E-Colleague

Ryan Backman (IT) and wife Lisa welcomed a daughter, Sierra Grace, on May 9. The baby was born at Sunnyside Community Hospital and weighed 7 pounds, 11 ounces.

Fred Gregory (President’s Office) married Viola Artikova, a medical doctor from Uzbekistan, in Charlotte, N.C., on May 6. Viola, who just graduated from the University of North Carolina/Charlotte with a master’s degree in public health, will be returning to Uzbekistan to manage a USAID-funded program to develop policy and procedures with the Ministry of Education for mainstreaming children with disabilities into the school system. She will work both from Uzbekistan and Newberg on this project over the next year.

Patti Cooke’s (Plant Services) father died on May 27. James W. Meireis had been a groundskeeper at George Fox many years ago. He was with his family in Redmond, Ore., when he passed. A graveside service took place at Newberg Friends Cemetery on June 6.

Join the Undergraduate Teacher Education Department by donating a few hours of your time on Tuesday, June 23 to serve Sherwood Schools! The district is opening two new school next fall and need a GFU crew of students to help unpack all the new furniture and equipment. The serve project begins at 9:00 a.m.; any hours you can donate that day would be greatly appreciated. 

Contact Karen Buchanan at kbuchana@georgefox.edu to sign up.

Serve Day is in need of team leaders to serve on Wednesday, Sept. 9. Here is a rundown of team leader responsibilities:

• Attend a meeting on Sept. 2  to receive information about site
• Contact both site and RA prior to Serve Day to confirm details
• Supervise volunteers and ensure communication on Serve Day

If you are willing to be a team leader, please contact Rachel at serveday@georgefox.edu or 503-554-2326.

Just a reminder that the Bruin Den and everything else in Heacock Commons will be closed on Thursday, June 11, due to a PGE power conversion.

Employees are invited to attend an all-employee meeting from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Thursday, June 11, in Hoover 105. The meeting will provide employees an opportunity to receive campus updates. Your participation is strongly encouraged.

For those at the university’s regional sites, the meeting will be available for viewing at stream.georgefox.edu/live/commmtg.sdp. For best results, use Mozilla Firefox for your web browser, and your computer must have QuickTime Player installed. Simply copy the link into the address bar of your browser. If you have any problems, contact the Service Desk at ext. 2569.

A video recording of the meeting will be available for viewing the following day at itunesu.georgefox.edu.

Did you know that your university e-mail account is also a Google Account? (Note that it is just a Google Account, not a Google E-mail Account). Want to know more? Visit this link on the IT website.

You’re invited to a brown bag Lunch-n- Learn to hear how colleagues are using FaceBook (Rob Felton, Peter Crackenberg and Tamara Cissna)and Twitter (Robin Ashford).

When:     June 11, noon to 1 p.m.

Where:    Portland Center, Room 210

Cost:     Free

Bring:    Your lunch and, if you wish, your laptop.

R.S.V.P.  arussell@georgefox.edu

The University Store will be closed on Thursday, June 11, due to a power outage that will affect all of Heacock Commons.

Have an e-nnouncement you’d like to post? You can submit your news using a form online at georgefox.edu/online_community/e-nnouncement_request.

The submission form is no longer available on Bruindata.

Shane Roghaar, the university’s TIAA-CREF representative, will be on the Newberg campus Wednesday and Thursday, June 10-11. Sessions will meet in Hoover 104. You may make an appointment with him to discuss your investments (see the invitation posted on the HR/Benefits web page). Employees in other locations may contact Shane to arrange a telephone consultation at 503-452-6981.

There is a new class schedule available on the Web that displays classes in the familiar format used in Bruindata. Go to http://class.georgefox.edu to access the same MyGFU class schedule listing in a table format to assist with registration and advising.

You will notice changes in Bruindata today. As we continue the PeopleSoft implementation (MyGFU), some of the information in Bruindata has become outdated and is now available at MyGFU. We have removed data that is no longer current from Bruindata to prevent confusion.

Personal biographical information is being maintained in Bruindata; however, new students who begin classes for the first time in fall 2009 will not be in Bruindata and will only utilize PeopleSoft. IT is working on the PeopleSoft/Bruindata replacement portal this summer in preparation for fall semester.

– IT

The 09-10 application for the Juan Young Trust Scholarship is posted on the Student Financial Services website:

http://www.georgefox.edu/offices/stu_fin_srv/index.html

Juan Young is a former president of Kienow’s Food Stores.  This trust was set up to first help Kienow’s employees descendants with college expenses, therefore first priority must be given to them. 

If no applicants meet this criteria, the scholarship will be open to other candidates who fit the following qualifications: 

Oregon resident and under 21 years old on April 24, 2009

Four recipients will be chosen and the scholarship amount is $3,000 each.  Deadline is June 30, 2009.

If you haven’t already, please submit your May timesheet to your supervisor right away to ensure that you are paid on Wednesday, June 10. Please be sure your name and ID number are printed legibly at the top, and sign it before you give it to your supervisor. Thanks for taking care of this.– Human Resources

Attention student employee supervisors:

May student time sheets must be in HR no later than 3 p.m., Tuesday, June 2, so please have them hand-delivered to HR as soon as you have processed them. If you are not on the Newberg campus, please fax your student time sheets to 503-554-2186 and then send the originals to HR in campus mail. Also, please check to be sure all of your students have submitted their time sheets to you and follow up with any that have not.

And as always, we appreciate you checking for the following:

• Student’s name (be sure it is legible)
• Student’s ID number
• Cost center number
• Student’s signature (If the student forgot to sign it, please bring it to HR anyway. Do not send students to HR to sign time sheets.)
• Your signature

Reminder: If a student delivers his or her own time sheet to HR, it must be in a sealed envelope to comply with Federal Work Study regulations.

Thanks very much.

– Human Resources

If you have not already done so, please submit your May time sheet (support staff) or time-off report (administrators) this week. Please be sure it is complete, accurate and signed by both you and your supervisor before sending it to HR at Box 6108. Be sure to include your cost center and ID number. You can find your Employee ID number on your pay statement.

If your supervisor is not available to sign your time sheet by Friday, June 5, please send a copy to HR and keep the original until it has been signed.

Link to the Time-off Report: georgefox.edu/offices/hr/Timeoffreport.doc

Link to May time sheet: georgefox.edu/offices/hr/TimesheetMay09.xls

The PeopleSoft HR/Payroll System uses a calendar year instead of a fiscal year when calculating the one year’s accrual of vacation that employees can carry over into the next year. This means that even if your balance is more than a year’s accrual, you will not lose any at the end of June.

Since the PeopleSoft pay statements only show year-to-date information for vacation and sick leave balances and do not provide what used to be termed “excess vacation” balances (the number of hours that had to be used by June 30 of each year to avoid being lost), HR is working to create a tool to post on the HR website so employees can calculate how many hours of vacation they must use by Dec. 31 to avoid losing any. An e-nnouncement will be posted in the next several weeks with the link to this tool.

Beginning in July, supervisors will begin receiving quarterly vacation and sick leave reports with employees‚ monthly accruals, YTD earned, YTD used, and current balances.

Just a reminder that the Bruin Den is open every day from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. throughout the summer and will feature exhibition specials every Tuesday and Thursday for lunch.

Remember, too, that if you come to our office and buy $50 of Bruin Bucks we offer a 10 percent discount on all your purchases. This offer is available to everyone with a valid university ID card and can be used throughout the year anytime we’re open at either the Bruin Den or Villa Cafe.

Have a great summer and thank you for putting up with our construction in Klages!

– Denny Lawrence, Bon Appetit

You are invited to join university alumni, parents and friends at Safeco Field for a catered barbecue lunch in Lookout Landing and a Seattle Mariners game against the Minnesota Twins on Saturday, June 6.

Lunch begins at 11:30 a.m. and the first pitch is at 1:10 p.m. The cost for this exciting event is $40. Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Please register by Monday, June 1, online at georgefox.edu/alumni/events or call Vickie Timmons (University Relations) at 503-554-2131.

We hope to see you there!

Phase one of the Edwards Hall roof project will begin this Thursday, May 28. This should take approximately eight days. Phase two is yet to be scheduled. Please be aware that there will be large debris trucks and a material crane in the area.