Each spring semester, the Service Professional Advisory Council offers a series of “brown bag seminars” for NAU employees. No advance registration is required, you can bring your lunch along, and all seminars are free. We will provide light beverages for all attendees. We hope you will take advantage of the events we have planned for this year and bring suggestions for future seminars. See you there!

This year's sessions will be available to distance sites through video conference. Please RSVP to Terri Hayes if you would like to attend from a distance site. (Sorry but we will be unable to broadcast to Globe, Nogales or Payson due to staff shortages at those sites)

Hope in a Time of Turmoil

Date: February 16th, 2009, noon to 1 p.m.
Presenter: Stan Clark, Psychologist, Office of Employee Assistance & Wellness
Location: Adel Math,  ITV Room 137
Description: We cannot avoid, much less control, most of the challenges that come our way. We can learn to focus attention on feelings, actions, circumstances, thoughts, and other subtleties that promote resiliency in the face of adversity. In this workshop we will explore a few ways to generate hope and to rebound from stress more quickly!
RSVP by February 10, 2009.

Zen and the Art of Email Maintenance

Date: March 9th, 2009, noon to 1 p.m.
Facilitator: Lanita Collette, Assistant Director of Administrative Computing, ITS
Location: Adel Math,  ITV Room 137
Description: Do you dread opening your email inbox in the morning? Are you looking for ways to sort through the messages in an efficient manner? Have you found effective ways to manage your email correspondence? Are you frustrated that your important messages are overlooked by the recipients? Come participate in an open discussion of this challenging issue, facilitated by Lanita Collette, Assistant Director of Administrative Computing. This is your chance to mine our collective experiences for pearls of wisdom and strategies that work!
RSVP by March 2, 2009.

The last session will be held April 20th. Details will be published in the next SPAC newsletter.

-Dina Barnese

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In keeping with the mission of the Service Professional Advisory Council to advocate for and communicate with Service Professionals, SPAC conducts a survey every two years. The survey provides a compilation of ideas and issues that help SPAC determine what matters to Service Professionals and also provides SPAC with feedback on how well we are meeting our mission.

The results of the survey we conducted during the fall term have been compiled and are available on the SPAC web site. Of 594 Service Professionals, 140 (24%) completed the survey.

The top three training areas you identified are:

• Project management (59%),
• Supervision skills (48%),
• Resources available for staff training (47%).

You suggested several Brown-Bag Lunch topics and the SPAC subcommittee has planned the spring series based on those suggestions.

When asked to identify services you valued that are not currently available, the top three are:

• An Ombuds office/conflict resolution services (43%),
• Child care (43%),
• 403(b) vendor providing sustainable investing (26%).

In response to our question whether SPAC is communicating enough, 92 of you responded and 88% said we do.

Of the events SPAC presents - meetings, brown-bag lunches, the annual SPAC mixer and the employee conference, 85% of you attend the employee conference. Those of you who haven’t been able to attend any event time and distance are the biggest obstacles.

Approximately 75% of respondents have visited the SPAC website at least once in the last six months.

You offered many other comments and suggestions. Again, I encourage you to take a look at the survey results to see the breadth and scope of what your colleagues think is important.

-Tom Carpenter, SPAC Chair

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In response to the difficult economic times, SPAC decided last fall to sign onto the Adopt-a-Family Project to make the holidays just a little bit brighter for two families in need.

Upon contacting one of the Flagstaff grade schools, we were provided with a list of the family members’ ages, clothing sizes, and genders, so that we could provide gifts that would be useful and needed. We then set up a website where members of the service professionals’ community could log on and select a gift.

The response was overwhelming. In less than two weeks, we were able to fulfill the holiday requests for two families. Not only did we receive clothing and toys, we also were able to provide each family with a food basket and gift certificates to one of the local grocery stores.

From all of us on the SPAC Adopt-a-Family committee, a huge thank you to all who helped make the holiday season brighter for two Flagstaff families in need.

-Jane Thompson
 

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The university’s architect continues to work on the Wellness building.  Many of the recommendations related to universal design have been incorporated into the building including expansion of the halls and corridors, adding a covered entry way, and having an accessible bus drop off near the building entry way. 

CDAD, in collaboration with the other Commissions on campus, are developing a campaign related to improving the campus climate related to diversity.  This is in response to several incidences that occurred last semester related to biases, intolerances, etc.  The President has set-aside resources to launch the campaign.  All activities that are planned by the Commissions will be put on the Diversity and President’s website.

The School of Forestry has been working to address the needs of a student who is visually impaired.  They pursued assisting faculty so that they would be prepared and able to accommodate the student’s needs.  This included preparing for field work in the forests, classroom work, communications and preparation of class materials.  The outcome was a shared recognition of a balanced partnership that was developed among faculty, staff and the student.

The Diversity Awards dinner will be held on Thursday, April 9.  The nomination form and criteria are located on CDAD’s home page home.nau.edu/CDAD.  The deadline for submission of nominations is Friday, March 6.

- Karin Von Kay
 

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