CIRES Members Council Meeting July

Attendance

• Mistia Zuckerman, NSIDC (Chair)
• Jon Kofler, GML (Secretary)
• Eric James, GSL (Membership Chair)
• Alessandro Franchin, CSL
• Dawn Umpleby, Earth Lab
• Adam Woods, NCEI
• Molly Hardman, East Campus
• Michael Toy, GSL
• Lucia Harop, ESRL (zoom)
• Antonietta Capotondi, PSL (zoom)
• Amanda Mortonm Outreach (zoom)
• Candida Dewes, PSL (zoom)
• Aaron Sweeney, NCEI (zoom)’
• Gaby Petron, GML (zoom)

Location: NSIDC Research Laboratory No. 2
Meeting called to order: 12:36

1. CIRES Picnic

Mistia and Alessandro raised the idea of restarting the CIRES picnic with Christine Weidemeyer and she thought it unlikely for Waleed to approve it, because of his concern about accountability for work hours (people taking the day off and not going to the picnic).  Ale: We need to be creative.  Discussion: We could do it on a Saturday to circumvent that issue or after work / at the end of a work day.  Ideas for location are Waneka lake and Boulder reservoir.    Action item: Mistia will reach out to Waleed to see how he feels about it and start with our original request but modify it with alternate ideas if needed.  Aim for September this year.

2. Career Track & HR

RS1 to RS2 discrepancy.  At NSIDC it is required to bring in get grant money to advance to a new level. This is different in other parts of CIRES.  Consistency and clear guidelines about career track advancement will be elevated to high priority for Angela Knight (the new HR director who started on Monday).   Action item:  Mistia will invite Angela to the next soonest CMC meeting Angela is available to attend.    Salary consistency and other topics can be raised with Angela at that meeting too.

3. Meeting with Christine Weidemeyer

Ale and Mistia met with Christine Weidemeyer and covered a few topics:

- Town Hall Meetings:  Christine will schedule town hall meetings as soon as possible.  Ale and Mistia emphasized the importance of town hall meetings to Christine.  Waleed had announced that he would be having more town hall meetings, and the CMC would like to hold him accountable to this.

- Christine also mentioned Active shooter training on July 18.  Alessandro sent out an additional email to his cluster about active shooter drill.  The drill was initiated by the Federal protective service.

4. CIRES proposals Issue

No news here.  It will be revisited at the next meeting.

5. Travel Reimbursement for Shipping Breast Milk.

A new mom in CIRES one of the CIRES clusters was away from home for a week on work travel and used a service to ship breast milk back home at a cost $200. She asked CIRES travel if she could be reimbursed and was told it is considered a personal expense.  Could she claim this as a travel expense?  Are there regulations/rules around this at the state level? Or CIRES?.  Action item: person who raised issue email Mistia and Mistia will bring it up to CIRES on her behalf.  Some companies have gone on record as covering this expense for their traveling employees and this could be used in an effort to have this expense reimbursed.  The possibility making use of reduced shipping rates of the University is also raised.

6.  CMC Member Reimbursement

Mistia (separate agenda item):  CMC members should see dollar added to their paycheck.  Ideas are tossed around about having a next set of payments to bring us up to date in October.   This way, the pay rates can be made coincident with the elections in October.   CU HR is accommodating to anything we decide on, so the logistics of how this is easiest for the membership chair to manage.  Eric James implemented the previous method, and it will require work to change it.  It is unclear to him now what the most efficient path forward is, but possibly with a small group details to determine the best way forward could be hashed out.  No decisions to make changes are made at this meeting.

7. Housing

Ale:  Waleed is going to send the letter Ale drafted and the CMC voted on and approved to housing. 

Meeting Adjourned 13:30