Board of Regents updates

The Board of Regents reviewed President Eric Kaler's recommended fiscal year 2018 budget at its June 8 meeting. After receiving feedback from the University community and public, Regents approved a budget during a special meeting on June 20. 

 

During the June 8 meeting, the board also:

• Approved the FY18 annual capital improvement budget, with projects totaling $275.5 million to begin design or construction in FY18
• Approved a system-wide strategic plan framework
• Reviewed new sexual misconduct policies

 

You can read more about the approved University budget here »

Reminders About Personal Holiday

Employees eligible for a personal holiday can use their FY 2017 accrual until June 30. Personal holidays do not carry over to the new fiscal year.

FY 2018 personal holidays will accrue on July 1. The Absence Management system won't accept an absence request for the FY18 personal holiday until it accrues. As a result, employees who want to use their personal holiday right away in July should discuss that with their supervisor and then submit the request to the system after it has accrued on July 1.

Update on ASR organizational effectiveness

Organizational effectiveness strives to build and maintain ASR’s strength to meet the diverse challenges of our work and the changing realities of higher education. To stay strong we focus on two things: 1. Developing our staff and; 2. Improving the systems and processes that support our work.

Developing staff

Developing staff means looking at the entire employment cycle from faster, more targeted hiring of people with strong skills and abilities, to consistent onboarding, to offering development opportunities, and finally to improving our capabilities to plan for employee advancement and succession.

The Engagement Survey has provided valuable perspectives on employee commitment and dedication and on the effectiveness of ASR’s work environment. The survey is an important bellwether and guide for addressing employee needs and concerns.

ASR is now focusing on expanding leadership development opportunities for all employees, building on a refreshed IDP, revamped Performance Appraisal and retooled supervisor expectations around development. We are also building toolkits and improving systems for hiring, onboarding and succession.

Improving systems and processes

This work supports unit planning,  ASR-wide projects such as job description updates or student supervisors planning, and brings change management support to GPAS, CS 9.2 Upgrade and other projects as needed.

This effort emphasizes building and enhancing sustainable systems and processes that will support a strong ASR.

Ahead for OE

Our pilots of formal leader development offerings such as Leading on All Levels, Communication for Results, the Hogan Assessment and Developmental Conversations, as well as new offerings from Leadership and Talent Development (OHR), will be evaluated to help shape our future leadership development strategies.

We will also continue to improve and simplify processes such as performance appraisal, the IDP, hiring and onboarding.

Our efforts should result in ASR remaining an employer of choice and able to respond to emerging challenges in higher education.

ASR Book Club

Last call to sign up for the second annual ASR Book Club, where we will be reading The Latehomecomer by local author Kao Kalia Yang! Reminder that this year's book club is BYOB (bring your own book!). The deadline to sign up is Monday, June 26.

Meetings will take place in Fraser Hall from 12-1 PM on June 28, July 12, July 19, July 26, and August 2. The meeting on June 28th is a pre-reading discussion, so you have plenty of time to get your book and get started before the first book discussion on July 12. We look forward to some great discussion with colleagues across ASR!  If you have any questions, contact Shawn Hennessy at henne344@umn.edu.

Discover Canvas each Thursday this summer

Earlier this month, it was announced that Canvas was selected to be the successor to Moodle. As the University begins the transition process, a Discover Canvas event will be held each Thursday this summer. At this event, members of the Canvas Transition Team will be available in person and online to help faculty and staff explore this new learning environment.

ASR staff complete Master’s degrees

Congratulations to Sarah Hoegger (Master of Arts in History, University of Nebraska) and Sherief Elabbady (MBA in Strategy & Marketing, University of Minnesota) who both completed Master’s degrees in May 2017. Here’s what our recent grads had to say:

Sarah: I'm proud of all the effort that I put in to accomplish this long-time life goal. My focus is in Medieval England and my thesis title is "Restoring Order: Law and Justice During the Reign of Henry V." I took a research trip to the National Archives in Kew, UK. I literally had to walk back and forth to flip through the pages of some of the pipe rolls (pictured left).

Sherief: Completing it means I can be more well-rounded on the business side to help me be a better technical professional. It’s a pretty versatile degree, so I am also able to apply it to the work I do for the rest of my career. I also will have a lot more free time now. :)

OSF Culture of Consultation Working Group outcomes

A group of Office of Student Finance (OSF) and One Stop staff worked in fits and spurts over the past eighteen months to help improve and strengthen partnerships within OSF, and between OSF and One Stop. The discussions themselves were useful in building mutual understanding and positive working relationships, and here are some concrete outcomes to share.
  

• On-going, regular effort to offer OSF unit training/updates to One Stop staff
• Developed contact maps-- detailed lists of staff and their work responsibilities per OSF unit to direct One Stop Counselors to the most appropriate OSF staff member for each individual case.
• Used a shared document, the new Fraser 200 Staff List, to house the contact maps in a single Google doc to be continually updated as staff and duties change.  
• The OSF Undergrad Services unit is piloting the use of Chat to show their availability for phone transfers, with the goal of increasing student service and successful warm transfers. 

Please take a look at the expanded Fraser Front Desk Resource document.  You can look for staff by duty, by unit, or by name using the tabs at the bottom of the page.  The group hopes that these resources and programs will help improve effective referrals and build on our positive working relationships. 

If you believe this type of ‘function-based’ document would be useful across ASR, please let Tina Falkner know.

MyU user interface updates

MyU is currently undertaking an effort to update the user interface of MyU, including:

• Streamlining and improving technical components
• Refreshing overall design
• Improving non-tab navigation and the mobile experience

The expected go-live date is October 22. The MyU team encourages you to view mock-ups for the new MyU design and provide feedback via the MyU Portal UI Refresh Project website before June 16.

Tillman Scholars announced

The Pat Tillman Foundation has announced their 2017 Tillman Scholars class. This year’s scholarship recipients include two University of Minnesota students, Britt Johnson and Elizabeth Abbott. Elizabeth, an ASR employee in University Veterans Services, will be working on a Master’s degree in Social work with an anticipated completion date of May 2019. Britt is pursuing a Master’s degree in Nursing and will finish in December 2017. Awards range from $10,000 for one semester to $20,000 for two years and are for student veterans or service members. Winners from schools across the country will be attending the Pat Tillman Leadership Summit at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois, from July 20-23, 2017.

Streamlining business processes - new ASR-IT documentation

The Project & Work Facilitation (PWF) team has created two new documents for ASR-IT onboarding and reporting processes.

As a solution to a major pain point in the onboarding process, the new ASR-IT Access Request Guide was created to alleviate the frustration, headaches, and forgotten items when requesting/granting access for new employees to our various systems. This new guide streamlines onboarding, provides a common language to prevent discrepancies, includes links for ARFs, and provides comprehensive instructions for all the ASR-IT Teams (and the Academic Advisement BA team) access needs. This guide is available for any other unit to use as a template to create their own access guide for their staff.

The new FY18 ASR-IT Accomplishments document consolidates the old tracking document down to three sections, and each business group within IT reports on the same form, rather than having six individual documents. ASR-IT staff, please remember to start logging accomplishments on this new document and follow the indicated directions. If this format is useful for your unit, please feel free to copy this document as a template.  

If you have any questions, please contact Ryan & Kristy at pwf-team@umn.edu.

WiFi upgrades to take place in Williamson and Fraser

Work is ongoing for the Next Generation Network (NGN) project and WiFi access point upgrades are continuing on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus from May through August 2017. Service disruption is expected to be minimal.

You can view the WiFi upgrade schedule here. Please note that buildings are still being scheduled and that the schedule is subject to change.

Adobe updates incoming

During the week of July 17, 2017, OIT will be performing a mass update of all Adobe Acrobat and Reader versions (including Acrobat and Reader XI and all previous versions of Adobe Acrobat and Reader) to Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader DC. This mass update will affect all OIT centrally-managed devices (Windows and Mac) and all devices that OIT patches, including system campuses, Carlson School of Management, College of Education and Human Development (CEHD), and College of Science and Engineering (CSE) systems.

In October 2017, Adobe Acrobat and Reader XI will no longer be updated or supported by Adobe.

If you are using an unmanaged device, you can download Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader DC now. Contact the Technology Help desk for your campus with questions or for assistance.