Kris Racina - HR Director

UAF Staff Council would like to welcome Kris Racina. She is the new HR Director and was able to attend our March 20th meeting. During her attendance she shared her philosphy for HR. She believes Human Resources is a support function. It is a means to an end and it is there to assist UAF in meeting the mission statement in balancing campus missions, complying with State and Federal Laws. HR should be a resource to encourage working out of issues between supervisors and employees. Termination should be a last resort.

When asked about the staff levels at UAF HR, she stated that was not an immediate concern as there were some restructuring and cross training that could be done to alliveate some of the bottleneck.

Customer Services & Financial Commitment

Pat Pitney, Vice Chancellor of Administrative Services was a guest speaker at the Staff Council meeting Friday, December 12th. She wanted the council to know that her and her staff are committed to following the Chancellors vision of customer service being the number one priority. Their customer service is mostly focused on staff and faculty as we are the ones that deal with students and the public and believe their customer service mindset will trickle down through us.

Ms. Pitney currently has four goals for the current fiscal year:

1. Rationalize the budget process internal to UAF and fully understand all aspects
2. Figure out the funding for Life Sciences and Energy Research
3. Business Structure
4. Risk Management

She reminded the council that when UAF commits funds to a project that those funds are pulled from another area of the university.