By MARTY LEVINE
Staff Council will be voting through June 10 for five officer positions (president, executive vice president, vice president of finance, vice president of public relations and parliamentarian) and held a question-and-answer session between the two candidates for the top office at its last meeting on May 17.
Incumbent president Lindsay Rodzwicz and challenger Amy Kleebank — currently the public relations vice president — agreed broadly but cited a few areas of individual emphasis as Staff Council’s once and future leader.
Rodzwicz (administrator of Bioengineering’s Coulter Program in the Swanson School of Engineering) said that her top issues for Staff Council are compensation; shared governance and unionization; and staff engagement.
“We need to continue to advocate through shared governance about compensation for Pitt staff,” she said, citing the monthly meetings Staff Council officers hold with HR head James Gallaher and the more frequent meetings between the president and Gallagher.
Rodzwicz also said that the organization must continue to “ensure that staff have the opportunity to have dialogue internally,” with “more virtual and in-person chances to connect.”
She noted that the campus climate here “is overall very siloed,” depending upon where you work at Pitt, and hoped that meetings she has been having with Equity, Diversity and Inclusion office head Clyde Wilson Pickett can help shape the group’s initiatives over the next year or two. She also anticipated that the 2023-24 Year of Discourse and Dialogue, as directed by the provost’s office, will help to “drive forward change to Pitt’s culture.”
“I believe the shared governance system is effective (but) sometimes moves more slowly than some of us would like,” she added. But she pointed to new partnerships Staff Council has created in the past year with the University Senate, the Student Government Board and Pitt’s post-doctoral student group as positive signs, and assumes Staff Council will have just as much “open dialogue” with incoming chancellor Joan Gabel as it has had with current chancellor Patrick Gallagher.
Rodzwicz said her hard work, dedication and analytical approach would be assets for a second term. “And I think I am not shy about asking the tough questions,” she added. She also pointed to her work in previous Staff Council offices as the group pushed the University to institute paid parental leave in 2017 and more recently keep Bellefield and Trees Halls available for recreation and institute an emergency fund for staff aid.
“The accomplishments I’m most proud of are (examples) of how shared governance really works,” she said.
Amy Kleebank (art director in the Office of University Communications and Marketing) said that pay equity was her biggest issue for Staff Council to focus upon: “We need to enforce the fact that loyalty in this University means a lot and people who have been here a long time need to know that they are valued.”
She also said greater participation by Staff Council members was very important: “We are volunteers... (and) it is the same group of people who show up.” The organization needs “more opportunities for members to step into their roles,” with the group maybe requiring more of a commitment from members but also offering more professional development opportunities to them.
She also suggested that “a lot of people don’t even know what Staff Council does. … We have such a high turnover here” among Pitt employees that “we have to remind them what we do.” She cited her role on the ad hoc committee renaming Parran Hall in 2018 as a tough but important decision in which she participated.
Kleebank was hopeful as well that shared governance would continue to be emphasized during Gabel’s tenure. “Already Joan Gabel has said that she is all for shared governance. ... We need to meet with these people as we have been but even more so … and keep our good relations” with the administration.
Assessing her leadership, Kleebank said: “I’m no better than anybody else and that’s probably why I would have impact. I’m not in charge of this or that. I’m the person being impacted by these policies. I listen.”
Candidates for the other offices — for which voting continues through June 9, and during which unsuccessful candidates for one office may vie next to win a lower office — are:
Executive vice president: Christie Jackson (current parliamentarian and associate dean of Business and Finance, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences) and Lindsay Rodzwicz
Vice president for public relations: Suzanne Lynch (budget and finance manager, Office of the Provost), Caitlin McCullough (web content manager, Office of the Dean, School of Public Health) and Scott Szypulski (research administrator, Human Genetics, Public Health)
Vice president for finance: Monika Losagio (administrative officer, French and Italian, Dietrich School of Art & Sciences), EJ Milarski-Veenis (financial and operations coordinator, School of Education) and Suzanne Lynch
Parliamentarian: Brandi McClain (graduate administrator, Physics and Astronomy, Dietrich School), Christie Jackson and Caitlin McCullough
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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