Approval of Previous Minutes —

Poppy asks for motion to approve minutes from previous meeting on February  19, 2026. Henry Whalen motions to approve. Sasha Sharman seconds. Minutes approved by unanimous consent without objection, outside of a couple names on the attendance are duplicated and listed twice. Those duplications will be removed.

Guest Speaker Presentation —

• Cinnamon gives a presentation on KU Strategic Communications followed by a Q & A. Cinnamon has been with KU since September 2025 and is happy to hear insights from colleagues. 
• Storytelling at KU : balancing the complexities of internal and external messaging, and four primary marketing objections and functions:

1. External messaging : public and media relations.
2. Marketing and Branding : including reputational and crisis communications.
3. Internal communications: 
   • Internal audiences with different needs for messaging but people can get overwhelmed with too much messaging. 
     • Primarily, internal communications has previously come out of the Provost Office. Cinnamon glad to be working with Jill in the Provost Office so we’re not overlapping. 
     • Trying to navigate how One KU messaging goes out across the campuses and manage the needs of the different populations.
4. Content and Channel strategy: 
   1. Primarily involves unit – level communicators : producing content  strategies that leverages the various expertise. 
   2. Using communication technologies such as the Emma system. This has worked well to distribute communications across campus in a way that’s friendly and accessible, and trackable. 

• We want our storytelling to be relevant and relatable. There are always going to be ways in which we can improve anticipating confusion, especially around change management communications and some of the more complex things we do. 

Student Senate Report

• Student Fee has been passed. We increased areas such as Walk In, SafeRide, and SAPEC and decreased funding for Hilltop and the Student Senate Activity Fee (e.g., Wednesday night funding allocated to clubs and student groups across campus). We also decreased funding for the UDK. This isn’t to say we won’t be offering funding for them in our blocking line. 
• Student Senate elections are coming up and there is optimism for the future of Student Senate. 
• Tanya provides context around block funding and providing funding to UDK under this funding. 

Staff Senate Report

• Just announced first annual Staff Senate Service Awards: the “Staff Senator Innovator Award” and the “Staff Senate Integrity Award.” 
  • The innovation award is for a staff senator, and the integrity award is for a non-staff senator that embodies the values of shared governance. 
  • We will be presenting these awards at the new half-day HR professional development conference coming up on April 8th. 
  • Michelle Wilson will be receiving the Staff Senate Innovator Award and Sean Barker will be receiving the Integrity Award. 
  • Our transition meeting is April 15th, and Jessica will be moving into the president’s role. We’ll also be having a new batch of senators along with electing our University Senate members at that time. 
  • We had first meeting with Provost Mafi and shared some of our priorities for next year. 

Faculty Senate Report

• We have one more Faculty Senate meeting in April, and then we’ll have an organizational meeting at end of April in which we’ll do our transition for Faculty Senate, both leadership and senators. 
• We’ve put forth the recommendation to decommission one of the Faculty Senate committees, the Restricted Research Committee.
• Trying to figure out how to collaborate with the larger community and have discussions around the budget constraints of the University.
• Poppy and Misty are meeting with both Chancellor and Provost next week and hope to continue discussions around suggestions/ideas of getting more community input in the budgeting process.

Unfinished Business —

University Senate Code Article X. Section II: Membership on AP&P Committee 

• Finish discussion of adding a representative from Academic Affairs to the AP&P Committee. 
• Sasha makes motion to vote on this. Poppy seconds. Poll goes out for vote. 
• 22 votes in favor, 3 not in favor. Vote passes. 

New Business —

• Student Senate sent over updates to the University Senate code regarding appointing students to University Senate. There are areas in the University Senate Code regarding student appointees that Student Senate has not done in years. 
• Student Senate would like to make updates so that the Student Senate Constitution is in line with the University Senate Code, and there are not two documents with different procedures.
• Need to suspend the rules to vote on this. Sasha motions to suspend the rules. Kate seconds. Poll goes out and motion passes to suspend the rules.
• Sasha moves to vote. Kate seconds. Poll goes out for the vote. 23 votes in favor. 1 not in favor. Vote passes.

Meeting adjourned.