Category: October 2024

Sip Sip Club

Students, faculty, and staff can join Sip Sip Club for a flat fee of $99.99 for the academic year. At that time, they get the exclusive Mason Dining mug and unlimited brewed coffee or tea from six campus locations until the end of the school year. The locations on campus include Starbucks, Dunkin’, Einstein Bros. Bagels, The Difference Baker, Mason Square Café, and Randall’s Café. And for all handcrafted beverages, members get a 10% discount.  

Holiday Parties

Starting to think about those Holiday Parties? Look no further than The Corner Pocket—the game room and arcade right here on campus! Available to rent for students, staff, and the community, it’s the perfect spot to make your next event unforgettable. With unlimited arcade games, event services, lighting, and more, you can create a party that stands out from the rest!

Charles “Cully” Stimson, rector, George Mason University, has been invited as our November Staff Senate meeting guest speaker.

Wednesday, November 6
10:00 a.m. to 11 a.m. – Guest Speaker
11 a.m. to noon – General Business Meeting

Constituents are invited to attend in person in Merten Hall, Room 1203 or join the meeting via Zoom*
Passcode: SS123
Call in: 301-715-8592 or 267-831-0333
Meeting ID: 931 0040 3860 / Passcode: 621190

The Staff Senate collected questions in advance for consideration. We will also be accepting live questions, time permitting.

 

The Staff Senate represents all classified and non-student wage employees at George Mason University. Working closely with university administration, we address concerns that have an impact on the quality of work-life for the George Mason community. The work of the senate is accomplished through open and continuous communication with its constituents.

*The Staff Senate is requiring that virtual attendees join our Staff Senate General Meetings with their Patriot Pass credentials. If you are already signed into Zoom using your George Mason-licensed Zoom account, you should not see a difference. If you are not already signed into your George Mason-licensed Zoom account, you will be told authentication is required to join, and prompted to sign in. For more information, please access our helpful FAQ document.

Greg Farley, director of University Sustainability, presented a University Sustainability Update during the October Staff Senate general business meeting. For those who missed the meeting, or would like to re-watch the session, the recording is now available here.

A few follows-ups to questions asked in the presentation are below:

Recycling at Science and Technology Update:

• The Better Bins Preview in Katherine Johnson Hall is on the 1^st floor only – largely because funding does not allow the pilot to expand the whole building (yet).
• Updated waste and recycling labels should go out institution-wide sometime in the next 8-10 months. The Office of Sustainability does not have a firm timeline yet, but the labels seen in the presentation will be coming to SciTech.
• Glass recycling for events is institution-wide now; when you put in a work request for an event, please specify if you need glass recycling.

Regarding surplus and small electronic waste (e-waste), the two processes are interlinked — please start the process by putting in a work request for Surplus.  Once the Surplus team finds the e-waste, they will coordinate with the Information Technology team to clear it and make sure it is recycled in the correct manner.

Learn more about the Sip Sip Club here.

 

 

 

The October Staff Senate meeting featured Dr. Gregory Washington, president of George Mason University.

For those who missed the meeting, or would like to re-watch the session, the recording is now available here. Below you will find some responses to follow up questions not addressed during the session.

Q: What is Mason Faculty and Staff currently at if we need so much to get to the 60th percentile?

A: An initial estimate is included in the slides presented at the meeting. A comprehensive classification and compensation analysis will need to be completed prior to providing additional guidance.

Q: For staff who have been here longer than 15 years, the salary compression is a far bigger issue. Yes, much has happened in the past 4 years or so. But for those of us who have been here a long time, it feels like the administration only focuses on the recent successes, and far less on how to get long-time, dedicated staff caught up.

A: Thank you for your comment. It’s harder to increase classified staff who have been here for a long time given state rules. The increases given across the board help everyone overall, but we understand that some have struggled due to compression. We will continue to work on it.

Q: We hear the Support Center is being outsourced to save money. Should we expect more departments to follow?

A: George Mason continues to pursue enhanced operational efficiency and productivity improvements that may result in organizational realignments in order to best meet the needs of a growing student body in an environment of constrained resources.

Q: How does President Washington feel about the removal of our information desks? Will we see an increase in budget for the Campus Information and Visitor Services team? They are the front lines when it comes to customer service and first impressions of the university.

A: In the last two years, we have reduced the number of information desks (from seven on three campuses) to only staff the Johnson Center Information Desk, while all of the other locations now have an interactive kiosk.

The Mason Square staff and the Mason Student Services Center currently utilize the Information Desk in Van Metre Hall; the Merten Hall Information Desk is now utilized by Event Support for operations in Merten Hall; and the SUB I Information Desk was completely removed during a renovation to Patriot Lounge a year ago.

Hours to the JC Information Desk have also been reduced to focus on times of traffic and when other services at the university are open. This team also supports answering calls on the University Switchboard, which has begun also responding to text messages.

Q: We have seen challenges in retaining Sr. Leadership personnel at the university, SVP, VP of HR. There is a significant cost to search firms, and hiring through interview processes, and then the onboarding time for the required individuals. What steps are being taken to hire personnel that want to stay at the university long-term?

A: The university makes every effort to avoid unnecessary organizational transitions through comprehensive recruitment and retention programs that strive to hire the best leaders to match the challenges and opportunities we face as an institution and continue moving George Mason forward. However, there are often periods of higher turnover at universities, particularly for talented leaders in a competitive market.

Q: You last referred us to talk to individual units regarding budgets but they referred us back to the university at large. There seems to be a disconnect between clarity on who has control of compensation/budget.

A: The university has set budget savings targets as part of a two-year plan to mitigate a shortfall in our Education & General budget. The plan and targets were established centrally with responsibility for determining a unit-specific plan given to unit leadership as to ensure that each department’s plans best reflected their individual needs. The plan is working and we expect to fully mitigate the E&G shortfall in FY25.

Q: For the west campus extension, would it be more ideal to build more student housing to reduce our commuter population to build more university life and retention? If we have more retention, it would increase the amount of students who stay for all four years, so we’d also likely see in an increase in alumni donations to bring in more money to the university as a whole.

A: The presentation mentions the possibility of a West Campus expansion potentially including the addition of 2,000 student beds. But nothing has been decided about when, if, or how we will expand West Campus. There is much stakeholder engagement to take place.