Members Present: Diane Doering, Co-Chair; Mary Farrell-Stieve; Laura Gallagher, Co-Chair; Peter Kleppin; Pamela O’Donnell

Guests: Heather Daniels, Jake Smith

The meeting was called to order at 11:04 a.m.

Committee Member Introductions/Election of Committee Chairs

After a round of introductions, Heather Daniels discussed the job responsibilities of the chair position, which include calling meetings, informing the Secretary of the Academic Staff’s office of meetings, leading the committee in its business, and acting as a liaison between the committee and ASEC and the Academic Staff Assembly.

There was agreement amongst the members that having co-chairs would serve the committee better than a single chair. The Secretary’s office is also available to arrange meetings as needed.

Motion to elect Diane Doering and Laura Gallagher as co-chairs of the Communications Committee (Moved. Seconded. Approved.)

Discussion of 2014-15 Academic Staff Governance Priorities

The committee felt that it could best fulfill its role in the following areas:

• Promotion of training opportunities
• HR Design
• The committee raised the question of how information will be disseminated both at the university level and within schools/colleges/departments, with the notion of focusing communication on academic staff impacts
• Heather Daniels is the HR Design audience point person for academic staff (Lindsay Lemmer from HR Design is interested in meeting with committee)
  

Other areas the committee discussed included:

• Working with the Mentoring Committee on their new charge, to help publicize available opportunities
• Working with HR on onboarding
• Possible brown bag presentations geared toward new academic staff, talking about governance and what it means to be academic staff (could be delivered by ASEC, assembly members); could also be events from CASIs
• Heather Daniels to send an outline of talking points from Heather McFadden that may help, as well as graphics on campus-wide shared governance and academic staff governance
  

Discussion of 2014-15 Committee Projects

• Meeting with Lindsay Lemmer from HR Design (also discuss serving as focus group for communication from them) (prioritized first due to immediacy of HR Design)
• Meeting with PDRC to find a way to utilize stories of other nominees for Excellence Awards, since there is only one recipient
• Developing presentation: Intro to AS Governance/Toolkit
• Supporting other standing committees
• Reaching out to CASIs on how to work together to share their concerns and their best practices
• Jake Smith will send a Doodle poll to the committee members for a regular meeting time going forward.
  

Meeting adjourned at 11:50 a.m.

Minutes submitted by Jake Smith, Deputy Secretary of the Academic Staff