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Mission Statement The mission of the Staff Council is to represent the interests and concerns of the staff of Colorado College as they work to fulfill the mission and goals of Colorado College. (Click Here to view our expanded Mission Statement)
Next Meeting
Regular Meetings are scheduled for the 2nd Tuesday of each block typically on the second floor of the Worner Center (the room varies) from 11:30 to 1:00. For more specific details as we get closer to meeting times please contact:
Events
* 10/22/2007 Meet your 2009/2009 Colorado College Staff Council. |
News -- See below for some of the Cost Savings Suggestions submitted to date! Got a good idea? Link to submit your --10/10/08 - Some of the campus feedback thus far on how to reduce administrative expenses. ALCOHOL - This is a suggestion based on my own personal approach to trimming expenses. Roughly 6 years ago, I stopped ordering alcoholic beverages when I went out to eat. It seemed ridiculous to spend $16 on a meal and $8 on a glass of wine. It seemed to me that alcoholic beverages added 50% to the bill. My sense is that a fair amount of money could be saved if CC employees were expected to pay for their own alcohol while meeting with colleagues, traveling, taking search candidates out for dinner, etc. - Eliminate the purchase of alcohol from all official functions--from large farewell gatherings, to departmental meetings and individual business meals, let's do without the alcohol. - Establish a policy that no alcohol will be paid for by college while the budget is so tight (allowing no exceptions for retirement parties, trustee dinners, graduation receptions, recruiting dinners, department parties - everyone should be held to this) . BEAUTIFICATION (Plants) --Either negotiate for lower cost of plant services or discontinue this altogether – it’s a “fluff” perk that is not necessary COMPENSATION/BENEFITS --Offer early retirement or (for staff, since this is already available to faculty) phased retirement options. . Determine feasibility of offering deferred compensation to eligible employees (I assume this would be faculty and exempt staff). . Solicit staff/administration volunteers willing to temporarily reduce working hours, resulting in savings on salaries, FICA, and TIAA-CREF (but don't penalize employees on health insurance premiums if reduction of hours bumps them into a different employment category) . COPIES/SUPPLIES/PRINTERS AND PRINTING -- Print on both sides of paper. Recycle when you clean out files, etc. and use them to print on. It is not often that you need clean, pristine copies. It is saving our office lots. We also pick up used paper in the recycling bins around campus and use that. Purchase meamine or plastic plates to use at office lunches, snacks, etc. They can be washed rather easily and reused.......less paper waste. Make color copies of brochures, etc. for special occassions/people, but keep a stock of B & W for everyday purposes. Make all forms, applications, etc. electronic. Write agendas on a black board or large sheets of paper instead of printing copies for each person. --Allow students to print only a certain number of pages (example, 500 to 1000 - and charge them for copies that go beyond that number) by installing gold card readers on all college printers. This should include department lab printers to avoid shifting the burden to academic departments. The ACM school my children attended did this and it worked well. --I see a big issue here in the student accounts office. When we print from C3PO a blank sheet is printed with almost every sheet. We were told not to re-use them due to toner being on them and it hoses up the printer. If there was some way we could stop that extra sheet from printing or find a reasonable source for re-using the blank sheets, I would be so happy! I just think that's a terrible waste. ENTERTAINMENT -- We ought to stop paying for movies. It's one thing when the movies are related to coursework and another when they are strictly for entertainment. ENERGY/UTILITIES(Water, Heat, Electricity) --Let's police ourselves and ensure that we turn off all unnecessary lighting in our building; especially after 5:00 p.m. In addition, let's require that everyone turn off their computers at the end of the day. -- Solve problem of excessive heating in buildings. My office in Palmer Hall is routinely 78 degrees in the winter (there's no way I can adjust this other than running the air conditioning, which is even more appalling). I've heard the same from people who work in Cutler, Tutt Library, and Spencer Center. -- Stop watering the lawn on the quad every single night all fall. I know the non-potable water is cheaper than treated water, but this is still horribly wasteful. --Utilities – have more exempt staff/faculty work from home computers?
FOOD -- We can bring our own sack lunches to lunch time meetings. No need to cater and the costs are ASTRONOMICAL (I've looked into it). Providing coffee & tea is more than enough, and most employees are watching their weight, anyway. In small companies a lot less is provided. -- There's a lot of competition on campus between events, and the organizers are always thinking of ways to draw people to their particular event. As a result, so many of the hundreds of events on campus offer food (and often much of it is not even eaten)! I think a lot of money could be saved by finding a way to drastically reduce the food offerings at events (not to mention health and sustainability reasons) -- Too much college money is spent on food. I think I ate lunch at the college's expense three times in just over a week at the beginning of the school year. -- Cut down on dinners and banquets. -- Deep Rock Water – couldn’t we “cancel” this contract and purchase filters for sinks in some areas and keep Deep Rock where we need it because there is no kitchen access for some people? And, we could get comparative bids and lower the price. This is not keeping with our sustainability efforts lugging all those jugs of plastic water bottles either. HOUSING -- The college spends a lot of money housing guest speakers and such at nearby hotels. However, there are plenty of "unused" spaces for these people right here on campus that are virtually free (except for cleaning costs, which is done anyway). How about a guest room at the beautiful Women's Club? How about Stewart House? Over time, these options could save departments and student organizations money. LEADERSHIP --Perhaps Senior Staff and the President could demonstrate how they were cutting their own budgets as a way of leading by example. -- Returned Mail - it doesn't make sense to me the number of returned mail items that come just to our office, never mind back to other departments as well. It must be that addresses are either (1) not checked prior to doing a mass mailing, or, (2) data changes are not made in a timely manner. It seems to happen fast that a mailing address, worner box address etc. are changed quickly and maybe people doing mailings don't check and use their own lists? If we solved that problem, it would save the college substantial funds. --Mail – send invoices, bills and proposals out from CC electronically instead of mail. MEETINGS -- CC Committees editing documents/sharing information - Google Docs (http://docs.google.com) This is a new website where you can upload word documents, spreadsheets, presentations or HTMLs. It is a web-based software which lets you "edit online and invite others to edit and view your documents too" The whole group can make revisions simultaneously and you won't need to combine their edits. It happens automatically. When you're done, download the document or publish it on the web. -- Conference Calls - do all Admin Assts and other offices use the same company to service our conference calls? Global Crossing, Premier Conferencing etc - we could have a short term agreement with a local company for all conf charges and ask for a price break if we do that PHONES --Eliminate student dorm room phones - no one uses them anymore. . For campus offices, look into obtaining an internet-based or other telephone service that includes long distance; we make far more long distance calls than we used to due to students (and increasingly faculty) using cell phones rather than land lines. SCHEDULING/TIMING -- The current method of "budgeting to reality" has an unfortunate side effect of incenting departments to spend their money instead of save it. Toward the end of the fiscal year, a flurry of buying always happens so that departments spend out their full budget because they know it will likely be cut if they do not, whereas it will be assumed they needed every penny if they save every penny. This is a bad system if the goal is to save money. Incentives for saving money need to be built into the system. A good start would be assurances that a department budget would not be cut if it wasn't all spent out. An even better idea would be expand this into identifying certain department or college-wide initiatives that are funded entirely by budget savings. For example, the college could say that in addition to the 7% (or whatever it is) identified in the budget for health benefits increase next year, all unspent money in from departmental budgets will be added to that 7% in order to ease the burden on our paychecks. Something like this would be a great incentive for everyone to save money, it would be a good political move because the administration would be giving the community some measure of control over their own fate and a way to work hard to help everyone out. It could potentially be a community builder, and while the bottom-line would stay neutral, it would likely help departments begin to identify where they can save money, etc. Another example might be that all savings are channeled into the loan payout for parking, with the potential to reduce or eliminate the cost of parking passes each year. Perhaps the department which saves the most money could be publicly recognized and given a plaque each year... part of this would be a description of how money was saved to give others ideas, and it would show that this is desirable. Of course, we'd have to be very careful not to publicly say this is good, but privately punish the department for saving money by slashing their budget. -- Why not add an extra day to our Winter Holiday period. Instead of returning to work for a day after the New Year holiday, why not start work on Monday and eliminate the utility costs that come from being open for a day at the end of the New Year holiday week. -- There's talk about eliminating the half-block. If this option went away, why not keep the campus closed for students and again, save on energy costs that come from being open during that period of time. SUBSCRIPTIONS -- The Wall Street Journal is much cheaper for an on-line sign up then to have the actual paper sent to us. -- If every department took an inventory of multiple subscriptions that could be shared, a lot of money could be saved. Each dept could have a common place to put information of interests to the staff and get only 1 subscription. TRAVEL/TRAINING --Cut back on travel to non-essential meetings, etc. --Cut travel to places like WACUBO Seminars/training and do it on-line (sustainability)? --Staff Retreats, like kinds of meetings – negotiate with a “lodge” or some place nearby to use a facility for all of those types of gatherings, or use our own space in Cornerstone for the retreats and classroom kinds of activities. Bring speakers in and do seminars on campus, instead of people flying out everywhere
--10/08/2008-- Cost Containment Suggestion Form (or Emily's Mock Apple Pie) Please take a moment and help us collect suggestions for cost savings here at CC. This data is anonymous and will be consolidated by 11/1/08 to present to the Working Group on Stewardship and Cost Containment (WGSCC). This is important work and we can all contribute! As the economy grinds on it's hard not to worry about how the college will be impacted. Will we meet Vision 2010 goals for Financial Aid students? Will our endowments be impacted? If staff can help find ways to cut unnecessary expenditures it will help the CC towards attaining all our variously stated goals and maintaining our excellent educational experience. This kind of pro-active movement just makes good common sense. If you know things are going to be tight it's time to start looking at ways to save money. I've got an aunt who washes out her zip-lock baggies and reuses them. She saves all her butter containers to reuse for storing left-over food. I'm not suggesting we have to dive into this THAT deeply - but hey- taking a lesson or two from relatives in tight times is not a bad thing. Take a minute and look around at how we spend money here at CC. Where could we cut costs? How can we do things more inexpensively? Please submit your ideas here by clicking the link below. Once they are all collected I'll post the final list of ideas we submit to the Working Group on Cost Containment. I should note that we are submitting ideas to the WGSCC that relate to administrative departments. Our challenge is to come up with $500,000 in administrative permanent budget reductions for next fiscal year. Since the budget for next year is setup in January - we'll need to get our responses in quickly. Joan Taylor, Co-Chair Submit your suggestions here;
-- 09/11/2008 -- Meeting Minutes! Staff Council meeting minutes from the September 9th meeting. -- 02/29/2008 -- Staff Coincil Nominations ! Staff Council is hosting elections for those that are running for Staff Council. Please take a moment to read the nominee bios. Elections will open on Monday March 2nd for staff voting. -- 02/22/2008 -- Presentation! Staff Council was invited to the Board of Trustees Finance Committee meeting to talk about COLA and here is the document. -- 02/13/2008 -- Meeting Minutes! Congratulations to the Staff members that were awarded College Kudos at the first all campus staff meeting! Here are the recipients, and the kudos. Here are the meeting minutes. -- 02/11/2008 -- Meeting Minutes! Staff Council's response to salary recommendations. -- 02/07/2008 -- Meeting Minutes! Meeting minutes from the January 15th Staff Council meeting. Also, stay tuned for a date and time for our Staff Voices, CC's second all-staff meeting! -- Staff Voices Agenda 1. Opening Comments from Staff Council - Dave Reed -- 10/05/2007 -- Please join Staff Council and your colleagues for Staff Voices! Please join Staff Council and your colleagues for Staff Voices, CC's first all-staff meeting, on Thursday, October 25th in Armstrong Theater. Refreshments will be served from 3:00 to 3:30, the meeting will begin at 3:30. To ensure order and efficiency, we are asking that questions be submitted in advance. Submit questions and agenda suggestions by October 18th to StaffCouncil@ColoradoCollege.edu, or anonymously at www.ColoradoCollege.edu/staffcouncil/feedback.htm. We're excited to announce that the event will also feature "Colleague Kudos." This is your opportunity to thank and acknowledge your staff colleagues who go above and beyond the call of duty; send kudos to ColleagueKudos@ColoradoCollege.edu. -- 09/24/2007 -- Meet your 2007/2008 Colorado College Staff Council! Join us on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 from 4pm to 6pm in the Gates Common Room. Please RSVP to Millie Brence-Austin at mbrenceaustin@coloradocollege.edu by September 21st, 2007 so we can plan refreshments accordingly! -- 08/29/2007 -- Meeting Minutes! Meeting minutes from the June 18th Staff Council meeting. Meeting minutes from the August 7th meeting. Also, stay tuned for a date and time for our annual Meet the Staff Council Event! -- 07/30/07 -- CC's Electronic Town Square! This is an informal forum for an all-campus dialogue. CC employees may ask me questions, raise concerns, tout accomplishments, celebrate colleagues, and generally express what's on your mind. In turn, I will endeavor to clarify policy decisions, herald progress, dispel rumors, and highlight colleagues' achievements. Together I believe we can improve campus communication. This can also serve as an electronic suggestion box. I have only ground rule: let's be candid and civil. Thank you, http://www.coloradocollege.edu/welcome/presidentsoffice/ets/ -- 07/05/07 -- Climate Survey results posted! In November and December of 2006, Staff Council conducted a climate survey of Colorado College staff. We've spent Spring analyzing the results and preparing a report to discuss results and recommend action. You will all receive a memo in the mail with an executive summary of the results, and you can also find the full report in our Reports, Surveys, and Meeting Minutes section or access it directly. -- 06/25/07 -- New Mentee Application, Mentor Application, Mentor Program, and Evaluation documents and instructions. -- 04/19/07 -- New meeting minutes, and May 2nd meeting agenda! Minutes for our January, February, and April meetings have been posted in our Reports, Surveys, and Meeting Minutes section (woohoo, we're finally caught up)! Our tentative agenda for the May 2nd meeting is: * Reaccreditation self study report - Libby Rittenberg Last Updated 07/05/07 |
Send questions or comments to: StaffCouncil@ColoradoCollege.edu
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