Approved 04-20-23

ASEC Minutes

2:00 – 4:15 p.m. Thursday, April 6, 2023

53 Bascom Hall

https://uwmadison.zoom.us/j/93936751067

Members Present: Donna Cole; Stephanie Elkins; Alissa Ewer; Albert Muniz; Mallory Musolf, chair; Lindsey Stoddard Cameron

Guests: Alisha Arnold, Lesley Fisher, Beth Meyerand, Patrick Sheehan

The meeting was called to order at 2:00 p.m.

The minutes of March 30 were approved.

General Reports

Mallory Musolf, ASEC Chair, expressed appreciation for everyone who helped put on this year’s Academic Staff Institute. Mallory and Jake have attended three of the four shared governance sessions with provost finalists. The fourth one is slated for April 7, and feedback is due from the campus community on April 9.

Jake Smith, Secretary of the Academic Staff, reported that Provost Scholz sent communication to the deans in support of working with CASIs. The OHR session at ASI on career progression and promotion was well received, and OHR will be coming to share information and feedback from that session in May. Chancellor Mnookin’s investiture ceremony is scheduled for April 14, with related activities celebrating UW-Madison scheduled for the week leading up to the ceremony.

Liaison Reports

Donna Cole and Lesley Fisher reported on a recent listening session. Topics included locking mechanisms for general assignment classrooms as well as department classrooms and communications on safety concerns.

Donna reported that the UW System Reps group received a response from President Rothman’s chief of staff about progression pathways for UW System campuses. The response referred to the impact of financial difficulties on progression guidelines for other institutions. The System Reps will engage President Rothman on this topic at their meeting on April 7.

Business

• April Assembly Meeting Planning

Donna volunteered to present the resolution on the Staff Climate Survey.

• May Assembly Meeting Agenda

ASEC reviewed the first draft of the agenda for the May Assembly meeting. Chancellor Mnookin and Chief Diversity Officer Charleston are both on the agenda. There will potentially be ASPP changes for the Assembly to vote on as well.

Guest: Beth Meyerand, Vice Provost for Faculty and Staff Affairs

Vice Provost Meyerand reported that she does not anticipate any impacts to the HIB working group’s progress as a result of the provost transition. She often meets with incoming Interim Provost Wilcots on these issues, and Provost Scholz has been briefing him on the group’s activities. She expects similar briefings when the new provost is appointed. The group is pushing to address as many areas of the charge as possible, and there is the possibility that the new provost may want the group’s activities to continue. Vice Provost Meyerand holds a session on addressing hostile and intimidating behavior during new department chair orientation. Her office also holds a separate chairs chat on this topic, with Tamie Klumpyan and Lynn Freeman from OHR helping to facilitate that session. Vice Provost Meyerand’s office is also looking at a series of professional development experiences for department chairs to help them become more comfortable with difficult conversations, which could easily be transferrable to academic staff as well. Her office will work on this more during the summer, with the idea of implementing something in the next year. The current HIB working group is charged with looking at procedures and processes around addressing HIB. Specific changes to the policy are not within the scope of this group, though it may make broad recommendations on policy in conjunction with the other areas of its charge.

Vice Provost Meyerand commented on follow-up from her office regarding the Staff Climate Survey. Once the qualitative data has been analyzed, her office will do outreach with all of the schools/colleges/divisions to consult on how they can support addressing climate issues at the local level.

Vice Provost Meyerand has reviewed the Resolution on Improving Academic Staff Workplace Conditions and Morale. She plans to discuss this document with the new provost once they are in place.

Ageism has come up in different spaces, and ASEC discussed this issue at both ends of the spectrum. ASEC had discussed this with Patrick Sheehan previously. Vice Provost Meyerand mentioned that the chairs community of practice may be a good venue for trial programming and self-reflection on this issue.

Guest: Patrick Sheehan, Chief Human Resources Officer

On long-term diversity data tracking, OHR has spent over a year working on this issue. One of the main obstacles was the self-disclosure statement for employees and partnering with UW System to update this. There are limited subsets of individuals granted access to these data via HR security roles, and non-identifying data can be disseminated with a legitimate business reason. This also leads to consideration of how these data will be input and output in the new Workday system. There has also been a great deal of activity on diversity measures in the legislative space across the country, as well as with the North Carolina and Harvard cases at the Supreme Court.

It is important to address ageism for a number of reasons, including from a labor market standpoint. Susan Tran Degrand and the Equity, Inclusion, and Employee Wellbeing unit are working to identify resources to help address this issue. We need to be thinking about the breadth of multiple generations who are and will be working within the institution. There is the possibility for a group to look at best practices, understanding the need to recognize experiences of individuals in different employee categories.

Progression and promotion continue to be the key issues from survey results that OHR has seen. ASEC will meet with individuals in OHR to preview work on career progression in May. The plan is to record a session similar to the one at ASI that will be broadly available to campus.

OHR and UW System HR are currently bringing Chancellor Mnookin and President Rothman up to speed on TTC Phase 2, related to benefits. After that is done, the idea is to share more unified information and communication about next steps.

Business

• Topics for Guests

Chancellor: wrap-up on investiture, topics for Assembly (putting her vision to work and tangibles in the coming year, reflection points for the previous year, compensation plans (DCF), staff impacts of her vision, priorities for academic staff she is anticipating in the coming year, update on the 175th); thoughts on workplace conditions and morale resolution; thoughts on the research enterprise; what opportunities does she see for graduate students, with all of the initiatives that have been geared toward undergraduates, what are her impressions of how the structure of VCRGE is working

OHR: paid family leave (carryover from this meeting), update from Susan and EIEW, discussion of how to address ageism through working group, how OHR is working to advocate at state level on paid family leave

Meeting adjourned at 4:18 p.m.

Minutes submitted by Jake Smith, Secretary of the Academic Staff