The Metropolitan State University of Denver Staff Senate welcomed Larry Sampler, chief operating officer; Stacy Dvergsdal, associate vice president for Human Resources; and Amanda Berry, director of Total Rewards, on Dec. 12 to discuss student-employment issues that were recently highlighted in a student-employee supervisor survey organized and facilitated by the Senate.  

The dialog focused on two central issues, concerning work-study and a student’s inability to adjust their work hours on their time sheets.  

On the topic of work-study, a few pain points have been noted, particularly for employees who manage, distribute and track work-study funding, leading to confusion and frustration for some departments and work-study students. The work-study challenges have been a major concern because student employees are one of our most vulnerable employee groups. Solutions to address the work-study issues are underway. Read this Early Bird article to learn about the progress being made.  

The other focal issue concerns student employees’ ability to adjust their work hours in Workday. The new Clock-in/Clock-out feature in Workday originally was launched with “enabled time” turned on, giving students the ability to adjust their time. However, this “enabled time” feature was inadvertently turned off in June, leaving the task to supervisors, which has resulted in some supervisors spending an exorbitant amount of time modifying hours.  

“It’s an equity issue,” said one Staff Senate meeting attendee. “Now, our student employees don’t have the power to record or edit their time sheets and instead must send an email to their supervisor to do it for them, which is time–consuming for both.”

Berry thanked the group for sharing their concerns and for taking the time to outline the issues in detail, allowing for both clarification and education. The HR team is committed to conducting research to find a solution and/or modification to the Clock-in/Clock-out feature. More to come. 

“It was a productive discussion, one that was collaborative and inclusive. It was good to hear from multiple voices and get a student’s perspective, too,” said Berry. “We appreciate the feedback and are committed to addressing these issues. It is never our intent to make work harder for any employee.” 

Career Pathways Catalog Module 

Erica Buckland Anderson, director of Curriculum and Catalog, gave an overview of a new module that will be included in the 2024-25 catalogs. The Career Pathways Catalog Module includes career and salary data, projected industry trends and an overview of the pathway program. It also features a Career Explorer function that allows students to search programs within a particular field and/or area adjacent. Since this module is customizable, it will enable lots of flexibility and allow each major to tailor information presented in the catalog about their programs. For instance, it can incorporate a call-to-action button to encourage students to apply for a program. Buckland Anderson is working with department chairs and/or their appointed contacts to determine what each catalog page will include.  

Student Success Launch Implementation update

Interim Ad Provost Marie Mora, Ph.D., shared that the work to operationalize student success has begun, in support of Pillars I and II of our Strategic Plan. The Student Success Launch Implementation Team, which launched this fall, is charged with finding ways to remove institutional barriers to enhance student success. To support the work, seven working groups have been developed, focused on: 

  1. Academic Polices as Obstacles  
  2. Advising and Technology  
  3. Changing Majors and Withdrawal Process  
  4. Experiential Major Maps  
  5. Exploratory/Undeclared and Meta Majors  
  6. One-Click Registration   
  7. Student Engagement and Community Hour

These working groups will be instrumental in helping move objectives and results forward and are focused on identifying barriers impeding student success, such as complications with graduating on time. For example, advisor turnover has been identified as a barrier, so there are discussions happening about implementing career ladders to support advisors. More updates and details will be shared with the Staff Senate and the broader University community as the work progresses.  

Round-robin updates 

Executive Committee 

  • The Staff Senate is reconfiguring the Staff Senate SharePoint. More to come. 

Budget Taskforce 

  • The budget circular for next year has been finalized and released. Branches are responsible for developing their own budgets and should scrutinize them to analyze how their current budgets could support new proposals before they are submitted to the University Planning and Budget Advisory Committee. The deadline to submit budgets has been pushed to Feb. 16. Visit the UPBAC SharePoint site to access the budget circular. 

Shared Governance Working Group 

  • The group is finalizing a plan and proposal for consideration. Feedback collection from constituents will begin in January and continue until March. More details to come in January.  

Senate Policy Review Committee 

  • The University Staff Complaint Policy is moving along in the process. Some minor revisions were made to the policy before going to the President’s Cabinet for review and recommendations. Visit the University Policy Advisory Council SharePoint for the committee’s full meeting notes.  

Staff Employment Policy and Support Committee  

  • The group continues to communicate and collaborate with Human Resources. Please continue to share comments with the committee. 

Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee 

  • The JEDI book clubs are taking a break in January but will be back in February.  

Community announcement 

Congratulations to the Staff Senate for winning the first-ever Faculty Senate/Staff Senate Give-Off Challenge to support Rowdy’s Corner. More than $40,000 was raised for Rowdy’s Corner through Roadrunner Tuesday.