Covid Emergency Response Meeting Summary

FA – COVID Emergency Response Team – CERT

August 19^th, 2020 Meeting Summary
1pm – 2pm
Google Meeting

Present: Carla Michalak, Christine Duffy Webb, Tim Skinner, Suzanne Shepard, Lorenz Firsching, David Michalak, Mike Lynch, Denise Abrams, Ellen Brand, Mary Seel, Howard Streby, Rachael Hagerman, Kennie Leet

Summary of the meeting:

1. Robust discussion on the President’s response to Suzanne’s email that we will not delay our salary adjustments. We brainstormed a list of responses that Suzanne could include in her response to the president. Carla took notes and will send to Suzanne so she can craft her response.
2. Review minutes from August 7^th CERT Meeting – Approved
3. Discussed Mary’s bullet point list that she made out of the longer document and reviewed Kennie’s slides. Everyone agreed all were perfect and would be shared at the Faculty Association’s Welcome Back meeting on August 27^th.  
4. Can we develop a Blog or reinvigorate our faculty newsletter or the FA Breeze and include some of our content in these forms of communication? Did not discuss today
5. We previously discussed sending emails/letters to the president, let’s review two samples together.
   a. Approval needed by Rep Council?
   b. How do we want to “sell this” to our colleagues?
   c. What other topics do we want to address in weekly letters to the President? (layoff threats have to stop, attitude of no, bully tactics, restructure without input, etc)
   
   We devoted the rest of the meeting discussing which letter to send first and we decided on “Letter 1”. We made additional edits and talked about referencing the faculty “selfless” devotion to our students and our positions.
   
   We first decided to send the letter and email explaining our goal with the letter to Rep Council and request an electronic vote by August 19^th so that we could send the letter out to the membership requesting that they send their version of the letter to the president by 4pm on August 20^th just prior to the Board of Trustees meeting. We wanted to make sure that he could convey to the BOT that the faculty are not “fine”.
   
   

We did discuss copying BOT members but Mike suggested that we start with the president then escalate to the BOT.

• Faculty Morale: Did not address as a separate item however everything we do is on behalf of all faculty and an attempt to improve morale and our working relationships with the Administration.
• Other Agenda items?
• Would like to schedule a regular meeting time if possible: Agreed to meet on Wednesday, August 26^th, at 1pm.