Approval of Previous Minutes —

Minutes from November 25, 2024 : No objections or corrections. Minutes approved. 

New Business —

Ed Hudson plans to attend the next RRB meeting to discuss the IT environment after retirement. Please e-mail any questions you’d like to include for Ed. 

With “One KU,” what are some similarities and differences between the KUMC campuses and Lawrence-Edwards campus? 

• KU Med Center and KU Lawrence have different HR processes and benefits.
• KU Edwards is interconnected to KU Lawrence campus so benefits are the same. 
• Similarly, Wichita and Salina campuses are connected to KU Medical Center. 
• KU Medical Center can be quite complex with many affiliations and appointments. 
• There is a partnership between KUMC Wichita campus and Wichita State University, as they share the Wichita Biomedical Campus. 

Note the benefits that are important for retirees to keep: 

• For example, KU Lawrence retirees keep their e-mail, which is especially important to many from the Lawrence campus. 
• Currently, many KUMC retirees don’t retain e-mail access.

Next year is when the RRB committee is charged to start sending out another survey: 

There has been previous confusion regarding who the survey is coming from and who has responsibility and authority over the data generated. 

Some insights and suggestions from Dave about the future survey: 

1. There was financial support for the survey from KU Endowment. This allowed the team to engage research assistance for literature searches, handling successive drafts of the survey questions, formatting the survey items for online administration, and processing the data that was generated. 
2. It will be important early to decide whether to survey the KU-Lawrence and the KUMC retirees together. Only a partial list of emails could be obtained for KUMC respondents in 2023, so the representativeness of that sample is difficult to gauge. 
3. The procedure for contacting retirees by email (one or both campuses) should be settled early in the effort. The request will need to go through KU administration. 
4. Something else to settle up front. The 2023 survey went out with a cover letter from the Chancellor inviting replies. This raised questions about the disposition of the eventual replies and survey data: Who received and controlled the material? Who could have access to the material?

The nature and wording of the survey’s questions could be reviewed. Repeating some of the exact same questions can be informative, but streamlining or changing some of the questions may also be helpful. 

If employees retire but don’t go through the retirement process, they don’t receive many of the retirement benefits that accompany retired employees at KU. Rather, it is like a separated employee, so e-mail isn’t retained. Retirees are not “required” to go through the formal HR process – but then may lose many benefits such as e-mail, parking pass, and other amenities that are available to retirees. 

Beth will gather some website links and share with the group regarding retiring from KU and KU IT Services. 

There is question regarding record retention surrounding research:

• Who has the responsibility to retain research items? 
• Office of Research retains many documents but it can be complex with gray areas. 
• Office of Research is often not notified about retirement or notified after the employee has retired and left. Some of these questions can be run past Ed Hudson and Alicia Reed. 
• After meeting with IT at the next meeting, it may be helpful to meet with KUCR. 

During the March meeting, the committee will likely want to think about what to include in the yearly report that is to be submitted in April. 

Dave mentions a TIAA publication will be coming out soon that includes data and conclusions from a KU survey that was conducted in the early 2000s. Dave will send this publication to the committee when it comes out because it’s a positive story. It includes the good will among retirees and the institutions they retire from. Dave hopes to receive the story soon. 

Beth will submit to the group some IT links.

If the rest of the group comes across other links that are helpful for retirees, please submit those as well. Please also send any other questions to address at the next meeting with Ed. 

Elevating potential retiree knowledge could be a goal of this committee. There are pre-retirement workshops on campus that all can attend. Trying to build connections and a KU Retirement community could be another goal.