All Staff Council added a new committee this year, the Special Interest Committee. The committee explores initiatives, questions, and/or concerns presented to All Staff Council through research, planning, and collaboration with appropriate offices on campus.

The Special Interest Committee has made two recommendations that are moving forward.

Recommendation 1: Add Human Resource policies to the Drake website. In addition, add an explanation of why there is a difference between exempt and non-exempt vacation time in the time card directions section.

Exempt staff begin with 160 hours of vacation, and non-exempt staff begin with 80 hours of vacation. Non-exempt staff use 37.5 hours as their workweek with five 30-minute lunches paid. Over the year, the 2.5 hours they get weekly for their paid lunch amounts to 130 hours. This equates to 16.25 days, which is more than two weeks of vacation time. It’s important to note that some staff do not get a paid lunch.

Recommendation 2: Add to the Drake website and HR policies that full-time staff members in exempt positions, who have 9-, 10- or 11-month contracts, have the opportunity to be paid over 12 months. Faculty already have this opportunity; therefore, the committee recommends that it be offered to staff members as well.

It should be noted that non-exempt staff would not be able to defer their pay because they must be paid on a payroll basis to include overtime earned in the pay period. This does not include Head Start employees as they must pay all employees within the program (fiscal) year and would not be able to defer pay into another program/fiscal year.

Additionally, the committee is working on creating a staff mentoring program scheduled to launch in August 2018.

The Special Interest Committee is interested in your suggestions. If you have a question, issue, or concern, reach out to Pam Pepper at pam.pepper@drake.edu or extension 4558. The committee will review your inquiry and respond. All suggestions are kept confidential.

—Pam Pepper, All Staff Council Special Interest Committee Chair

The next in our series of meetings focused on creating inclusive learning environments will be at 3:30 p.m. on Monday, March 19, in the Olmsted Center, TMR 132. These meetings provide an opportunity for anyone on campus to come and discuss the challenges, successes, and failures we have faced as we try to navigate the difficult issue of creating inclusive learning environments. For questions, contact Art Sanders at arthur.sanders@drake.edu.

—Art Sanders, Associate Provost

ITS will send emails that mimic real attacks as part of its phishing education in March. As a reminder, here are some indications that an email may be dangerous:

• A strange sender, or one that you don’t expect
• A request to take ‘urgent’ or ‘immediate’ action
• Links or attachments that don’t match the message content or that you don’t recognize

Slow down and take a second look before acting. If you receive an email that you suspect is phishing, don’t click any links, download any attachments, or reply. Instead, forward the email as an attachment to informationsecurity@drake.edu.

Additional training will be assigned to faculty and staff members who repeatedly click links or open attachments in phishing emails, simulated or not.

For more information on how to report phishing emails, see the IT Service Portal guide, Reporting a Phishing Message (How-to).

—Peter Lundstedt, ITS