Week in Review
March 9, 2014
Hi everyone,
February and March seem to be dominated by less-than-normal weeks. Of course we had a our snow days last week, and the week before was dominated by the SACS visit. As you have probably already heard, our SACS on-site committee left campus without any recommendations and with full acceptance of the QEP - something that is almost unheard of. The final action in MSU's reaccreditation is approval by the SACS Board, which was originally scheduled for December; given their incredibly positive findings, we have an option to complete the process at the SACS Board's June meeting.
Last week, our ILS replacement team attended SAALCK's second demo of a possible ILS replacement system - this one provided by OCLC. SAALCK and KYVL are still trying to figure out funding options for replacing Voyager, and keeping an eye on the legislative budget to see if they appropriate any funds towards this project per CPE's request.
Kathy forwarded notes from last week's budget forum (thanks Kathy). Dr. Miller has been very good at keeping everyone updated on the deficit faced by the university (must have something to do with being an accountant). The library has three items on the list of cuts - these are the three that I forwarded through Jay Morgan back in the fall semester. Our three items reduce funding for book allocations, cut one database recommended by R&I as no longer necessary, and cut our supply budget by a couple of thousand. The list of cut do not cover the deficit, so there are sure to be more cuts to come, but at this point no one knows what they may be. This week's board meeting should see some further clarity on these issues.
We should also have some clarity on who our next President will be soon. I have been asked to moderate and escort the candidates to and from their sessions with the Deans. Tuesday and Wednesday mornings both will be taken up with the Board meeting.
At the Dean's Council last week, it was revealed that profitability reports for each class in each college had been generated - these new reports are going to be run more often, and most likely taken into consideration for future restructuring decisions or decision on filling vacant positions. Let me ask you - how do you think the library appears on a profitability report? Outside of our LOR classes, we do not engage in activities that generate tuition revenue for the university. To dwell on this once again, but this is why our retention assessment is so important. We are the only University Libraries in the state of Kentucky that is close to being able to draw a connection between the work of library employees and correlations with retention. This work is only going to become more important - I would use the word essential - in the very near future.
Finally, our snow week last week got in the way of completing faculty evaluations and the University Promotion Committee. Faculty evaluations will conclude Monday and the evaluation forms will be scanned and distributed to the faculty. I've also received the instructions from HR for staff evaluations for this spring, which I will be forwarding.
Have a great week!
Adam