Transcript: Staff Council

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jennifer Klunk, and it is my honor to continue to serve as Staff Council President for this year. I’d like to start off by paraphrasing the Staff Council mission statement, which is part of our bylaws.

Staff Council is an advisory body through which elected staff members convey information and make recommendations to the University President regarding the interests and concerns of Staff.

We are constituted by the University President, and by the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System, with the goal of continually improving university operations and the well-being of UT Dallas’ staff.

So, what does that mean, exactly?

Through Staff Council, members of UT Dallas staff community make suggestions for change that have an impact on all staff. We are many voices, and together we are a stronger, more effective community. We asked staff to tell us their thoughts on remote work, and you did – we received over a thousand responses, which were reported to campus leadership with the aim of finding a workable hybrid model for more staff.

You asked us to address concerns around parking, and we did – our proposal resulted in a partial refund of parking costs to those staff on campus during the beginning of the pandemic. We continue to work towards the concrete concerns around employment equity, looking to provide new approaches to staff recruitment and retention using historical employment data.

These are just a few of the many topics addressed over the last year. More details can be found in our annual report on the Staff Council website.

This year we challenged you to help us come up with a new piece of artwork that represents Staff Council, and you did. With the words ‘Service, Advocacy, Impact’, we move forward more committed than ever to speaking the concerns of staff into the decision-making processes of campus.

We are in a time of dramatic change, both globally and at UTD. I think it’s fair to say none of us would have predicted the last 3 years. But change takes time, and we continue the hard work of being agents of change.

This includes improving relationships across campus, building bridges between all levels of the campus community.

Sometimes hard questions are asked, including this one – When will staff become a priority at UTD?

This is a direct quote from a suggestion submitted to Staff Council, and while I am hopeful for positive change always, I have to acknowledge that morale has been a problem. A member of campus community once told me, “I just want to make UTD as great as I know it can be.”

I want to echo these sentiments – I believe in UT Dallas as an institution, a workplace, and as an agent of positive change in the metroplex and beyond. To continue to move forward, we must face the challenges directly, and work towards a more equitable outcome for every staff member of our campus community.