Officers’ Reports

 

Read President Ronnie Houchin's written report here

Staff Council President Ronnie Houchin would like to thank the committee that put together Staff Recognition and Development Day. He personally thanks the individuals that volunteered time to make that day happen. Congratulations to those that achieved milestones and longevity awards. If you missed the keynote speaker Dr. Kevin McClure the recording is now available: https://media.uaf.edu/media/t/1_zlsvrwa6. Dr. McClure’s keynote topic is “A More Caring University: Higher Education Leadership in the Age of Low Morale and Burnout.” He addresses demoralization, burn out and how to address those issues. Self care is not enough, we need organizational responses, boundaries and guardrails. 

Congratulations on making it through a challenging year. We recently had commencement celebrations and seeing our students achieve their goals is very rewarding. The faculty are absolutely central to the educational mission but the work of the university couldn’t be done without staff. Ronnie would like to acknowledge the work all of us do to make sure students are safe and supported and able to achieve their goals. 

Thank you to Juella Sparks for all her hard work and dedication over this past year as Staff council Vice President. We appreciate all your efforts to push forward the goals of the staff council. 

Read Vice President Juella Sparks writte report here. 

Staff Council Vice President Juella Sparks announced she will be leaving UAF this summer.  She hopes we can carry forward the projects taking place at the alliance level. Juella spoke with President Pitney and she believes that alliance should be more centralized to topics that affect the system, she really supports shared governance. The challenges we face here may be shared at the other universities.

 

Chancellor White

Chancellor White would like to thank the Staff Council for organizing and running the Staff Recognition and Development Day. It was a good day to acknowledge the challenging time that we are in and the great work that is being done. Much appreciation to Ronnie, Raina and Kari for all their efforts, it is much appreciated. 

Thanks to those that participated in the flexible work forum, it was our most populated forum. As we talked through the philosophy and implementation of flexible work, you were able to see how that philosophy might work for you and work with your supervisor and unit. Our goal is flexible work to meet the needs of the unit and meet the needs of you as individuals. 

We are expecting the budget to be finalized next week. The University's budget is usually decided upon last and goes before the conference committee. The house and the senate both supported elements of the Regents budget, which was higher than the Governor's original budget. We are hopeful some of those suggested budget elements will not be vetoed by the Governor. 

Recently in Chancellor's Cabinet they discussed commencement and strategic enrollment planning. Thank you to all the staff that participated in the work of commencement planning. 

If there are thoughts about commencement or things you might do differently, or things we might improve please send them to Jeannie Phillips or Samara Taber. There is a lot of opportunity for strategic enrollment planning in staff units that are not academic delivering units. Wherever we have processes that can affect the student experience we would like to raise those concerns. Growing our enrollment can financially impact our future. For more information on the strategic enrollment planning please refer to the following website:https://uaf.edu/sep/.