MSU PROFESSIONAL COUNCIL MEETING MINUTES
                           January 15, 2003
                                   
PRESENT: Leslie Schmidt, Glenn Puffer, Becky Ward, Jim Mitchell, Clyde
Carroll, Jim Manning.

The meeting was called to order by Chair Leslie Schmidt at 2:10 PM.
The minutes of the December 18, 2002, meeting were approved with the
following addition:
     Policies proposed by Personnel and Payroll Services - Kerry
     Evans, Dawn Watkins, Janell Barber.
          Three new policies have been proposed.  They are:
               - A Criminal History Record Check Policy
               - An Overpayments and Underpayments Policy
               - A Progressive Discipline Policy
          The policies were discussed with Professional Council.
          There were no significant objections expressed.
     As there was no further business, the meeting adjourned at 3:00
     PM.

Report from UPBAC - Jim Mitchell.
     - The committee is working on ways to evaluate academic programs.
     - It is hoped that data gathering will lead to a process of
     thinking about the strengths of MSU and where, in the future, to
     invest additional money.
     - With so many criteria being considered, programs may come out
     with similar ratings in the final analysis.
     - During it's first year, when there were budget reductions,
     UPBAC distributed them to the vice presidents and they made the
     reductions as they chose.  Last year, additional money was
     distributed to programs very specifically.  It has not yet been
     determined if vice presidents will make this year's reductions or
     if specific programmatic reductions will be made by UPBAC.
     However, the budget process is not being discussed in terms of
     reductions at this time.
     - UPBAC is continuing to discuss salary raises.
     - Student Affairs is implementing its own evaluation and
     benchmarking process, which may be of the greatest use
     internally.
     - During discussion, the point was made that the current program
     review is internal, so it is not objective..  Although a data
     rich environment is useful, it's possible for a group to have
     more data than it can use effectively.
     - A positive outcome of the current budgeting process is that the
     issues are being discussed by the entire campus, as well as with
     a wider audience.  The openness of the process is viewed as
     beneficial.  However, using a large groups to make decisions is
     difficult.

Professional Council website development - Discussion.
     - A site that is simple and clear, with links, is desirable.
     - Topics that would be useful on a website include meeting
     agendas and minutes, constitution and bylaws, membership, and
     links to sites such as Personnel/Payroll Services and the Board
     of Regents.
     - The Web Advisory Committee determines what is viewed on MSU's
     home page.  There are already many topics under the pull-down
     menus, so it may not be feasible to add specific pull downs for
     Faculty Council and Professional Council.
     - According to Glenn, ITC has data regarding how a website is
     entered, the amount of time it is used, and the number of
     hits.(http://webmstr.msu.montana.edu/).
     - Leslie will talk with Rich Howard about the proposed Faculty
     Council website so the two sites complement each other.

Other.
     - Council members would be interested to know if the university
     ombudsman is being used.
     - There will be an update on UPBAC and the budgeting process at
     the February 19 meeting.

As there was no further business, the meeting adjourned at 3:00 PM.