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As Staff Council begins its 20th year on campus, I am honored to serve you as Staff Council's chair through May 2022.  As the students return to campus for fall and we all navigate into our new routines, I look forward to working with staff as we return to a new normal.

I hope that you can attend our May general meeting this Thursday, May 20th, from 2:00-3:30pm (add to calendar). We are glad to welcome President Hartzell to hear the end-of-year presentations from our remaining four committees:

Our May general meeting will be happening on Thursday, May 20th, from 2:00-3:30pm (add to calendar). We are excited to have President Hartzell joining us, and we'll be hearing end-of-year presentations from these committees:

I’m writing today with an exciting opportunity to be a part of UT’s Strategic Planning effort.  You may remember that President Hartzell told us about this important initiative in an email earlier this year, where he said,  “The idea here is to create a shared road map of opportunity for our campus community.

As we're sure you are aware, and as President Hartzell referenced in his email of a few weeks ago, we as a nation have been witnessing a distressing rise in anti-Asian rhetoric and violence.  Staff Council stands in support of our Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander colleagues, who are an integral part of our country and our UT community, and against racism and bigotry in any form.  We also recognize that while words do matter, words are not enough.  Part of our work in se

For the last four years, the Staff Council Sustainability Committee has partnered with the Office of Sustainability to co-host a staff appreciation lunch in April.  Last year’s event was unfortunately canceled due to COVID-19, but we are happy to announce the Earth Month Staff Sustainability Lunch is back (via Zoom, of course, and minus the food) on Friday, April 30th from noon-1:00.

I am excited to invite you to the first of our two end-of-term general meetings, at which we'll be joined by leadership as our committees present their accomplishments over the course of the term. Our April general meeting will be held via Zoom next Thursday, April 15th from 2:00-3:30pm. Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Darrell Bazzell will be joining us, and we'll be hearing from the following committees:

Join us for our March general meeting, Thursday, 3/25/21, from 2:00-3:30pm.  The meeting will include a COVID-19 Vaccine Education Panel with guest speakers Amayrany Maya-Mora, BSN, RN, Public Health Nurse at UT Children's Wellness Center and Gabriela Alvarez Perez, PMA, Medical Assistant at UT Health Austin.

Due to the difficulty of rescheduling the February general meeting, we will instead be moving the planned agenda items, including the COVID-19 panel, to our March meeting.  It will be held a week later than usual on Thursday, March 25th from 2:00-3:30.

We did go ahead and hold officer elections virtually, and I would like to congratulate our new officers-elect:

Rhonda Cox, Chair

Todd Lawrence, Vice-Chair

Ann Sellers, Secretary

Greg Caponigro, Parliamentarian

There's no way around it - this year has been a rough one so far.  As many of us struggled (and some of us continue to struggle) with basic necessities during and after the winter storm, staff also worked hard to take care of our university community - feeding students, running warming stations, keeping our utilities and computer systems running, even staying on campus for days on end.  Staff’s commitment to the university community and keeping things running is inspiring and UTSC is so proud of you.  I especially want to recognize with gratitude the tremendous efforts of our