The Professional and Scientific Council is considering changes to lactation spaces and policies that were introduced at the April 6 meeting.
The council's peer advocacy committee developed the recommended changes in collaboration with several other campus groups, units and committees. Among the recommendations:
- Create a process to identify and approve designated lactation spaces
- Assign ownership of the spaces to a centralized unit
- Increase the number of spaces, with attention to the distribution of locations
- Develop guidelines or a policy to ensure compliance with laws and requirements
- Initiate an educational awareness campaign for users, potential users and others
"Our committee has received many, many emails and comments from people," said Ben Green, chair of the peer advocacy committee. "Clearly we found an issue that's important to people and we're happy to try to address it."
If approved at next month's meeting, the proposal will be sent to university human resources with a recommendation for action.
Updates from UHR
In her report, associate vice president for university human resources Julie Nuter provided an overview of current initiatives. These include:
- Creating the Community Health Partnership to work with the City of Ames and local health care providers to address priority health concerns (such as mental health and chronic condition support)
- Adopting a self-insured funding model (with Wellmark) for the Student and Scholar Health Insurance Program, which will cut costs and improve coverage
- Collaborating with the state Board of Regents and other Iowa schools on the Greater Iowa Higher Education Recruitment Consortium
- Developing the annual affirmative action plan
- Evaluating the enterprise resource planning and student information system
Other business
Amendments to the council rules and bylaws were introduced. The language clarifications include:
- Adding the president and president-elect as members of the university planning and budget committee
- Designating ex-officio and non-council member non-voting roles
