An important message from some singing raisins

The California Raisins

Don't believe the rumors!

Unless you hear them through the UAF Grapevine.

We love this website! Seek, and you shall find answers to even your most obscure questions.

You got skills?

Get some through Skillsoft!

All three MAUs kicked in the necessary funding for three more years of this program!

Check out Books 24 x 7.

Get Toasted

Ana Richards, Director of Multicultural Affairs, and Jackie Debevec, Career Services Dept, are establishing a UAF Toastmasters Club.

Toastmasters teaches you to speak comfortably in front of a group, how to organize an event, and how to become a leader in the workplace and community. There is also the opportunity to become a mentor to those that come in behind you.

Meetings will be held on Tuesdays, starting January 27th from 5:30 - 6:30 pm in the Wood Center E/F Ballroom.

Budget and compensation revisited

A 4.5% "grid increase" has been requested for the FY2010 budget and it will probably be the last time a "grid increase" is used to include our step increases within the budget request. It looks like the System will not be going back to the old way of doing step increases, either, and are investigating other options. The Staff Compensation Task Force is looking into other ideas, including merit-based raises (possibly with evaluations required), using an end-of-year bonus concept, and others. They're always looking for ideas, so feel free to pass them on, if you have one! (Once one is decided upon and approved, it won't be put in place until FY2010 at the earliest we're told).

There is also a high probability that health care premiums will be going up, as early as next July 1. There's still discussion and calculations to be made to determine exactly how much it can go up; we will let you know as soon as we hear anything.

Another item the SCTF is working on is the fact that the "grid increase" request for FY2010 is 4.5%. Being that the request is based on the cost-of-living in Anchorage (which is currently already at 4.6%), the chance that the new rates almost definitely won't cover the cost-of-living increase in addition to the health care premium increase is incredibly high. The SCTF is meeting next week and hopes to get some answers and ideas out of it.

Escort service

Staff Council didn't think non-retained employees deserved to be publicly humiliated by having police escort them off campus as they vacated their jobs. It creates an embarrassing scene and is unnecessary for the majority of the non-retained. So new protocol is no escort service unless the Vice Chancellor decides there's the potential for violent, temperamental behavior.

Skillsoft Skillsof Skills Ski S

Skillsoft may disappear!

Statewide won't pay for it and it's up to each MAU to pay their share with total cost of $195K for a three year subscription, with our current subscription ending January 2009.

Numbers are climbing and there continues to be more and more Skillsoft students/users. The safety-related courses are definitely the most popular.

We'll give you a final update on Skillsoft's future next month.

8.2 or 8.3

I think this may matter to some of you and those that care probably already know that Banner will be upgraded next November 2009.

That's all.