| January 2024 Office News + Updates | Happy New Year!
We look forward to starting the new year with a celebration of the many things we've accomplished in the Office of the Registrar. The 2023 Year in Review will be shared next week, highlighting achievements from each team. We recognize that a few bullet points are not sufficient to encompass all the incredible work done by our staff throughout the year, but this format gives a quick glimpse into what we do to help our campus community thrive.
In addition to celebrating the work of our teams, we'll be looking to emphasize your achievements in your performance review. Performance reviews covering Jan. 1–Dec. 31, 2023, are due internally on March 22. We'll be hosting two fireside chats with Tracey Pritchard from HR to support our staff and supervisors during the review process. Details about the chats can be found below and additional information about performance reviews will be shared in the coming weeks.
Please continue to share your news, celebrations, or other ideas for these monthly newsletters. Contributions may be sent kristan-hellige@uiowa.edu at any time.
Have a wonderful year! | | | Fireside Chats for Performance Reviews | | | | Fireside Chat: Performance Reviews for Employees Thursday, Feb. 1 at 10 a.m. on Zoom
Tracey Pritchard from HR will help us with considerations from the employee's point of view as we go through the performance review process. Some topics that may be covered are:
- How do I write my goals?
- What if I disagree with my supervisor’s ranking?
- How do these impact my salary?
- How much do I need to write?
- What if I didn’t meet my goals last year?
- Do I need to submit evidence?
Please feel free to submit questions in advance to Sara Sullivan. | | | Fireside Chat: Performance Reviews for Supervisors Thursday, Feb. 15 at 2 p.m. via Zoom
Tracey Pritchard from HR will help us with considerations from the supervisor's point of view as we go through the performance review process. Some topics that may be covered are:
- How do I evaluate the goals of those I supervise? Do I have to write their new ones?
- How much do I need to write? Can I use bullet points, or does it need to be sentences? Can you give examples?
- Does HR ever look at these?
- I am nervous about the rating impacting a salary. How does my perspective impact my team’s financial situation?
- Can I require feedback from other people? Can I require certain things in goals?
- What if the conversation gets emotional?
| | | | Webinar: Can you hear me now? Wednesday, Jan. 24 at noon via Zoom
Your voice matters. Employee voice – an employee’s expression of new ideas or problems that need to be resolved – has a tremendous impact on organizations. For a variety of reasons, too many employees don’t feel heard or don’t feel their input matters.
Join assistant professor Daniel Newton as he discusses evidence-based ideas for speaking up and provides suggestions so you are heard and can make a difference.
Register to attend Can you hear me now? | | | Fireside Chat: HR by Tracey Thursday, Jan. 25 at 10 a.m. via Zoom
Please join us as Tracey Pritchard, our new HR rep, demystifies and promotes resources available to YOU.
Topics might include:
- Time off
- Conflict management
- Performance reviews
- Recruitment/retention
- Professional development
- Exploring your fit
- Wellness
- Benefits
Please bring any questions or topics you are interested in learning more about! | | | | Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthdate has been a tradition at the University of Iowa since 1969, and the national holiday has been observed through human rights programs since its inception in 1986. In 1990, the university initiated the Human Rights convocation program.
An official university holiday was designated in 1995 to provide an opportunity to engage the University community in a discussion of the human values that the King holiday epitomizes. These initial events have grown into a campus-wide celebration that engages faculty, staff, students, and community members to give lectures, discussions, and cultural arts presentations. Learn more about the Martin Luther King Celebration of Human Rights Week.
The National Day of Racial Healing aims to create a brighter future, support and build communities, and take the steps to create transformative change. It was intentionally placed the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to provide a day of reflection regarding the year-round pursuit for racial equity and takes place on Jan. 16, 2024.
Learn more about additional campus DEI celebrations happening during January. | | | Microsoft Copilot Microsoft Copilot is now available and gives University of Iowa faculty and staff access to a generative AI-powered platform with enterprise data protection.
Copilot can help employees generate content, analyze data, summarize documents, create images, write code, learn new skills and much more. Copilot has access to current internet data, enabling it to provide up-to-date responses to requests. Copilot does NOT have access to your Microsoft 365 data such as your email, OneDrive files, Teams data, etc. Copilot does not remember the history of what you have previously asked and any data that you submit is not available to Microsoft and is not used to train the model.
Copilot is a more secure and enterprise-focused alternative to consumer services such as ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Bing Chat. Using Copilot will better protect UI data and intellectual property.
Learn more about how to use Copilot. | | | | RegiSTARS Special thanks to the commencement team and all the volunteers from the Office of the Registrar for another successful weekend of commencement ceremonies. These events would not be possible without the support of our staff! We thank everyone who helped answer questions leading up to commencement weekend, and to those who chose to spend their Saturday morning with us this fall.
Check out the photo gallery from the fall 2023 ceremonies.
We’ll need even more volunteers in the spring, so please consider saving the date of Saturday, May 11 to join us in celebrating our graduates. | | | What We're Reading, Watching, or Listening To We borrowed this idea from The Daily Iowan as a way to share some of the interesting things we're reading, watching, or listening to. Please share your ideas for future newsletters!
The Power of Having a Growth Mindset by Tiffani Robertson, AACRAO Connect
how to write an out-of-office message by Alison Green, Ask a Manager | | | | Nominate a Colleague for a Staff Council Award You may nominate a deserving staff member for the Board of Regents Staff Excellence Award, UI Outstanding Staff Award, the David J. Skorton Staff Excellence Award, the Richard E. Gibson Award or the Staff Award for Distinguished Leadership in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Call for 2024 nominations close on Friday, Jan. 12, 2024. Please reach out to the committee co-chairs with questions at staffawards@uiowa.edu.
Nominate a colleague here!
| | | Highlights from the Leadership Team | The Office of the Registrar's Leadership Team meets weekly to discuss ongoing matters in the office. To be more transparent about what is discussed during these meetings, we will highlight key topics that were covered throughout the last month.
- Planning for the 2023 Year in Review message. Leadership team members reached out to their teams for contributions and formed three or four bullet points highlighting team achievements throughout the year.
- The migration of Wiki to SharePoint is complete. The new SharePoint sites serve as archives, and we continue to discuss the best way to create a central repository for all documentation that is also compliant with accessibility standards. The biggest challenge at this time is that there is a lot of variation in documentation from how it was created to where it's currently stored.
- An offer has been made for the athletic eligibility and compliance coordinator position. Details will be shared with the office soon.
- Planning for performance reviews and acknowledging the anxiety that they can bring to both staff and supervisors.
- Will two hold fireside chats with Tracey Pritchard from HR to discuss reviews - one for staff and one for supervisors with the hope that we can provide tools to everyone to make the annual review a positive experience.
- Additional information will be coming from our office later this month and our internal deadline for submitting reviews is March 22, 2024.
- Researching how other areas on campus use student employees, specifically those who work within MAUI.
- How might we begin using student employees in our office again?
- Recognizing that employing students in our office will help support the future of the registrar profession.
- Goal to have the section and hours changes project go live before the start of the spring semester.
- Revisiting the need for a supervisors meeting to support staff in the office who supervise at least one person. A series of questions were sent to all individuals with supervisory status to determine interest in holding these meetings, possible frequency, and potential topics for discussion.
- The Office of the Registrar and Treasury Operations Memorandum of Understanding has been signed and goes into effect Jan. 1, 2024.
- The leadership team is continuing its work with the Ombudsperson through a series of in-person meetings in February and March.
Please feel free to reach out to your supervisor or a member of the leadership team if you have any questions! | | | |
