A friendly kiss

December 06

Horticulture freshman Teresa Pelzer gets a kiss from Olivia, a four-year-old Siberian Husky, during the Barks at Parks therapy dog study break at Parks Library Wednesday afternoon. The therapy dogs are at Parks four hours daily all week and are part of a broader list of stress-reducing activities co-sponsored with the student wellness office.

What are you using that's moving to Workday?

By Erin Rosacker
December 06

Wondering if you'll be using Workday when it launches July 1, 2019? The answer is yes. If you'd like to know how, there is a comprehensive list of functions in ISU's current systems that are moving to the cloud-based software platform.

Employees can see the functions on a downloadable spreadsheet -- sortable by system name and more -- now available on the WorkCyte website. AccessPlus and ADIN are gateways to more than 40 systems with financial, human resources and payroll functions moving to Workday. It's an upgrade for processes running on systems developed decades ago. The oldest are inventory and purchasing vendor index systems in use since 1977 and 1978, respectively.

All employees will be using Workday in some way, with access to functions specific to them (for example, benefits selection and W-2 forms). Functions in systems such as Kuali and PeopleAdmin also will move to Workday, with employee access based on position responsibilities and reporting hierarchy.

Examples of system functions moving to Workday include:

• Benefits open enrollment
• Electronic letters of intent
• Vacation and sick leave
• Personnel information (for example, address changes)
• Equipment inventory
• Kuali Financial (all system functions)
• PeopleAdmin (all system functions)
• Payroll
• Purchase orders
• Requisitioning
• Tracytime and ADIN time entry

Some central IT systems are NOT moving to Workday next summer, for example:

• Student information systems
• Accounts receivable
• Tuition reimbursement
• Student Scholar Health Insurance Program (SSHIP)
• Kuali Coeus
• GoldSheet (pre-award grants)

 

Related stories

• How will Workday change what you do? March 1, 2018
• Employee reporting hierarchy sets foundation for Workday, Aug. 24, 2017
• WorkCyte: Out with the old, in with the new, May 4, 2017

CELT announces its first faculty fellows

By Rob Schweers, office of the senior vice president and provost
December 06

Ann Gansemer-Topf and Monica Lamm have been appointed the first faculty fellows in the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT). Their two-year, 30-percent appointments begin Jan. 1, 2019.

"We are extremely excited for this opportunity to leverage Ann's and Monica's expertise to benefit faculty teaching practices and teaching scholarship across the university," said CELT director Sara Marcketti. "Their appointments are the result of feedback from the strategic planning process, particularly from faculty -- tenure-track, tenured and term -- who want to provide the best learning experience for Iowa State's students."

Gansemer-Topf, associate professor in the School of Education, will serve as faculty fellow for scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). She will work to enhance CELT's efforts around SoTL and assessment, including leadership of the SoTL Scholars program, and develop resources for departments to use for program evaluation.

Gansemer-Topf, who joined the faculty in 2012 after serving as Iowa State's associate director of research for admissions, earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Loras College, Dubuque; and a master's in higher education and Ph.D. in educational leadership and policy studies from Iowa State. Her research interests include assessment of student learning, effective pedagogy and student success.

Lamm, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering, will serve as faculty fellow for programming. She will expand CELT's faculty programming, including the development of a Teaching and Learning Academy for new faculty members and leadership of the Teaching Partners program.

Lamm joined the Iowa State faculty in 2003. She earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Syracuse University, New York, and master's and Ph.D. degrees from North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Lamm has received numerous Iowa State teaching awards and worked with CELT to develop team-based learning to enhance student success.

MU's top floors housing one last round of temporary tenants

By Dave Roepke
December 06

One last time before a major renovation, the top three floors of the Memorial Union are serving a new but temporary purpose.

For roughly their first 15 years, the MU's fourth, fifth and six floors were home to students when the residence halls were filled, with an interlude housing Army and Navy personnel during World War II. Beginning in the early 1950s and continuing for about 65 years, the three floors of guest rooms were a hotel.

With enrollment surging and Geoffroy Hall under construction, the hotel closed in the summer of 2016, and students again called the MU home. Students lived in the guest rooms for two academic years, but the residence space no longer was needed after the addition of Geoffroy's nearly 800 beds.

This summer, the state Board of Regents approved an $11 million project to renovate the floors into student services offices and study space, upgrading aging utilities in the process. But planning for that project will take much of 2019, MU director Steve Winfrey said. That gave the facility's ever-changing guest-room floors one more opportunity for reinvention, making use of available space and helping the MU continue to recoup some of the revenue lost when the hotel closed.

On the fourth floor, more than two dozen faculty and doctoral students from the Ivy College of Business are using the former hotel rooms as offices pending construction of a $28 million addition to the college's Gerdin Building, a project the regents approved this summer with expected completion in 2020.

Last month, development and communications staff in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences moved to the MU's fifth floor, displaced until late next summer by a $2.3 million renovation of Curtiss Hall's third floor.

The study abroad center moved this fall to the sixth floor, leaping at the chance for more space and windows, Winfrey said. Study abroad had been in the east wing of the MU's third floor, which temporarily will house the Center for LGBTQIA+ Student Success beginning spring semester after it moves out of the Student Services Building.

It's not the MU's only recent turn taking in university personnel displaced by construction. The fourth floor held the College of Engineering administrative offices when Marston Hall was renovated from 2014 to 2016.

When the top three floors are renovated, the LGBTQIA+ and study abroad centers will be among the student-focused units relocating there from other MU offices, along with the veterans center, student legal services, the international students and scholars office, and the office for the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity/Iowa State Conference on Race and Ethnicity.

The project, funded by student fees, will gut all three floors -- more than 18,000 square feet -- replacing the segmented room layout and long-outdated electrical, water and mechanical infrastructure. While formal design is just underway, the initial plan is office spaces along the perimeter with collaborative and study areas in the center of floors, Winfrey said. The project may devote an entire floor to a lounge area ideal for studying or just hanging out, he said.

"If you look at the building, there's no major lounge space," Winfrey said. "It's supposed to be the living room of campus, as they say."

The renovated floors should be finished and occupied by February 2022, after about a year and a half of construction, he said.

Institutional research director search has begun

By Anne Krapfl
December 06

A national search is underway for a director of the office of institutional research. The university hired Academic Career and Executive Search (ACES), Hartford, Connecticut, to lead the search, including recruiting candidates and receiving nominations and applications.

A search committee, chaired by associate vice president for research Surya Mallapragada, will review applications, complete preliminary screenings and bring a small group of finalists to campus for interviews.

The application deadline for guaranteed consideration is Jan. 1, 2019. Campus interviews are targeted for late January/early February with the goal of having the next director on board by late spring.

Nominations may be sent to managing partner Jennifer Muller at ACES.

Joining Mallapragada on the search committee are:

• Kyle Briese, College of Human Sciences administration
• Kevin DeRoos, IT services' university information systems
• Julie Labianca, office of institutional research
• Mark Simpson, office of the registrar
• Karen Zunkel, office of the senior vice president and provost

The office of institutional research (IR) is part of the academic affairs division, and its director reports to associate provost Dawn Bratsch-Prince. Kathy Jones, retired associate vice president for student affairs and registrar, has been serving as interim director since Nov. 14. In addition, Joshua Mitchell, a project manager in the School of Education's Research Institute for Studies in Education, is working three-fourths time in IR data analysis to help with the workload until the new director arrives.

Former IR director Gebre Tesfagiorgis retired in June 2016. Associate director Sandy Gahn, who had been serving as interim director, retired from Iowa State last month.

Budlong joins Inside staff

December 06

Jeff Budlong (BUD-long) has joined the university relations staff as a writer for the weekly faculty-staff publication, Inside Iowa State. Budlong fills a writer position vacant since February.

An Iowa native and graduate of Wartburg College (B.A., journalism) in Waverly, Budlong brings 16 years of daily newspaper experience, most recently at the Sioux City Journal, including the last two years as sports editor.

The office of university relations is in Suite 201 of the Kingland Building at Lincoln Way and Welch Avenue. Budlong can be reached by phone at 294-5952, by email at jbudlong@iastate.edu.

Holiday packages should be going home

By Anne Krapfl
December 06

At first glance, having your holiday online purchases shipped to your office is the solution to two potential problems: front porch theft and nosy family members. What you might not realize is that personal use of ISU postal and parcel services (PPS) is against both university policy and state law.

If your package arrives on campus via the U.S. Postal Service, it is routed through PPS and violates the rules. If FedEx, UPS or Speed-Dee delivers a personal package to your office building, no rules are violated, said Robert Tott, PPS manager. So, it's worth noting how your purchases will be arriving. Amazon and Target send most of their deliveries through the U.S. Postal Service, he noted.

Two key concerns drive the policy, according to Tott. A high volume of personal mail makes the mailroom staff less efficient with the job they're supposed to do: quickly sorting and delivering university business mail. The other is the potential liability for Iowa State when a shipped item arrives to its purchaser and has been damaged somewhere along the way.

"To provide efficient service to campus, it's best we not spend our time in the middle of those types of situations," he said.

The seasonal hike in incoming packages hasn't been too dramatic yet, according to Tott, though his staff delivered some large boxes after Thanksgiving weekend that clearly were not university business.

No service Dec. 22-24

There's one more compelling reason this year to ship your purchases home. Tott noted that the way the university holidays line up, PPS will be closed the last three days before Christmas, Saturday, Dec. 22, through Monday, Dec. 24. During that window, his staff won't be around to deliver mail arriving on campus via the U.S. Postal Service.

In effect, Santa could be late.