Restructuring Conversation Team Minutes

11 December 2000
3:00 pm Serna Conference Room

Present: Mann, Grijalva-Arzate, Benavidez, Metcalf, Ellis, Baldwin, Vowell, Lawrence

Absent: Heiner, Woodard, Greg Rolfe

Next Meeting: Because the next meeting time for this group is before classes begin in January, we decided to meet on Monday, 29 January. We will then return to our regularly scheduled date of the second Monday of the month. We will meet from 1 to 2:30 beginning on 29 January so that a couple of people who have classes from 3 to 5:00 can attend.

The group began discussing the tasks we had outlined last meeting in an effort to unbundle what departments do. The overall observation coming from the discussion is that each task we listed can and should be unbundled further. Out of the discussion of each item below came a further break down of the task. We also realized that different departments did things differently and that some had developed procedures that others could adopt-doing some internal adoptions of best practices. Below the gist of the discussion is captured.

  1. Schedule classes and rooms: In many cases, faculty initiate both the list of classes they want to teach and when and where they want to teach. In others, departments have class rotations so faculty already know what is to be taught and the choices they have is on time and place. The secretary takes the requests and puts them into a schedule. We discussed the need to develop guidelines for determining what classes get placed in which rooms. We also need to look at room classification guidelines. Some suggestions for priorities for room assignment include being first to request it, need based on special equipment and size, and proximity to faculty offices. Dr. Gilbert has done a memo regarding room assignment. We need to determine the role of the Registrar in this.
  2. We decided that the category of Building Problems would subsume the areas of climate control, reporting repairs, and safety and security issues. We need to set up a protocol for handling repairs. We need to determine the role of the building supervisor in the above areas. Buildings need to have periodic checks for things like burned out lights and other safety issues.
  3. In terms of travel, we discussed the possibility of establishing an exclusive contract with a vendor which might be bid out to get the best rates. We discussed the possibility of centralizing the task of booking out of state travel.