Campus Master Planning Committee - Request for Participation

Hi Everyone,

The Staff Council Office asked us to share with you all an important request from Linda Seavey, Director of Campus Planning Services (CPS):

"As you are aware, the University has adopted a 2006 Campus Master Plan that provides a strong framework to guide the land use and building/landscape design decisions for future physical growth and development. As part of the campus master planning process, the University formed and charged the Campus Master Planning Committee (CMPC) to serve in an advisory role in the development of the CMP and to review all projects impacting the "land" to ensure compliance with the CMP. The CMPC representatives are chosen specifically because of their functions at the University and their role and knowledge in dealing with facilities and the infrastructure of the institution.

Staff representation is integral to the function of this committee. With the retirement of Michel St. Germain, the CMPC would like to extend an invitation to Staff Council to select a representative for membership for this important work impacting the long range vision of the institution. If possible, it would be helpful to select a Staff Council member whose professional/educational interests are in land use planning, architecture, environmental initiatives, etc. Once a representative is selected we have some "orientation" materials that will help this person understand the role of the committees and a synopsis of the major review components of the CMP."

It is not necessary to be a Council member to be appointed to this position!

Anyone interested who feels qualified can give their name to a Council member for submission to our vice-president Karla Nuissl. Please act promptly, as the committee meets in early November. Interested parties may obtain a full committee membership list by emailing Beth Wright at beth.wright@uvm.edu.
Note- For more information and contacts see: Campus Master Plan

Please consider, and thanks!

Joanne

Council Updates

Hello Again!

Our full Staff Council meeting was held on Tuesday, October 2nd, and opened with a brief address from President Vogel. He praised the work of the previous Staff Council, and hoped that the new one, in its reorganized and enlarged format, would be equally effective in increasing the value of staff contribution to the effort of organizing and projecting the voice of the University.

A brief Q & A session followed, and we made a point to thank him on behalf of all the staff for the extra time off over the winter holidays. Then we all trooped out into the sunshine to have a group photo taken. It was an informative meeting; the staff reps to the Board of Trustees committees made their reports, and all the committee chairs gave brief summaries of their group's preliminary discussions. Everyone had creative and useful ideas for the upcoming year's projects.

Here's where I ask for help! I could use some feedback: how interested would people be in a preliminary report on the Staff Council meetings? Authorized minutes don't get approved until the next scheduled meeting, and then they get posted to the website on a schedule I'm not familiar with yet. (the most recent set posted as of today are April 2007)

If people would like a summary sooner, I can write up a brief overview from my personal notes--I'm allowed to do that as long as it's understood that it isn't the final "authorized" version of the minutes. But posting that also takes up time and blog-space, so I'll wait to hear if there's any real interest in it first.

My contact information is in the right-hand column (note: e-mail is faster), or brave souls can post a public comment to this post: clicking on the post's title "Council Updates" will open a "Post a Comment" link at its foot. Put your comment in the box and choose your identity level (yourself, Other, or Anonymous). You can preview it first or just publish right away. Don't be scared off by the "Comment moderation " statement at the bottom--I enabled that to protect us from spammers, etc.

Thanks in advance for the input,

Joanne

October Gets Rolling

Hi Everyone,

Here are a few housekeeping items:

The October Staffline is now available!
In addition to its usual interesting articles, it contains the offer of an early discount for the UVM community on First Night Buttons(Half Price!) and tickets to shows at the Flynn and Memorial Auditorium. The offer only is good until October 31st, so try to check on it soon.

The committees are gradually getting their membership lists and schedules posted to the council website. Two are already up and hopefully the rest will follow soon. Short bios of members are also being posted as links under their names on the main list.

Next, as mentioned in the last post, the Communication Committee met on 9/27/2007, and discussed several items we'd like to address this year. Among them was how to modernize and increase the ways members can receive the Staffline without losing old methods that are still useful. Another was the need for a standardized and accessible location for basic information about Staff Council functions, policies, and procedures.

The planned January roll-out of the new UVM website template could provide a good timeline for us to get those updates ready at the same time, if possible. Towards that goal we also wondered if the Council office could consult the TechCATS (from the CTL), for advice on posting information to the Council website in the new template.

Overall it was a very good discussion, but I won't take up your time listing all the topics right here--I've put the Summary written by our Chair in the right-hand column with the other linked documents.

We meet again this coming Thursday, October 11th, and I'll let you know how the plans have progressed-

Have a good week,

Joanne

October Begins

Hi Everyone,

We now have the agendas for the upcoming full Staff Council Meeting set for October 2nd at noon. A copy is linked here. We're hoping in future to get them posted a week prior to the meetings, so that people with interest in the topics can arrange to attend if they wish.

The committee chairs' Preliminary Updates section of the meeting should be quite interesting, because they'll be presenting summaries of their committee's proposals for the upcoming year's work. I'm eager to hear what the other committees have planned! The Communications Committee has had its first meeting and I can outline the results of those discussions after they've been presented to the council.

Thanks again to everyone while I learn my way through all the rules and procedures. I can post some more informative updates after the meeting.

On the apple front: Terence Bradshaw from the UVM Horticultural Farm sent me a list of the estimated times the different apple varieties would be available at their Friday sales--I put the information in a chart that people can view.


Have a great week,

Joanne