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Thursday, September 14, 2017

System campus visits—Crookston

Each year Sue and a few other Twin Cities’ staff take time to visit each of the system campuses. Most recently, Sue, Eleanor Pijut, Adrienne Bricker, and Tina Falkner visited Crookston and had a terrific discussion with many staff there who are always very appreciative of ASR’s work. Topics discussed at the meeting include student finance and registrar projects, technology updates, system-wide efforts, policy updates, and Crookston-specific topics.

ASR book club leads to keynote speaker for fall event

Over the summer, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee held an ASR-wide book club that was built on momentum of the micro-grant-funded diversity book club in 2016. The group read The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir by author Kao Kalia Yang.

During a series of five peer-led meetings, the book club members enjoyed getting to know one another while learning about Yang’s Hmong family and their refugee and resettlement experience. Some of the members of the book club are on this year’s ASR Development Team.

While planning for the fall ASR development event, the Development Team learned of Yang and her experiences, and decided to extend an invitation to have her speak at the event. Yang accepted and will be joining us as the keynote speaker for the fall development event on Wednesday, October 11.

To learn more about Yang, visit her website. In addition to the Latehomecomer, she wrote The Song Poet which is a current nominee for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Yang’s talk will be of interest to all, even if you have not read either of her books.

To those who participated in the book club over the summer, thank you! Thank you especially to the members who volunteered to lead the meetings. We hope to make the book club an annual tradition!

ASR budget update

ASR will receive its budget instructions this week from OUE. Since the legislature provided all funding upfront, there will be no new funding for the University next year. This provides ASR with opportunities to model various budget changes; we will be submitting a proposal within three weeks.

Immigration Response Team—policy briefing

At the August 24 ASR in-service, guest Marissa Hill-Dongre gave a presentation about the Immigration Response Team. As director of the team, Marissa shared who they they are, what their goals are, and how their work affects ASR. Slides from the presentation are available for review »

On Monday, September 25, the team will be holding an Immigration Policy Briefing from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the Best Buy Theater, fourth floor of Northrop. See more details of the event »

Things we do (outside of work): Amanda quilts

Though there are many makers in ASR, one in particular earned recognition for her work at the Minnesota State Fair this year. Amanda Temple (OSF) won first place in the quilting category called “pieced; machine quilted by someone other than the entrant.” She also won a special award from Bear Patch Quilting Company. Her work was on display in the Creative Activities Building. Congrats, Amanda!

More from the quilter:

The quilt is an adaptation of The New Hexagon by Katja Marek that consists of many small pieces of fabric hand stitched together using the “English Paper Piecing” process. There are a total of 246 2" hexagons, with up to 10 pieces in each hexagon. I started in January 2015 after I was laid up with a broken leg and not able to do other quilting and it took about two years to complete. Each piece is "fussy cut" from a specific design in the fabric, which makes the end result very precise. The quilting itself was done by Steffani Burton. The State Fair has different categories for quilts that were hand quilted, machine quilted, and quilted by someone else. I won first place in the "pieced; machine quilted by someone other than entrant" and a special award from Bear Patch Quilting Company.

​The thing I like about quilting is that it allows me to be artistic and creative even though I don't really have traditional artistic skills like drawing or painting. And hand quilting is portable, so I could work on it anywhere. Pieces of this quilt have travelled with me on many derby trips, to work, in front of the tv, and several road trips.


Thanks for sharing, Amanda, and congratulations on the blue ribbon!




Thursday, September 7, 2017

Go-live for Campus Solutions 9.2 Technical Upgrade

A period of system downtime is necessary to complete the first phase of the PeopleSoft Campus Solutions 9.2 Upgrade. PeopleSoft Campus Solutions and related systems will be unavailable starting 9 a.m. (previously reported as 7 a.m.) Saturday, September 23. Work is anticipated to be complete and systems available again at noon Sunday, September 24. Please review the full details on system availability and make sure your colleagues are aware of how the planned outage may impact their work.

When systems are restored Sunday afternoon, users will notice minimal changes (restricted to look and feel). Preview these changes.

Those who use PeopleSoft frequently may need to clear their browser cache and cookies when logging in for the first time after the upgrade is complete.