Month: January 2009

Name That Web!

The alumni office will launch a new, interactive website for the alumni in late spring 2009. The site will offer a searchable database of alumni (great for students and alumni seeking mentors or networking opportunities), RSS feeds, online event registration, enhanced volunteer and career resources, social network site links and much more.

While the services and resources are great…..the name is not!  “The MIIS Alumni Online Community” needs a new name.  We have the Communiqué magazine, the “Connections” e-newsletter, and ……? Please send in your suggestions (alumni@miis.edu)  for a name that truly represents our alumni community—diverse, engaged, forever on the move, and making a difference today!

On Your Next Trip, Reconnect with MIIS Alums

Attending a conference this semester? Heading to a global summit? On the road for personal travel and willing to help out?

The alumni office is in the final stages of planning spring 2009 alumni receptions and happy hours, and seeks your help!  If you are traveling and have a spare 2 hours one evening, please consider hosting an alumni reception.  The alumni office looks at the total number of alumni in a given area (and occasionally works with the enrollment department to co-host events for prospective students) and the last time an event was hosted in the area as part of the decision process.  Your effort is minimal, but has a tremendous impact—2 hours of time, attention and resource dissemination to our great, globally-dispersed alumni!  All arrangements are handled by the alumni office.  For additional information, or to pass along your travel schedule, please contact alumni@miis.edu

Announcing the New and Improved Samson Center Dining Room!

Over the semester break, the Samson Center Dining Room has undergone renovations designed to provide students with a more comfortable and efficient environment for both dining and study.  The newly revamped Dining Room will re-open on February 2nd, with expanded seating and an exciting new food service vendor, “The World Cafe”.

“The World Cafe” will initially be open Monday – Friday from 7:30AM to 7:00PM, serving a variety of menu options, including breakfast cereals, grilled items, roasted chicken, fish, vegetarian options, and Mexican and Asian cuisine, among others.  “The World Cafe” will also feature cappuccinos and espressos.  Stop by and try them out soon and keep your eye out for additional postings of their menu and other features.

***Please note that the two rows of tables closest to the food service area will be reserved for “dining only” from 11AM – 2PM Monday through Friday.***

New renovations in the Dining Room  include:

•    Three newly installed countertop workstations and accompanying new seating, with additional electrical outlets for laptops.
•    Four new cafe-style tables and new seating.
•    New, comfortable four-inch seat cushions on all chairs in the Dining Room.

MIIS@work Milestone

The preceding story was our 100th post!  Thanks to all of you who are sharing your news with the community!

Photo credit:http://www.flickr.com/photos/crystalflickr/190713106/

New Welcome for a Familiar Face

Maureen Anda recently joined the Institute Advancement team as the Alumni Relations Coordinator. Maureen has been working in the Alumni Relations Office since November of 2007 on a temporary assignment with Office Team, Administrative Staffing. During this time, Maureen oversaw a major data project transferring and cross-referencing more than 13,000 paper transcripts into an electronic format, which will eventually lead to the inclusion of thousands of alumni records into Banner. She also worked with data entry and collection, survey development and merchandise sales.  In Maureen’s current position she will be the lead for alumni record management, as well as addressing the development and maintenance of a new alumni online community, among other projects.

Maureen grew up in Granada Hills, the suburbs just north of Los Angeles. She worked in her family’s real estate school, Miller Schools (a private vocational school specializing in real estate education) from 1983 to 1993.

Maureen and her husband Ismael started their own business in 1993; That’s Our Baby Catalog, a mail order catalog that featured infant and toddler products.  They relocated to the Monterey Peninsula in 1997 and she pursued her administrative career working with A.G. Davi Real Estate, in real estate property management, with John J. Eisinger DDS, Inc., as Financial Coordinator in their Orthodontic practice, and with CreekBridge Construction, a developer of quality homes and retail centers, in their Sales and Marketing Department.

Renovations of Apartment Building Completed

4plex Renovations have been completed on the Monterey Institute apartment building located at the corner of Van Buren and Franklin Streets.  This project, headed by Controller Steve Marino, has resulted in a completely remodeled building that will provide market-rate housing for Institute faculty and staff and a guesthouse unit for VIPs and other Institute visitors.  The apartment’s landscaping was designed and completed by Classroom and Grounds Supervisor Marty Goss and Classroom and Grounds Assistant Kirk Eckhardt and incorporates drought-resistant plants and drip irrigation.

Two units (Apartments A & B) will become available for rent immediately, under the following guidelines:

1.  These units will be managed internally and advertised to Monterey Institute regular faculty and staff.  Applications will be accepted and reviewed by Campus Services.  Please contact Jon Covell at 647-7175 or at  jonathan.covell@miis.edu.  Background/credit checks will be run.

2.  These units are two-bedroom, one-bath.  Maximum occupancy is three.  No smoking, no pets.

3.  Rent is $1,750 per month.  A security deposit of $1,750 is required.  Minimum one-year lease.  Rent includes washer/dryer,  PG&E, trash, water, & sewer.

Green Renovation

This building has incorporated the following green improvements in order to comply with new Monterey Green Building Codes, emphasize our commitment to sustainability, and provide a comfortable, healthy environment for those occupying the house.

• Plumbing:  Installation of high-performance, low-flow showerheads, low-flow faucets, insulated plumbing and pipes (to keep heat from escaping), and low-flow toilets.
• Energy:  The building will have 95% efficient furnaces,  a high-efficiency water heater, and a vent kitchen range hood to the outside (in order to keep pollutions and odors from contaminating the house).
• Flooring:

• Recycled-content tile and low volatile organic compound (VOC), water-based wood finishes.
• Recycled-content, non-toxic, tack-down carpet, padding and underlayment. (Recycled content: PET plastic bottles, recycled wool, nylon, or recycled cotton. Tack-down installation is easier to remove than glue-down, eliminates toxic glue chemicals, and allows the carpeting to be partially recycled at the “end” of its life.)

• Paint: The paint used in this building is low VOC.
• Reuse/Recycling: Construction and deconstruction waste was reused and job site waste was recycled to the extent possible.

Provost and Planning Appointments Announced

President Sunder Ramaswamy announces the appointment of two additional members of his administrative team:

Provost Amy Sands has been reappointed to her current role, and will continue to provide academic leadership to the Institute. She is charged with coordinating the work of reorganizing our academic administration, which begins next month, ensuring that we achieve what we have set out to accomplish: programs that are individually distinguished by their strength and academic excellence, contributing to a whole that is even greater than the sum of its parts.

Provost Sands brings to this challenging task her three years of experience in her current role, as well as three years as dean of GSIPS. Her knowledge of our academic programs, her contribution to the redefinition of academic excellence for the Monterey Institute, and the esteem in which she is held by her colleagues, have equipped her well for the task of building two vibrant, interdependent, forward-looking graduate schools, and an over-arching advising function that serves our students as lifelong members of an academic and professional community.

Amy McGill will also continue as a member of the administration, in the role of Executive Director of Planning and Special Projects.  She came to the Institute in 2007 from the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education, after serving as the associate director and then director of Middlebury’s Center for Educational Technology.  She has appreciated the opportunity to continue working with long time Middlebury colleagues, but at the same time has developed a deep commitment to the Monterey Institute’s mission and its people.  She will leverage her knowledge of the strengths of both institutions as she continues to coordinate the M2 integration process, with a focus on finance operations and communications functions.

She will also oversee and develop the Institute’s human resources and technology services and programs; facilitate innovation across the Institute; and provide leadership for special projects that advance the Institute’s strategic goals.

The two Amys join Beth McDermott, Executive Director of Institutional Advancement, and Jason Warburg, Executive Director of Communications, whose appointments were announced previously, and Barbara Burke and Jim Graber, whose positions are ongoing, to form the President’s Staff.

M-squared Finance, Operations and Communications Group Formed

As the Institute moves closer to the June 30, 2010 date for legal integration with Middlebury, President Ramaswamy is taking steps to formalize some of the structures that we have in place for keeping the M-squared integration planning process on track.  Beginning this week, Amy McGill will chair a bi-weekly Finance, Operations and Communications group, mirroring a similar group at Middlebury.  While meetings between counterparts on both campuses (such as those in HR, IT, IA, Finance and Communications) will continue as needed to collaborate on specific projects, we hope that regular FOC meetings here will enable us to better coordinate the many facets of our evolving relationship with Middlebury.

FOC members at Monterey are:  Amy McGill (Planning, Technology and HR), Jim Graber (Finance), Steve Marino (Finance), Beth McDermott (Advancement), Jason Warburg (Communications), Jill Stoffers (Enrollment), Cathy Vincent (Human Resources).

Members of the community who have questions or concerns relating to integration are welcome to bring those issues to any member of the FOC group, and we’ll report back regularly with news of our progress.

Cathy Vincent Returns to MIIS HR

If you didn’t get to say goodbye to Cathy Vincent when she returned to Middlebury in November, don’t worry – now you can say hello!  Cathy will be returning to Monterey, beginning Monday, January 26.

Cathy will continue to co-manage the HR department with Michael Ulibarri, but we have reconfigured their job responsibilities so that each of them will have oversight of specific HR functions.  Michael will continue to serve as the primary point of contact for staff and student HR issues, while Cathy will focus on developing more specialized HR processes and services for faculty.  Cathy will also be the primary liaison with Middlebury HR for integration issues, including our shared HR information systems. Michael will continue to focus on compliance, training and development. Together, they are charged with pursuing the following priorities for strengthening MIIS HR, as we move toward integration with Middlebury:

1. Continue transition of benefits and compensation management to Middlebury;
2. Educate members of the community about important policies and procedures, leading to a culture of cooperation and compliance;
3. Differentiate and improve HR capacity for faculty recruitment and services;
4. Provide orientation opportunities for new faculty and staff that are tailored to the needs of those groups;
5. Develop, collaboratively with Middlebury, “21st century employment practices” that take into account mobility and work-life balance issues.

Zilinskas to Speak on Agroterrorism

Ray Zilinskas, senior scientist at JMCNS, will be a featured speaker at the Monterey County Health Education Consortium’s January 22 seminar for health professionals entitled, “Keeping the Salad Bowl Safe: How We Prevent and Investigate Foodborne-related Illnesses.” Zilinskas will speak on “Agroterrorism, Post-harvest Food Sabotage, and Emergency Preparedness.”  See the attached pdf for additional information.

J.D. Yuan Speaks at Woodrow Wilson Panel on China-Pakistan Relations

J.D. Yuan, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at JMCNS and associate professor of international policy studies, is one of three speakers at a panel entitled “Storm Clouds Ahead for the ‘All-Weather Allies’? Today’s Pakistan-China Relationship,” sponosred by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.  You can watch a live webcast of the panel on January 26 at 3:30 p.m., eastern time.

e-W-2s

In conjunction with Middlebury College, the Payroll Office is making your W-2 Tax and Wage Statement available to you electronically, if you wish. Moving to an electronic W-2 saves the Institute time and money.  In addition, the electronic W-2 is a safer method in delivering personal and financial information of a confidential nature that would otherwise be sent through the U.S. Postal Service.

Please read the following Q & A’s if you are interested in participating in this process.  If you do not wish to take advantage of this option you need take no action.  Your W-2 will be mailed to you on Feb 2, 2009.

The Payroll office can be contacted at payroll@miis.edu with any additional questions.
———————————————————————————————————
Q: What is an ‘electronic W-2’?
A: This is an option to access and print your W-2 information electronically through Banner Self Service. The electronic version prints out an IRS approved paper W-2.

Q: Why should I choose to receive my W-2 this way?
A: Electronic W-2’s benefit everyone. Not only will you be able to access your W-2 information sooner, you have the ability to access and print the W-2 as often as you like. The Institute saves time, effort and money associated with printing, stuffing and mailing over 1,000 W-2’s.

Q. How do I sign up to receive my electronic W-2?
A. Log into Banner Web (Self Service)
Click on the ‘Employee’ section, select ‘Tax Forms’ and ‘Electronic W-2 Consent’. Please read the consent information carefully, make your choice and then hit the submit button. Please make your selection by January 23, 2009 if you want to receive an electronic W-2 for 2008.

Q. How do I print my Electronic W-2?
A. Log into Banner Web (Self Service)
Click on the ‘Employee’ section, select ‘Tax Forms’ then ‘W-2 Tax and Wage Statement’. Select ‘Tax Year’ and hit the ‘display’ button. Select the Print button below the W-2 form to display the current statement for printing. Print a copy for your records and print copies as needed for submission to federal, state and local entities. Printed copies do not indicate if they are Federal, State, Local or an Employee copy, but the electronic version can be used for any of these filings.

Q. When will my electronic W-2 be ready?
A. You will receive an email from the Payroll Office informing you that the W-2 is available for viewing and printing. Per IRS regulations, W-2’s need to be either postmarked or available electronically by February 2, 2009 for tax year 2008. We will make every effort to have the electronic W-2’s available earlier than February 2, 2009.

Q. What if I do not have access to a printer?
A. Please do not choose electronic delivery if you do not have access to a printer. For security reasons we suggest you avoid using printers located in public areas.

Q: What if my address is incorrect on the printed W-2?
A: You may still file using the electronic copy but you must contact Human Resources to make any changes to your address.

Got Kids? Get Language!

If you have children who are interested in a summer immersion language programs — or you have friends who do — check out the Middlebury Monterey Language Academy. In its second year offering French, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic, MMLA programs help middle and high school students leap ahead of their peers in language proficiency.