The Daily Bruin

The George Fox basketball programs have always had incredible fans. So we’ve created Bruin Madness to bring all our fans together to cheer our teams on to victory! The second “Madness” event is scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 14.

Bring your family and join alumni, students, parents, community members and other fans for amazingly delicious tailgate fare and exciting activities at the Indoor Tailgate Party Dinner and KidZone. Then head off to Miller Gymnasium to cheer on the Bruins as they take on Puget Sound in a doubleheader. After the game, young alumni (those from the past 10 years) are invited to head over to Abby’s Pizza to continue the celebration.

Don’t miss your best chance to catch this year’s Bruin basketball teams in action, all while you connect with hundreds of other George Fox alumni, parents and students.

Schedule

4 p.m. – Indoor Tailgate Party Dinner & KidZone
6 p.m. – Women’s Basketball Game
8 p.m. – Men’s Basketball Game
10 p.m. – Young Alumni Night at Abby’s

Visit alumni.georgefox.edu or call ext. 2131 for more information and to purchase tickets.

As security has been patrolling campus, we have noticed some very unusual white staff hangtag parking permits being “hung” in some unusual ways! If your white hangtag is broken, please bring the pieces to the security office and we can update your registration on the spot and issue you a new permit. If you have LOST your permit, or need one for a second or third vehicle, the cost is only $5 each (cash only), and they can be purchased in the security office.

Portland employees: If you come to the Newberg campus frequently, please go on MyGFU and register your vehicle, and a gratis staff/faculty or adjunct hangtag will be mailed to your Portland campus mailbox.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call ext. 2090 during office hours.

The Employee Council site‘s “Readings and Resources for Managers and Supervisors” section has a new article: “Top Ten Reasons Why Large Companies Fail To Keep Their Best Talent.”

Although we aren’t a large company, the list of ideas for promoting satisfaction and development of employees is still applicable. This short article provides supervisors with ideas for encouraging employees, and gives all of us some ideas for self-development and contribution to our institution.

We’ve discovered that vacation and sick-leave balances on our Dec. 30 pay statements do not include accruals for December. This issue is the result of our December pay day being a day earlier than usual. These accruals are set up in PeopleSoft to run on the last day of the month (even if it is not a business day). At the time payroll was run for our Dec. 30 pay day, these accruals had not yet been updated, so the YTD “Earned” and “End Balance” on employees’ pay statements do not include the vacation and sick leave hours that you earned in December.

The good news is that these accruals have now been manually processed in the system, so leave balances on our Jan. 31 pay statements will correctly reflect December and January leave accruals. We will do our best to avoid this problem in the future.

And while we are on the topic of vacation and sick leave, please be sure to submit your December time sheets and time-off reports right away. Links to these forms can be found on this page.

– HR

A new year, a new month … It is time to think about nominating a colleague for the first Employee of the Month award for 2012. If you know of someone whose recent contributions make him or her worthy of this honor, please take a few minutes to send an e-mail to Peggy Kilburg that includes a specific summary of the person’s contributions (past 30 days or so) and any other information that you believe makes this person deserving of this award.

The President’s Executive Leadership Team will select the recipient from the nominations submitted and he or she will be recognized and awarded a $100 gift card to The Allison at our community meeting later this month.

All university offices will be closed Monday, Jan. 2, to observe the New Year’s holiday.

Student supervisors, please submit the rest of your students’ December time sheets to HR right away — by Wednesday, Jan. 4, by noon. Pay day is Friday, Jan 13, because Monday, Jan. 16, is a holiday.

Please be sure the student’s name, ID number and cost center number is legible on each one. Please total them, sign them, and be sure the students did as well. (If the student is not available to sign it, please send it without the signature, and HR will contact the student.) Please do not send students to HR to sign their time sheets.

Federal Work Study regulations require that students delivering their own time sheets must have them in a sealed envelope.

If you happen to still have any paperwork to submit on a student hired in December, please hand-deliver it right away — no later than Tuesday, Jan 3. We need to set up students in the system before the time sheets arrive.

Thanks very much.

– HR

Did you get peanuts for Christmas?

Mail Services can use all of the peanuts and other packing materials that you received. Please bring them to Mail Services and they will gladly be put to use by other shippers – including those from departmenst on campus.

Thanks!

– Mail Services

Marketing Communications is collecting orders for name tags. For those who have regular face-to-face contact with the public and need to order a name tag, you may now submit and view your name tag requests at this link online.

Be sure to provide the name of the person for whom the name tag is needed; title or department; and the budget to be charged. Examples of title or department include: Dean of Students/Student Life and Admissions Counselor/Admissions. The next order will be placed Friday, Jan. 13.

Now is the time to submit your request for business cards. The marketing communications office will be processing a business card order soon. Place your order directly with B&B Print Source by Friday, Jan. 13. Please create a new “Individual Account” on the form.

Contact Danette Newkirk (Marketing Communications) if you have any questions.

It’s time to order university stationery. For order instructions, go to the marketing communications website. You will continue to purchase all non-departmental stationery (including “second-sheet letterhead”) through the university’s Print Services.

Orders are due by Thursday, Jan. 12.

Minimum wage in Oregon is going up to $8.80 for 2012. Your students will love it, but it could be a challenge to manage your budget. Please remind your student employees that their Jan. 13 check will still reflect the 2011 rate since it covers hours worked in December.

And, as a reminder, remember to turn in December time sheets for each of your students as soon as they have worked their last shift of the month! Our processing time in January is critically short with the New Year and MLK holidays. Thank you!

– HR

To simplify the process of preparing for a new semester, IT automatically created a FoxTALE site for all of your spring and summer 2012 courses that are listed in MyGFU.

Spring 2012 FoxTALE course sites have “2112” in the title, and summer 2012 FoxTALE course sites have “2114” in the title. Please note that May term courses are included in summer 2012. Each FoxTALE site automatically enrolls students, but the sites are hidden from students. You have control over when, or even if, you make a site available (visible) to the students.

See the FoxTALE for Faculty web page for more details. Questions? Contact Gloria Doherty (gdoherty@georgefox.edu) or Sheila Abercrombie (sabercro@georgefox.edu).

All university offices will be closed on Friday, Dec. 23, as well as Monday and Tuesday, Dec. 26-27, to observe the  Christmas holiday.

The Newberg and Portland campuses have adopted a new tobacco-free campus policy beginning Jan. 1, 2012. While tobacco use by traditional undergraduate students and employees has already not been allowed (on or off campus), guests have been permitted to smoke outside buildings on university property. The new policy prohibits smoking and all forms of tobacco use everywhere on-campus by any person.

For more information and FAQs, please see this Tobacco-Free web page or contact Mark Pothoff (Student Life) at ext. 2313 or mpothoff@georgefox.edu.

The end of the year is quickly approaching – three business days, to be exact! Gifts from George Fox employees make it possible for students to receive tremendous opportunities for spiritual formation, vocational development and character growth.

To see videos and students’ testimonies of how these types of opportunities at George Fox deepen their relationship with God and prepare them to transform culture, please go to giving.georgefox.edu.

For an easy way to give via payroll deduction, please follow this link.

If you want to receive 2011 tax credit, please make sure your donation meets the following deadlines:

• Checks must be postmarked no later than Dec. 31.
• Online donations must be processed no later than Dec. 31 at midnight (Pacific time).
• Credit card payments must be processed in our office no later than Dec. 30 at 5 p.m. (Pacific time). To reach us on Dec. 30, please call Kristi Hagen at 503-554-2111.

Many thanks to those who have already responded! You make such a difference in students’ lives.

Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

If you have any questions, please contact Mandria Montplaisir, director of annual giving, at mmontplaisir@georgefox.edu.

IT is offering two webinars during the first week of January:

• FoxTALE Introduction, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 9-10 a.m.
• FoxTALE Assignments, Thursday, Jan. 5, 4-4:30 p.m.

Join IT throughout the spring for 30-minute webinars on FoxTALE, FoxFiles and Google Docs. View the schedule and sign up at this link. Information on how to join each webinar will be delivered via e-mail 24 hours prior to the webinar. We’ll continue to add webinars and post additional announcements.

Questions? Contact Sheila Abercrombie at sabercro@georgefox.edu.

Faculty members: As you enter final grades for fall 2011, please note the following change. If you enter an “F” grade for a student, this student’s name will be populated in a row at the bottom of your grade roster. You will be asked to select one of three “F Grade Attendance Reasons”: Never Attended, Attended Until Term Completed, and Attended Until (for this option you will need to enter the student’s last date of attendance in your class).

This feature replaces the FSA grade that has been used for students who stopped attending but are still listed on the grade roster. If you have questions, please contact your enrollment counselor.

As a reminder, the university has free tickets to the 2012 Build, Remodel & Landscape Show, scheduled Jan. 6-8 at the Oregon Convention Center. The event is an opportunity to get started on your home improvement plans.

The show will feature displays and exhibits by kitchen and bath remodelers; window, siding and roofing companies; landscaping consultants; and many other vendors. Hours of the show are Friday, noon to 8 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Newberg employees, please stop by the Information Desk in Stevens Center to pick up your free tickets (normally $6 each); limit two per employee. Portland and Salem employees, you can request yours by phone or e-mail by contacting Barbi Doran (ext. 2099 or bdoran@georgefox.edu), and we will send them to you in campus mail (please note that Barbi is the contact person).

More than 200 students will receive undergraduate and graduate diplomas at the university’s midyear commencement ceremony on Saturday, Dec. 17, in the Wheeler Sports Center. Seating begins at 1 p.m., and the ceremony will start at 2 p.m.

Tickets are not required; however, seating is limited to 10 guests per graduate. At 1:45 p.m., a live broadcast of the ceremony will be available to watch at this link.

Chris Skaggs, who graduated from George Fox with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1999, will serve as commencement speaker. He is a 12-year veteran of the Web and mobile software industry and founder of Soma Games, a video gaming company with a Christian worldview.