AP Assembly
Minutes
UF Academic and Professional Assembly (APA), Thursday, January 25, 2007
Reitz Union, Room 282, 3:30-5:00PM
Call to Order—Diane Craig, President
Approval of Minutes from November 2006 Meeting—Approved
Guest Announcements—Donna Burdge, Associate Director for Recruitment and Staffing, Human Services—Pre-qualifying Applicants Prior To Job Interviews: Ms. Burdge spoke about GatorJobs and how to proceed with pre-qualifying candidates. Ms. Burdge suggested that each interviewer should contact one of the Recruiters at UF Human Resources to clear the finalists for each open position. This process should only take one to two hours and will save time and effort later in the interview process. Ms. Burdge highly recommended completing this step—at the front end—of the interview process to avoid problems later. Ms. Burdge also stressed that falsification on job applications is a big problem. It is critical for the applicant to answer all questions honestly. For more information see: http://www.hr.ufl.edu/recruitment/resources/default.asp Ms. Burdge noted that because of the efficiency of the new GatorJobs system, there are fewer jobs posted. Due to a high demand for information about this topic and timeliness, Ms. Burdge will be invited back to address more concerns at an APA seminar.
Program: Dr. Marc Hoit, Interim Chief Information Officer. Dr. Hoit gave us some background information about the Office of Information Technology and spoke of the reorganization and current projects. Much of this information can be found at: http://www.it.ufl.edu. The reorganization vision for Information Technology is an effort in progress. Business plans are being developed through planning and implementation teams. Updates will be posted: http://www.it.ufl.edu/ufitactionplan/. The Active Directory Project was constructed to centralize systems management. The Central Services strategy will improve networking services through better security and encompass the Help Desk, email services, web server hosting and increased collaboration. The specialty services and support needs will still be handled by the individual colleges and departments. Dr. Hoit mentioned some new incentives such as the Oracle Site License, defined business addresses for Faculty and Staff and the development of the course change submission system to one that is web-based. Please visit http://www.it.ufl.edu/projects/ for more information concerning other areas such as the Florida Lambda Rail, High Performance Computing, AT Grid, Web Page Accessibility, Video and Collaboration services, Voice over Internet Protocol and the Imaging Project.
APA President's Report—Diane Craig reported that we have a new Publicity Chair; Amy Holtzman is the Marketing Coordinator for the Leadership Development Institute, part of the Division of Continuing Education.
Alicia Turner, Management Analyst working with Mike Conlon at Bridges, is chairing the Staff Survey Committee. The committee will survey the APA membership to access our progress and to find out what areas we should address for the next year. If interested, please contact Alicia Turner at aliciatu@ufl.edu
An APA Seminar will be held on February 12 on the topic of retirement, led by Sissy Brennan, at 3:30–4:30 in Stadium 316. This is geared toward department administrators and office managers. An APA Lunch Forum geared toward individuals will be offered later this spring. Interest was expressed to have a performance management lunch forum in March.
Internal Communication Recommendations: Currently APA has no formal written document. UFCN Internal Communications Subcommittee has expressed interest in looking at some of the issues identified in the email sent out to the APA membership earlier this year. A representative of the APA Internal Communications will meet with them later this month or next month.
University Committee nominations deadline is this Friday. The APA will have a Nominations Committee, chaired by the past president Ron Lester, to review the staff nominations and then forward to the Provost’s office their recommendations. Given the tracking done by the Faculty Senate nominations committee, the recommendations are not followed in many cases. APA has not tracked the staff recommendations sent over – and this is fairly new process for us—but would be good to have the nominations committee include setting up a tracking mechanism as part of their scope. Contact Nancy Bibbo with Provost’s office if you have any questions about the University Committees.
New member Email Welcome: Diane Craig is looking at identifying the new staff that are part of the TA12 payplan so that they can be welcomed into the Academic and Professional Assembly.
Old Business - none
New Business—none
The next APA meeting will be:
Date: Thursday, February 22, 2007; 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Location: 100 Smathers Library (Library East) first floor
Speaker: Dr. Bernard Machen, President, University of Florida
Adjournment