Annually, the Iowa State University 25-Year Club honors employees who have served the university for 25 years. The honorees are guests at the annual banquet and receive a certificate from President Jischke. The university also honors employees who have served Iowa State University for 35 years.

This year eight members of FP&M were inducted into the 25-Year Club. Those inductees honored were Jane Abell, Dean Khan, Ron Kinyon, Ron Risdal, Jeff Shearer, Bill Thompson, Dewey Walton, and Alice Weatherman. Honored for 35 years of service was Phil Evans.

The 66^th annual banquet was on March 21, 2000 at the Holiday Inn Gateway Center. The memorable evening began with dinner, a brief business meeting, introductions of inductees by President Jischke, and an exciting performance by the Barbary Coast Dixieland Band.

Informally founded in 1915, the 25-Year Club organization was formalized in 1934 under the direction of the late Harold E. Pride, then secretary of the Iowa State College Alumni Association.

The purpose of the 25-Year Club is to honor the loyal service of Iowa State University faculty and staff. As Colonel Pride wrote to the charter members: "Staff members who have served the College as long as you have come to personify the College to her alumni. Buildings and land do not make a college, it is the men and women of the staff who make any college."

Including our new inductees, FP&M currently has 43 employees with 25 years of university service. Of those 43 individuals, eight have worked at the university for 35 years or more.

As we all know, change is a constant. Change happens whether we want it or not. In this day and age, quality continuous improvement, adaptability, and responsiveness are the keys to success whether you are at work or at home. Continually improving means constantly reviewing our processes.

Processes are the way we perform our business day in and day out. Reviewing your processes, identifying ways to improve them, and implementing the improvements will lead us down the road of continuous improvement. Continuous improvement means you will improve quality of services and become more effective and efficient at providing your services.

We can break down the processes that we use to perform our business into five components: people, materials, machinery, methods, and environment. Continuous improvement involves reviewing our processes, identify ways to improve them, and implementing the improvements. This process allows us to improve the quality of our services and allows us to become more effective and efficient.

In the context of continually improving, we need to look at the components and determine which one(s) provide the greatest opportunity or impact for improving our process and our service effectiveness, efficiency, and quality. During the past year and a half, Custodial Services identified and implemented improvements in the areas of materials, machinery and methods including:

• Materials: reduce the number of chemicals in use to reduce variability in services and improve our quality of services
• Machinery: use of newer, more efficient vacuums, burnishers, scrubbers, etc.
• Methods: implementation of FAMIS for work flow and equipment management

The Custodial Services redesign, initiated almost six years ago, specifically looked at people. Under the context of continuous improvement, this ‘redesign’ is subject to process evaluations and continuous improvement in order for us to maintain effective and efficient services.

In the near future, we will be looking at methods and our environment. This includes communicating to our customers the level of service they should expect and looking at team growth in response to future campus growth.

With this in mind, we have started the process of reorganizing teams to accommodate the future growth of the university. The process provides us with the ability to make minor changes to accommodate future growth, instead of making reactive changes every time the university constructs a new building. This team reorganization to smaller groups of buildings should also eliminate some of our travel time between buildings.

Custodial Services strives continuously to address the internal issues in our efforts so we are able to maintain quality service to our customers. Our vision statement is: To provide and maintain a beautiful, clean, safe, and healthy building environment that is maintained at required standards for the use and enjoyment of the students, staff, and public in support of the university's mission of becoming the best land grant institution through learning, scholarship, and engagement.

At the end of February, Postal and Parcel Services moved into their newly remodeled and expanded space. The much-needed expansion provides the operation with 1,815 square feet compared to the 1,146 square feet of the old space.

Jim Ziebold, manager of Postal and Parcel Services, said that there are many benefits to the new space including:

• Increased efficiency in the metering production area due to the added space for staging.
• Staff in the sorting area are no longer standing on top of each other.
• Moving the customer service area out of the production area allows staff to better focus on customer needs.
• The canopy on the dock will protect staff from the weather (if we ever get any rain).

Carol Eyanson (mail center coordinator) and JoEtta Green (mail clerk) appreciate the quieter atmosphere of the new customer service area. They believe that they are better able to serve the needs of their customers and they are enjoying the additional storage space. The customers seem to be impressed with the new space also and have commented on the new decor.

The production and sorting staff think that the ceiling tile helps absorb some of the noise. They also appreciate the additional space and the comfortable room temperature (now that it has been adjusted). They noted a few drawbacks – they no longer get to see and or interact with the customers and in a few circumstances, having the operation so spread out causes extra steps. But, overall, the new space seems to meet with everyone’s approval.

Even the carriers (USPS, FedEx, etc.) that deliver mail and packages to Postal and Parcel have commented on the expanded space. They particularly like the improved access provided by the wider double doors that have windows to improve safety. The canopy and additional access also are a plus for them – all except the UPS driver, whose truck doesn’t fit underneath.

As part of the expansion and remodeling of Postal and Parcel Services, General Services Building has a newly remodeled vending/break room area (room 179). The vending room is accessible from the General Services dock or from the main hallway (a straight shot through the front door, past the key service area). Completion of the remodeling brought back the following conveniences:

We encourage the use of the new room by those within General Services and surrounding buildings. In return, we are asking for everyone’s help following the suggested "rules of the room":

• Use the ATM machine often, so we can justify retaining it in the building.
• Pick up/clean up after yourself; unless of course your mother works here and will be cleaning up after you.
• Put your trash in the trash container and only office-type white paper in the recycling bin.
• Respect personal items stored in the refrigerator; if you didn’t bring it or buy it, don’t eat it.
• If you put something in the refrigerator but don’t eat it, please toss it before it spoils.
• Items in the basket on the tables are for everyone to share (salt & pepper, toothpicks, etc.). Please return items to the basket and help replenish the supply when it is running low.
• Make use of the lending library (in the cabinet); bring books to share, borrow those that interest you, and return them when you are done.
• If you post items on the swap & sell board, be sure to remove them as items sell or is otherwise appropriate.

In early November, David Wolff from EH&S enlisted help from Campus Services. He was in the process of developing a new electronic book (e-book) module for their website entitled Manual Materials Handling.

Within the module, Bob Clark tells about the importance of proper lifting to prevent injuries. According to the module, "Every year thousands of workers are injured while lifting, pushing, and pulling all manner of heavy and/or bulky objects. The goal of this module is to increase awareness of soft-tissue injury and to communicate ways to avoid or reduce the likelihood of such injury. Don’t become a statistic. Take Bob’s sage advice and commit yourself to staying healthy on (and off) the job by working smart rather than ‘smarting while working.’"

Bob wasn’t the only Campus Services employee to help with the module. Others who helped include Curt Johnson, Kelly Netcott, Marc Ploessl, Cory Ritland, Jim Schleier, Jeff Schreck, Kelly Van Pelt, and Tim Wirth.

David plans to have this new module added to the EH&S website by the end of the month. Their website offers a variety of safety modules; check it out at http://www.ehs.iastate.edu/ebooks.htm.

On Friday, April 28, volunteers from Campus Services will assist Mark Vitosh from the Forestry department with ISU’s second annual Arbor Day celebration. This year the celebration will take place at 1:30 PM in Erickson Park (east of the ISU cross-country track on Hayward Ave).

Thirty-five children from Crawford Elementary school will be attending and will get "hands-on" experience as they help plant trees and shrubs in the park. Campus Services employees, Jim Callahan, Ed Johnson, Marty Kelly, Jim Schleier, Brad Spainhower, and Kelly Van Pelt, who are volunteering their personal time, will help the students with the planting. Trees Forever donated $650 and will help plant three trees. Others assisting will be representatives from a local church and staff from the Forestry department.