One employee and one student will be elected this month to be members of the Cornell Board of Trustees. Ballots for the employee-trustee elections will be mailed to all regular full- and part-time nonacademic staff members and academic nonprofessorial employees beginning March 15 and must be returned by 4:30 p.m., March 26, to the Office of the Assemblies, 109 Day Hall. (The student-trustee election took place earlier this week.)
Votes for the employee-trustee election will be tabulated using the Hare system, which has voters rank candidates in order of preference and requires the winner to have a majority, not a plurality, of votes. After the first round of voting, if no candidate has a majority of the votes cast, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and his or her second-place votes are assigned to the remaining candidates. Voting rounds are repeated until one candidate has a majority of the votes cast.
There will be an Employee Trustee Candidates Forum Monday, March 15, in G10 Biotechnology Building, noon-1 p.m. Pizza will be served. For complete election information, visit this Web site: http://trustee.assembly.cornell.edu/. Results will be announced March 31.
Here are the employee-trustee candidates and their answers to questions from the Office of the Assemblies:
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Assistant director, Academic Personnel Policy Office, Office of Human Resources
What do you consider the top three priorities for the president and trustee to address?
1.Setting long-range goals to guide in allocating resources in an era of stiff competition for every education dollar. In exercising effective financial stewardship, the president and trustees need to balance the needs of students, faculty and staff, together with those of the physical plant, and it is important that each competing interest be dealt with fairly.
2.Maintaining and improving morale as fewer employees are increasingly asked to do more work with fewer resources and find it difficult to balance the demands of the workplace with the demands posed by other areas of their lives.
3.Creating a greater sense of community where students, staff, faculty, alumni and the greater Ithaca community are all valued for their contributions and opinions and are recognized as true stakeholders in Cornell's future.
Specifically, how will you use your position as trustee to improve Cornell?
I believe my experience with different segments of the employee population, as well as with students, faculty and administration, will continue to serve me well as an effective employee trustee. I have been a dedicated employee advocate representing employee issues to members of the board of trustees, the president and the administration. I will continue to be accessible to individual employees and meet with both small and large groups and listen to your concerns, to make sure they are given the attention they deserve, and to report back on decisions affecting you. Please visit my Web page: http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/mve1/.
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Chief information officer, Johnson Graduate School of Management
What do you consider the top three priorities for the president and trustee to address?
1.Determining how to best reduce costs and therefore tuition while increasing financial aid.
2.Encourage the submission of research papers by faculty to top-rated journals to increase our reputation as a top research institution.
3.Develop a retention process/program for top performing staff.
Specifically, how will you use your position as trustee to improve Cornell?
I have already started a procedure that is being supported through the Office of Development Services to create mailing lists of the Cornell University Leadership Development Program (CULDP) graduates. These lists will allow for administrators and staff alike to communicate problems/issues to be resolved by people who have been trained to work together and make Cornell a better place.
I'm interested in pursuing a program that allows staff to be compensated for their excess vacation. The idea is to provide an incentive to be considered a top performer and for the university to provide a benefit, accordingly.
I would like to reintroduce the notion of a "promotion" for staff, something removed from the human resources process when CP grades were transitioned to the new bands.
Please visit my Web site at: http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/lf10/.
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Director, Multicultural Affairs, College of Architecture, Art and Planning
What do you consider the top three priorities for the president and trustee to address?
Specifically, how will you use your position as trustee to improve Cornell?
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