Kisch updates P&S Council on facility service teams

The Professional and Scientific (P&S) Council is still recruiting P&S employees to fill vacant seats when council terms expire this spring. The nomination deadline was extended to 5 p.m. Friday, March 14; the self-nomination form is online.

Governance committee chair Paul Easker, Virtual Reality Applications Center, reported at the council's March 6 meeting that he's received 14 nominations for this spring's 19 council vacancies across the four representative divisions:

• Academic affairs: 13 vacancies
• Student affairs: 1
• Operations and finance: 3
• President's division: 2

The president's division is the only area with enough nominations to hold the election, he said. Between one and three council nominees are needed in each of the other three divisions. The goal is to hold the online election yet this month.

Facility service teams update

Associate vice president Wendy Kisch, facilities planning and management (FPM), said FPM's development of a new service team structure should be complete by fall semester. In it, multifunctional teams are assigned to campus neighborhoods, and each team has the capacity and expertise to provide the full range of FPM services: new construction and renovation projects, custodial and grounds services, building maintenance, building systems repairs and maintenance, and overall service coordination. A team director will coordinate across the services in that neighborhood. Team members will become specialists for the buildings and building systems in their neighborhood, rather than the all-campus generalists they are now.

The goal is a more agile and customer-centric organization that serves the university effectively and meets customer needs, she said.

"The current FPM structure, which has existed for decades, is functionally siloed. It no longer works for our customers -- or our FPM employees," she said. The expectation that any FPM employee can answer any question about FPM service doesn't hold up, and FPM's campus clients have expressed dissatisfaction with inefficient processes, poor collaboration, lack of accountability, poor communication and high service costs, she said.

Directors for the six teams in the new structure are hired, as are some of the managers for specific service areas within each team. Leaders currently are hiring the remaining managers and supervisor-level positions. The final step, this summer, is to fill in and right-size the service teams for the neighborhoods they'll work in, she said. By fall, Kisch said she expects to introduce the full teams to the campus community.

FPM service teams

*To be defined

Officer elections

In unanimous consent ballots, the council elected Christine Reinders, Ames National Laboratory, to serve as president-elect beginning July 1, and re-elected council secretary-treasurer Sara Everson, public safety department, to another year of service. This year's president-elect, Jennifer Schroeder, finance service delivery, will move into the president's role next year, and president Jason Follett, software engineering department, moves into the past-president slot on July 1.

Follett announced that the council's diversity, equity and inclusion committee was dissolved on Feb. 28. Approved with other bylaw changes in December, the change had been scheduled to take effect July 1. The council's previously approved new community relations and advocacy committee will exist in ad hoc mode until July 1, when it becomes a standing committee.

Peer advocacy committee chair Rachel Faircloth, Ivy College of Business, announced ISU ombuds Laura Smythe has developed a training session on a new topic, "How Reflection Supports and Builds Professional Development," on Wednesday, March 26 (9-10 a.m., Coover Hall). Register in Workday Learn.

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