Personnel
Services Committee
Meeting August
29, 2002
Members Present: Ray Bailey, Kate
Blackwell, Jean Braden, Janet Bush, Connie Childress, Patti Hill, Joe Horobetz,
Barbara Howard, Ruth Schena, Melody Seeber, Agatha Taormina, Eric Trumbull,
Ellen Wertman, and David Williams
Members Absent: Kurk Lew, Ella Moore, Donna Principe, and Lawrence Shapira
1. Call to Order: Ray Bailey called the meeting to order at 2 p.m.
2. Approval of the minutes: The minutes were approved as distributed.
3. Chair's Report: Ray asked for our understanding and help as he deals
with a family health matter. Janet Bush
may have to take the chair from time-to-time.
4. Vice President's Report: Alison
Baker reported that the College is developing general strategies to deal with
the possibility of further budget cuts at 7%, 11% or 15% of the budget. A report on this planning must be sent to
VCCS on September 9 and from there to the Department of Planning and Budget on
September 16. The Administrative
Council will meet on this issue on September 3. President Templin is on board and fully engaged. He seeks the advice of the committee on
personnel matters tied to the cuts. He
wants to consult as broadly as possible before instituting any further
reductions. He will certainly consult
with the Senate and its leadership and will call the Reduction in Force
committee together if it looks like it will be necessary. Every member of the College community is
invited to offer ideas that could help make these reductions in ways least
injurious to the College's mission.
5. Classified Emeritus Program:
Janet Bush reported on a program to provide ID cards to Classified
Emeritus staff who do not have a College ID card. The committee endorsed this program and suggested that it be applied
to faculty emeriti as well. The
committee agreed that minor changes in processes should be delegated to the
College Card program. If necessary,
changes will be made in the employee handbooks.
6. Presidential Sabbatical Program: The presentations by sabbatical award winners at convocation were
superb. There is the possibility that
the program will be a victim of the budget cuts, but if it will continue, Ray
will put a notice in the Intercom to notify the faculty that they should begin
developing applications. The faculty
subcommittee is responsible for evaluating the program this year as
required. Ray invited the faculty
members of the committee to suggest any procedural changes they consider
appropriate. David Williams suggested
asking applicants to make a brief personal presentation to the subcommittee to
help inform the selection process. That
suggestion will be discussed by the group.
7. Salary Administration Issues:
David Williams said that in light of the budget situation, discussion of
his concerns about salary administration is not relevant. The committee agreed to move on. This issue will be discussed in the future
if appropriate.
8. Leave Reporting: A member of
the 12-month faculty asked why the College does not use the leave reporting
functionality apparently available that reports leave on the bi-weekly
paycheck. Patti Hill responded that the
CIPPS (state payroll system) process is available but is only applicable for 12
month faculty and staff. It does not
work for teaching faculty. That means
that Human Resources would need to deal with two systems, rather than the one
in-house system it currently uses. The
CIPPS data entry process is cumbersome and errors are easy to make.
Patti
admitted that Human Resources had not been regular in distributing leave
reports and that employees were not getting the information they needed to
track their leave with accuracy. She
said that efforts were underway to provide more frequent leave reporting.
The
consensus of the group was that there does not seem to be a critical need to
change the reporting system, but that the committee should pay attention to the
frequency of reporting and look for improvement.
9. Presidential Search
Process:
Ray summarized some concerns regarding the presidential search process. During
the 1998 search, many at NVCC felt that the local College Board did not
adequately consider the views of College employees while evaluating the
candidates. This year, by contrast, NVCC Board members met with the College Committees
as they interviewed the candidates and then clearly considered the views of
NVCC faculty and staff when making final recommendations to the Chancellor.
This exchange of ideas and information between the NVCC Board and NVCC faculty
and staff thus worked much more effectively this time.
However,
there was considerable dissatisfaction with the process by which applicants
were screened and then sent to NVCC for the final interviews. When the
screening committee met in Richmond, it included some NVCC Board members, but
in accordance with established VCCS procedure, it did not include any NVCC
faculty or staff. There was widespread agreement among the NVCC interview
committees that the pool of candidates sent to the College for interview
included one very strong candidate but several others who lacked the
qualifications to merit serious consideration and who were clearly inferior to
some internal candidates who were eliminated by the state-level screening
committee.
Ray
said that, in his capacity as NVCC's representative to the Chancellor's Faculty
Advisory Committee and the current CFAC chair, he will discuss the search
process with the Chancellor in order to present our concerns. The Personnel
Services Committee agreed with Ray's assessment and encouraged him to have that
discussion with the Chancellor.
10. Agenda Items for 2002-3: The Committee struck some issues from the
proposed list, mostly because of the budget situation. Some of those issues should be raised when
the College's finances permit. Remaining on the list are
Advising on personnel matters
regarding budget reductions
Expanding LWOP options
Evaluating the President's
Sabbatical Program
Recommending candidates for the
President's Sabbatical Award
Recommending candidates for
Classified Emeritus status
Retirement incentives
Orientation programs for new
administrators
Withholding option for summer
benefits
11. The meeting was adjourned at 4:20 p.m.