The Staff Senate welcomes the entire community, including our students, as we embark on this new academic period. 

Please enjoy our first monthly issue of the Staff Senate eNews. We hope it's an easy way to stay connected and up-to-date on Staff Senate happenings and to learn more about your Senators.

Key Priorities and Goals for 2018-2019

• More Staff Presence across campus: Board of Trustees and Presidential Search Committee

• Invite the Board of Trustees to speak before Staff Senate

• Staff Survey for early 2019 to set priorities for 2019-2020

• Cohesive Faculty, Staff, and Student Senates

• Support the Campus Climate Survey (results coming out in October)

• Develop a Staff Senate Staff Excellence Award

• Implement the new senator buddy system and create regular touch-points throughout the year

• Continue to advance the childcare proposal through the benefits working group

• Continue to advance the proposal to add staff the to the University Coordinating Committee

• Optimize the Idea/Suggestion/Question intake form on our website

All staff are invited to attend Staff Senate Meetings. 

Hear updates, share your ideas or concerns, and connect with staff from across campus. October's topics include the Campus Climate Survey results, Staff Senate video, and updates on Staff involvement in the Presidential Search.

i-Exchange matches new international students with volunteer SCU faculty and staff members to provide informal social and cultural interaction opportunities and activities throughout the student’s first academic year.The program is not a typical “buddy program” which pairs international students with local students, nor is it a “home-stay” program.

In the fall, you will be invited to the i-Exchange Kick-off which facilitates introductions and allows faculty and staff to welcome their new buddies to SCU. Then in the spring, ISS will invite all participants to an event to celebrate a year of friendship and cultural learning. Throughout the academic year, hosts and students are encouraged to get together at least once a month.

Learn more about this exciting new program from the Global Engagment Office, and sign up to be a host by TODAY Friday, September 28th!

Santa Clara University faculty, staff, and students are invited to attend Town Hall forums to learn the official results from the Campus Climate Study conducted in Winter quarter 2018. The consultant from Rankin & Associates will be presenting the results for the first time to the University community.

 Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Town Hall Forum #1
12:30 p.m. - 2 p.m.

Town Hall Forum #2
5:30 p.m. - 7 p.m.

Both located in Louis B. Mayer Theatre

 A live stream will be available for both forums. Please check scu.edu/voice for the specific link to the live stream prior to the start of the forms.

If you have any questions about the forums, please contact Ray Plaza, rplaza@scu.edu or at 408-551-3383

In an effort to get to know each other better and to identify areas of collaboration, senators will take turns during every meeting to share three personal facts about themselves, and a highlight and challenge in their area or department. This month's featured senators come from the Staff Senate Executive Committee.

1. I'm from Seattle and love the rain!
2. I'm a Midwesterner at heart as my parents are both from the Midwest, and even have some family in the same small town in Illinois, despite meeting in Seattle.
3. I love to explore and travel! 

• Charney Hall will officially open on October 12th as part of the Alumni Weekend!

• Dispelling myths that law students have about studying abroad in law school. 

1. I’ve worked for the University for more than half my life (I’m 34 years old) and began at the ripe old age of 15. What started out as an “after school job” turned into a career. My first 4-5 years were part-time, and the last 14 years or so have been full time. Of all the departments to work for on this campus, I absolutely LOVE working at the Mission. The hours are very odd, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’m also very proud that my particular building is on every piece of stationary that leaves our campus!
2. I don’t drink coffee! Yet, I’m a Starbucks Gold Card holder. I can’t explain that one either.
3. I ride motorcycles.Much to my mother’s dismay, I’ve been riding motorcycles for 16 years. My original passion was for sport bikes, but I find myself leaning towards some of the new Harley’s that are coming out now. 

• One of the highlights of my department is that we get to interact with pretty much every constituency involved with our University.  Most of the campus recognizes the Mission as being Wedding Central, but we also work closely with students, other departments, donors, board members, and other non-profits to name a few.  Our University’s iconic Mission is a natural draw for people visiting our campus (be they affiliates or simply a neighbor), and I’m proud to be a part of the team that gets to care for, manage, and facilitate all that happens within our church.

• An ongoing challenge for my department is access to the Mission Church.  Because we work with such a varied group of people, I’m very aware of how closing our campus to vehicles has and continues to impact those who find traversing the increasing distances quite difficult.  For instance, grandparents coming to their grandson/daughter’s wedding, or alums gathering at a funeral for a fellow Bronco, or even someone who uses a walker wanting to attend a University concert being held in the Mission.  Our campus community consists of much more than just the 18-22 year old age group, and finding solutions to accommodate everyone, on an ever-growing campus, is one of my long-term goals. 

1. When I was in college, I wanted to be a financial advisor because I love numbers, data, and math. I worked as a financial advisor for several years out of college, but then got into public relations, marketing, and communications, and always found myself still dabbling in metrics and data. Now in my new role, I’m working again in finance and with data, which is where my true passion is.
2. I absolutely love to cook and bake. When I was barely old enough to stand, I started making my parents cakes for birthdays and special occasions; they have gotten better over the years. I also cook dinner every night for my husband and me. 
3. I’m expecting my first child in November, a little girl – I’m very excited to be a mom!

• This past June with the class of 2018, we surpassed 100,000 alumni. We’ll be celebrating this milestone all year. One way we are honoring our alumni is to ask them to share their story. If you are an alum or know someone who is, please share your story on our website.

• As you probably already know, The Alumni Office launched our Alumni Strategic Plan last September to lay out how we can better engage the University in the lives of our alumni and to engage our alumni in the life of the University. Now that we have a clear plan, we’ve spent a lot of time evaluating and aligning all that we are currently doing in our office with our strategic plan, developing a 4-year implementation plan, and determining what key metrics we want to measure to track our progress against the goal of:
  • 1 million points of alumni engagement
  • And uniquely engaging 35 percent of alumni, which is a 35 percent increase in the number of alumni currently engaged

1. I am a Super Bronco, multiple times.  I am a graduate of Bellarmine. During my undergrad, I transferred to SCU graduated with a BSc in OMIS.  I then jumped into the master’s program immediately after graduating and got my MSIS. While an undergrad I was hired as a student employee in IT, then at the start of my grad program I was hired full time.  Also during my grad program I served as an adjunct lecturer, which means I have been part of all four major groups on campus: student, staff, faculty, and alumni.
2. I play the bass.  I started in 2010 by taking lessons with the School of the Blues in San Jose.  I am currently part of the worship team at my church.
3. I am a fire spinner.  I started spinning fire poi in 2008 and can be seen annually as part of Bethlehem at Santa Clara First Baptist Church. 

• Project to migrate our ERP to Workday is underway. This will be a long and painful process, but is much needed for the sustainability of SCU.
• We have new hardware for our virtualization cluster that will be going live later this year. This new hardware will increase our CPU clock speed from 2.0 GHz to 3.2 GHz, and should last us for the next 5 years.
• We are looking to expand our web presence into AWS.  Currently scu.edu is hosted entirely in our data center. We are looking to get the emergency site up and running in AWS first. If that is successful, then we will be looking to move the entirety of www.scu.edu to AWS. 

• We still have a lot of maintenance to do this year and we are short staffed in some key departments.  Please bear with us as we schedule late night and weekend maintenance to get it all done.
• We would like for departments to approach us as early as possible when evaluating new technical solutions.  If we are brought into the conversation early we can help evaluation possible solutions to ensure that they will integrate with our systems and follow best practices.