Staff Education Coordinating Team (SECT) Minutes for August 10, 2004
Present: Sue Baughman, Maggie Cunningham, Sue Koutsky, Johnnie Love, Tony Prosseda, Ambika Sankaran (guest), Maggie Saponaro (timekeeper), and Jane Williams (notetaker).
SECT Membership and Meetings
Two new members were welcomed: Tony Prosseda from McK Reserves/Access Services (and the Libraries’ attendee at the campus Leadership Development Institute,) and Sue Koutsky from Preservation/Technical Services. Ambika Sankaran, the new graduate assistant working with Sue Baughman, Johnnie Love and Maggie Saponaro, was also welcomed as a guest to the meeting. Maggie Saponaro noted that the new Staff Learning and Development graduate assistant, Jennifer Muter, will begin work next week and will attend SECT meetings as her schedule permits. The last day of work for Marissa Peterfreund, the former GA for Staff Learning, was August 5. Neither Bob Kackley, the new representative for the Peer Training Collective or his substitute, Bob Garber, could be at this meeting.
Outcomes:
- The group agreed that six of the nine members will constitute a quorum.
- SECT members will begin rotating the role of facilitator as well as those of notetaker and timekeeper, starting with Jane for September. The facilitator will also develop the agenda for the meeting s/he facilitates.
May Meeting Minutes Review/Approval
The minutes were approved. Maggie will post minutes on the SECT website.
Organizational Culture and Diversity Assessment and SECT
Jane said that SECT should play an important role in following up on the findings and recommendations of the May survey of library staff, in which 200 of 240-250 total staff participated. Results may be available in September.
SECT Evaluation
The group brainstormed various ways to follow up on the evaluation of SECT by the group on its first anniversary in May.
- Sue Koutsky will ask Technical Services for a backup for her for SECT meetings and Maggie Saponaro will ask Joyce to ask the Information Technology Division for a backup for her.
- Maggie Saponaro or Jennifer will try to represent the Staff Learning and Development Office at every SECT meeting possible.
- Sue Baughman said that communicating with departments or work groups between meetings is important.
- Sue Koutsky noted that more PR about SECT and Staff Learning, in addition to Library Matters articles, will help with staff awareness.
- Johnnie asked if emotional intelligence, scheduled as the topic for her brown-bag this week with supervisors, should reach a larger audience in the Libraries.
- Sue Koutsky and Tony commented on how to find out from their departments what the training needs are. Jane noted that not all departments or teams are represented on SECT and that the original idea for SECT was to have every group that does training represented.
- Sue Baughman said that more formal, longer-term assessment of learning activities may be needed.
- Maggie Saponaro acknowledged that the expanded Staff Learning calendar is helping to reduce simultaneous scheduling of events.
- Williams suggested SECT consider developing a work plan for Jan.-Dec. 2005.
- Johnnie mentioned that staff sometimes ask her how to get a record of all the workshops they’ve attended. She refers them to Maggie Saponaro, who can give them precise information (including dates) if a workshop has only been offered once, but only the title of a workshop attended if it was offered more than once. Each person’s Learning Curriculum notebook has a checklist for the individual to keep up to date. It is also on the Web at http://www.lib.umd.edu/groups/learning/LCWorkshopChecklist.pdf . Maggie Saponaro will consider an article for Library Matters about the checklist and its uses for PRDs and workplans as well as applications for promotion or permanent status for librarians.
How To Begin To Explore Computer Training
Maggie Saponaro read some questions Trudi posed regarding computer training:
- Is it time to formally review how well overall this type of training is meeting staff’s needs?
- Should we rethink who is teaching the classes (OIT or library staff)?
- How much prework, if any, are staff asked to do?
- How much and what kind of followup should there be?
- How are people screened for advanced training?
Maggie Saponaro distributed a summary sheet of spring and summer 2004 computer training sessions of the Learning Curriculum. Three of the eleven sessions had outside trainers and four were offered on request. Handouts for the computer workshops are stand-alone tutorials. These handouts could be the subject of a Library Matters article.
Outcomes:SECT’s September meeting will deal in more detail with the questions about computer-based training. SECT members will try to find out from their colleagues their levels of satisfaction with past training, plus new needs. There may need to be a long-term assessment of this component of the Learning Curriculum. The survey done a couple of years ago to guide subsequent training might be redone next year. Sue Koutsky asked about computer competencies for new staff and Sue Baughman added that topic might be a project for SECT to develop.
Round Robin
- Maggie Saponaro reported she will teach HTML and Excel for new graduate assistants this fall. She noted the Element K is not presently available to campus through OIT.
- She is not sure that type of Research Port training may take place under ITD’s auspices.
- Tony said that circulation training for Aleph 16 may occur in December or January. Self-check is fairly intuitive and should require little or no training.
- Johnnie noted that the morning of August 25 is orientation for new graduate assistants.
- Maggie Cunningham said that Library Safari will indeed be done again and training for it is unofficially set for August 26 and 27.
Next Meeting:
Tuesday, September 14th, 1:00-2:00, MCK B0111 (ITD Conference ROom)
Time keeper: Chestnut; Notetaker: Baughman; Facilitator: Williams
Topics: Computer training, OCDA, Round-Robin
