where it ends, right?
This is great information for everybody to hear.
And maybe that's something we can develop
with the communications team too on how we can better share
some of those staff council updates and things.
So put your thinking hats on,
but let us know.
And maybe for those of you who know
what your staff meeting schedule is,
maybe you could get that information to Alan
in the next week or two.
And if you don't have a staff meeting,
maybe we can create one just to talk about staff council.
We do have open positions,
and we are just able to do more with those positions filled.
So do you wanna spotlight some of those openings for us?
I think they're on the website.
-: Are you asking me?
-: Yeah. -: Oh.
-: I'm putting you on the spot.
It's a spotlight, it's an opening.
-: Yeah, no.
-: LCOM has.
-: LCOM always has some because-
-: Yeah.
And representation is based on the size.
So there's some formula to that.
-: So LCOM, DOSA,
Division of Finance and Administration, Research.
I wanna say it's either CALS or CAS.
I can't remember which one, it's one of those, CAT.
(council members laugh)
-: C-A dot, dot, dot.
-: What else?
Did I say Extension?
Extension just got, they grew,
so it actually has a new open seat.
So in addition to Corinne,
there's now a second seat in extension that opened up
'cause of the number of staff that was hired there.
That's off the top of my head.
But yeah, if you look at our website
and the representative page where all you are listed,
and just click on the different areas,
you'll see where there's open seats.
There's about 10 or 12 open seats right now,
which has been pretty consistent since COVID.
Up until COVID, we were full.
And then that threw a monkey wrench
into a lot of people's operations, including staff council.
So we'd like to get that back up and running a little bit.
And as we were discussing a little bit earlier
in the meeting,
if you're interested in being on staff council,
there's no open seat,
where you don't wanna be a representative at-large,
there's no limitation on the number of at-large folks
that we can have.
-: But at-large members can't be a chair, co-chair position?
-: That's correct, they cannot be in leadership.
Although, oddly enough,
you could be vice president of staff council.
(council members laugh)
That's how the bylaws work.
You can't be president, but you can be a vice president.
-: So I think there's just opportunities
for a little bit of involvement or more involvement.
And if you wanna dip your toe in the pool,
or you have somebody who thinks it sounds like a great idea,
but, oh, I don't wanna be overtaxed,
I've got a lot going on in my job,
I think we have space for those who want
just to do a little bit.
I don't want people to think that it's a huge time,
it doesn't have to be.
Any questions or thoughts?
We do have some time.
I'm happy to give you back
a good chunk of your day here, too.
I know we've got a lot of things ramping up
with the students coming back,
starting to feel busy again, right?
And certainly, if you have any questions
or wanna meet offline, contact me directly,
sure, happy to meet with you.
-: Monika, I just wanna add that,
just to go back to thinking about ways
that we communicate with our constituents.
And I think it's important for everyone
to volunteer either what they do,
what they would like to do.
For example, I will take snippets out of Staffline
and I'll Teams our staff,
or I'll send a whole email out to the staff
with various information from Wellness,
from the Wellness newsletter and from Staffline,
just that's how I keep my constituents engaged.
So I think Monika and I are just really interested
in learning how you either plan to
or how you already do keep your constituents engaged
and informed.
-: Does Staffline not go out to all staff?
It sounds like it does. -: It does.
-: So it seems repetitive when we resend it.
-: I don't know.
I wonder if it depends on the source that it's coming from.
-: Well, it-
-: I know, I know, exactly, but if it's coming from Staffline
or somebody that they know,
it might have a different response.
Do you have data of click-throughs or open?
-: Nope.
-: And that's such a good point, right?
Because you're getting it in your inbox,
are you actually going in and reading it?
And how deep are you going?
And I think- -: It's in the other box.
-: Yeah, it goes in the other box.
-: It's in the other box.
-: And sometimes I think if we're the representative
and we know there's all this stuff in Staffline
but there's two really standout items,
sharing that when you're talking with your colleagues,
or as Jen mentioned, throwing it in a Teams,
if you have a Teams group and just be like,
hey, guess what?
Blah, blah, blah.
And I think in general,
this idea of pushing information to people
is hitting home better than,
this is out here, you go do more with it, right?
'Cause people just aren't, right?
And there's no other way to put it.
It's just really time-consuming to do all of that.
-: I'd like more of the activity-based things.
I haven't done it recently 'cause it's been the summer,
but when I first started and there were things I would say,
I'm going to this and it's fun,
and here are the other people that are going.
I'm kind of the social bully of our department,
so I'll get a couple people that I know
who would be interested to go
and try to get engagement to the team that way,
and then they kind of learn more about staff council
from doing that activity.
When I first got here a year ago,
I'm just someone that always reads all of the emails,
so I was like, oh, staff council, that sounds fun.
And yes, my peers that are in the department were like,
I've never read that email, what are you doing?
And other people were like, well, there's fun stuff.
So I do think you're right.
I think the person that it's coming from
makes a big difference, and if you filter out the fun stuff
and start people with that,
then the interesting, helpful things
can be more approachable.
-: And Staff Appreciation Week
is certainly gonna be coming up.
That's a great way, like,
hey, let's go to the barbecue together.
And I think they've really been building it out
to have more events on different days,
like, oh, go get a smoothie, get a creamy.
There are some departments
that can't take the time to do those things,
so can we bring something back for you?
We're trying to make sure that with the luncheon
that for entire departments that cannot leave,
that we're bringing lunch to them, right?
'Cause we don't wanna have those barriers
preventing people from feeling appreciated.
So there's a lot of little details.
Go ahead, Maureen.
-: I was just walking the walk,
there's so much work done on the intranet, the myUVM.
-: Yes.
-: And I really haven't looked at it,
and then I just looked at it during this meeting,
and I was like, oh, where's this stuff?
Where's staff council?
And so I had to take the action
to look for the staff council tag or whatever it is.
But it's really concise,
and it pulls together all the streams.
And that might be something we could communicate out
is making use of something
that people have spent a lot of time on already,
and then it's where you can go to the calendars there.
So I'm just thinking that when I get back,
I will point out to my team,
hey, don't forget, this is a resource that,
where did I see that?
Oh, you can start here
instead of looking through all your emails,
and you start on myUVM.
-: And there's been a lot of work done on the platform
to bring pieces of information together
so that you can just click in one area
that will be a feeder for others
so that you don't have to search for everything, right?
Like search on this policy.
It's like policies around this global umbrella, click here,
and it kind of provides more succinct information
in more specific locations.
-: I know there's people who worked on the myUVM page
so I just wanted to put a plug out there.
-: Absolutely.
-: No, I think that's a really, really good idea
'cause I'm looking at it too right now,
and staff council is one of my tiles,
and it really does, it just says Upcoming Events,
Funds and Awards, Latest Newsletter, Staffline and Forms,
and it's all right there.
Whatever you want, you just click on it,
and that's a great way to get people involved
with staff council, I love that idea.
-: Does staff council have an Instagram page?
-: Yeah.
-: We have Instagram, X, and Facebook.
The Instagram page is sort of kept up to date.
Twitter and Facebook, not so much.
Part of that is because staff council used to do
a twice every other year survey to everyone,
finding out all kinds of different things
about what you think of staff council,
how do you like to be communicated.
The last one that we did, which was 2020 or 2021,
showed that social media was the least used method
that staff received information or looked for information.
So we really backed off on spending any kind of time
on social media, except for Instagram,
mostly because I could figure out how to use Instagram
and I couldn't figure out how to use the other ones
'cause I don't have any social media of my own.
But yeah, so we do have that.
We had something else, but I don't remember what it was.
-: I think it's also maybe an area
we wanna look at revisiting, right?
Just if there's somebody who has interest and enjoys that,
and we can partner up with what to do,
'cause it can be a very catchy, fun way to get engagement.
(council members laugh)
We're just having conversations.
I mean, I could run Instagram as one of my second jobs
if we're actually looking to do that.
-: Okay.
-: I mean, I think it's a good way to do it.
I think most people are on it.
And it can be anything, it could just be free creamies
at the Davis Center on Tuesdays, or anything.
I think it needs to be revisited.
-: Okay.
-: But that's just my own two sense.
-: Excellent.
So I guess the question would be,
would it be worth trying to organize a committee,
a group of people who would be interested
in looking at what we could do with it, or what?
-: I think too many people in it, it's too much.
-: Just having one person?
-: Just one or two.
-: One or two, okay.
-: I think just 'cause too many opinions
and what would work, but that's just my view.
-: Well, what do you think about doing a trial of,
you're interested in kind of doing that?
You wanna maybe schedule some time with Alan
to look at or talk about what maybe we could do?
See?
'Cause I think the other danger with surveys
is sometimes people will give an answer
that's not really the reality,
like, no, I'm not going to social media,
but social media pops up.
So, it's that pop-up, right?
-: Right, like I don't want information from Instagram,
but is that where I get most of my information publicly?
-: Yes.
(council members laugh)
-: Right, well, this is exciting.
I think it's worth exploring
and putting some stuff out there and we can,
I guess I'd like to think about making note
of some of the events that are coming up
with the freebies, right?
That's always good.
Also thinking about the golf week.
Are we still signing people up for that?
That's over?
Was that the fair?
-: Fair's all done.
-: All of those summer events are done.
-: So connecting with the social committee
to find out what's coming down the pike,
connecting with Liv about Staff Appreciation Week,
where we can talk about,
we're gonna have a Cat Chat during that.
Do we have people signed up for that?
-: No, I don't think so.
-: Before I sent out today's Staffline we were at four.
-: Yay.
-: Three signed up for the first date coming out.
One said they didn't care, so I threw them into it.
I haven't looked at it since Staffline went out today.
-: So, would you envision using it as something like,
hey, we're looking for people to participate in Cat Chat,
or more like, oh, Cat Chat's happening, or both?
-: Or, oh, this is what Cat Chat is.
-: Okay.
-: I mean, you gotta start from the bare bones
especially if people, it's a new Instagram,
I think it should be all revamped,
especially with the younger, new staff people on,
that's how they're all getting their information.
Start from square one.
That's just me.
But I think you need to- -: Let's try it.
-: What is it?
And here it is, and then you can always, I don't know.
Yeah, I think, yeah, start from the beginning.
-: Okay.
-: Explain what it is, and kick off,
and do a big social media push,
and get the UVM Instagram page to repost ours,
and get all the colleges to repost it, and get more-
-: Generates the buzz. -: Yeah, thank you, yeah.
-: Okay.
-: So there's now six people that have signed up
for Cat Chat.
Three preferred Thursday,
the other three didn't have a preference.
-: So it sounds like we might wanna identify
some of the priority items to get out there to start with,
and then work from there.
I don't have a lot of experience with Instagram,
so I'm gonna defer to those that do.
-: I would say Instagram is a pretty big,
you would be spending a lot of time doing that.
-: We have resources, if we can't do that,
if we wanna push information to somebody
who's gonna do that, we have resources we can utilize.
-: Okay, cool.
-: Yeah, that would be my only hesitation is that like,
with social media,
if you're gonna do it you need to do it really thoroughly
and make sure that you're following up with comments
to make sure people don't post anything nasty,
so there is kind of like daily maintenance that's needed.
-: Okay.
-: Or stuff.
So, yeah, I think it would be worth meeting first
and discussing what our intention would be,
how often would we be posting, who would manage that,
what content would we get in order to do posts,
would we be sharing stuff we already have,
is there a database of photos,
could someone work two hours once a week
to schedule posts for the whole week?
Anyway, it's a lot of-
-: It is, it is. -: Yeah, it's a lot.
So my hesitation,
just to be cautious and not saying you shouldn't do it,
is just to be very careful about a long-term plan
for doing it, as opposed to being like,
yeah, I'll make a social media post,
and then you just have an account that has followers,
and they're like, this hasn't been posted on in four months,
and then there's this weird comment from people, and yeah.
I'm down to talk about it,
it's just worth looking at the cons
of a poorly managed social media account.
-: Yeah, and Twitter and Facebook,
nothing has been posted to either one of those
probably for two or three years.
Instagram, like I said, has been, yeah, every couple months.
-: But would you recommend Instagram above the other ones?
Like, far more relevant, so let's just-
-: Easier to make sure
you just got a picture and put some words under it
and it's good, but you feel like Twitter and Facebook
gets a lot more involved.
-: Okay, great.
Let's schedule some time to,
okay, hope we can build that up.
And if anybody's interested
in being part of that conversation, let Alan know.
No commitment, just a conversation right now.
I just would like to learn more about how we can use that
and then figure out, we do have resources,
what resources we can put behind that
'cause this is a volunteer position,
and you do have a job to do
so we wanna be respectful of that too.
Anything else?
Anybody online have anything they wanna share?
All right, I'll call-
-: Just one thing, since nobody else has anything,
you might have seen the email,
I know it was in Staffline today,
but I think separate emails have gone out.
In addition to the Staff Appreciation Week,
there is the Welcome Back Day,
which Wellness and HR is sponsoring.
It's on Tuesday the 20th from one to three o'clock.
There'll be all kinds of tabling events.
I put staff council in as one of the organizations
to table at that event.
So if you're interested in tabling at that event,
maybe a half an hour at a time
so that it's is not a huge commitment,
shoot me an email to let me know
if that's something you're interested in.
Since the social committee got rescheduled,
which is gonna be happening at the same time,
I'm actually available the whole time
from one to three o'clock.
But yeah, it's just sitting at a table, answering questions,
reaching out to people.
Perhaps maybe some tchotchkes to give away,
I don't know if we've figured that one out yet or not.
-: Do you wanna do a sign up that we can send out,
people can sign up for a time slot?
-: I can do that.
Or if you already think you wanna do it, just let me know.
-: All right, well, hopefully this gives you a lot
to think about and we'll have lots of great discussion
with our next meeting.
But you don't have to wait till the next meeting.
Email, phone call, Teams in the meantime.
And I'll call the meeting over,
officially adjourned at 1:11.
Thank you, and welcome.
-: Thanks, everyone.
-: I wanted to just say Tuesday the 20th-
Zundel: Thank you so much.
-: I can do that.
Nichole: Thank you.
(council members chattering)