Academic Staff Assembly Minutes 12-11-17

Approved 2-12-18

ACADEMIC STAFF ASSEMBLY MEETING MINUTES
272 Bascom Hall
Monday, December 11, 2017
3:30 to 5:00 p.m.


Provost Sarah Mangelsdorf called the meeting to order at 3:31 p.m.  

The Academic Staff Assembly minutes of Monday, November 13, 2017, were approved.  

Reports
Kevin Niemi, ASEC chair, reported that the Academic Staff Institute will be held on March 15, 2018 at Union South and registration is open.  Cost is $18.  The deadline for Academic Staff Excellence Awards and Board of Regents Awards is January 12.  Visit htpp://acstaff.wisc.edu for more information.  ASEC met with the Laurent Heller, Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration and discussed the pending tax bill, new Associate Vice Chancellor position in the VCFA office, and a new group called the Protest Oversight Group being formed.  This group will be charged in part with reviewing the campus response to various demonstrations or protests.  A call for nominations went out to academic staff on December 8.  ASEC met with the Provost and discussed Cooperative Extension joining UW-Madison.  There will be around 700 academic staff who would join UW-Madison as part of this merger.  ASEC met with Casey Nagy, who is leading the process to bring UW Cooperative Extension into UW-Madison.  They discussed the governance issues related to this process.  ASEC has discussed the academic freedom resolution and will be continuing discussion over the coming weeks.  Kevin invited the Assembly to submit their thoughts to ASEC.  ASEC made a number of nominations or appointments.  This included nominations for a search and screen committee for a new position, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs.  Kevin remarked that the quality of the pool for this committee was excellent.

Rosa Garner presented the annual report for the Ombuds Office.  This is the fifteenth year of this office on campus.  There are currently five Ombuds (John Dowling, Jean Petersen, Rosa Garden, Chuck Snowdon and Ann Hoyt.  Harassment and Sexual Violence.  This past year the office had 187 visitors with 171 different cases.  They had visits from 40 academic staff who had more than 5 years on campus out of a total of about 65 cases.  The main categories for academic staff issues were in order evaluative relationships; career progression and development; and peer and colleague relationships.  The first category is about 3 times higher than any other category.  Hostile and intimidating behavior was also tracked.  It was 16% during the first year, and last year it was 25%.  They believe they are seeing an increase in the reporting of this due to increased education around campus.  They had 40 cases of this last with 13 of those cases being reported by academic staff.

Sherry Boeger presented the annual report for the Employee Assistance Office.  Their individual cases were up 11% this year.  They saw a large increase in people who are supervisors or managers coming to see them with an increase of 33%.  Sherry indicated they were pleased with this increase and felt it indicated that supervisors/managers were seeking out information that they need.  They also saw a 21% increase in groups this past year.  They served a total of 188 academic staff last year up 2% for the year before.  Academic staff were the largest user of the Employee Assistance Office.  The top reasons people visited Employee Assistance were in order management consultation, occupational/career, partner/relational and anxiety.  Last year’s top concern was employee to employee conflict.   

Susan Fuszard reported that she has held several trainings on suicide prevention on campus.  She invited people to reach out and invite her to visit their unit.  She also introduced SilverCloud, which is an online ehealth treatment for mild to moderate depression, anxiety, stress or positive body image.  The online modules are free for employees.  ETF has a free financial fitness program that is online.  They have an online quiz you can take with educational online modules available.  Employees are able to work with a financial counselor for free for 30 days.  

Marty Gustafson gave the Mentoring Committee annual report.  Last year the Mentoring Committee matched 60 pairs.  They had a difficult time finding mentors.  That problem has continued this year when they had twice as many mentees as mentors.  This year they plan to look at other mentoring programs on campus and how they can work better with those partners.  They held four different events for the mentor/mentees last year.  They held these events to provide mentor pairs the opportunity to meet.  Attendance at these events were approximately 35.  They also had a Community of Practice on Mentoring last year.  They are trying to determine whether to continue this

Business
Resolution to Endorse UW-Madison Policy on Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence
Jenny Dahlberg (ASEC) moved the Academic Staff Assembly approve this resolution.  Seconded.  Motion Approved.

Amendment of ASA Document #275, Prohibited Harassment: Definitions and Rules Governing the Conduct of UW-Madison Faculty and Academic Staff
Jenny Dahlberg (ASEC) moved the Academic Staff Assembly approve this resolution.  Seconded.  Motion Approved.

Resolution to Retain the Distinguished Prefix as Part of the New Titling System
Deb Shapiro (ASEC) moved the Academic Staff Assembly approve this resolution.  Seconded.  Motion Approved.

January Assembly Meeting
Provost Sarah Mangelsdorf posed the question about whether the Assembly wished to meet in January.  The Assembly voted to not hold a meeting in January.

Provost Report
Provost Sarah Mangelsdorf gave a report on the progress of the UW Cooperative Extension restructuring.  A steering team and various working groups are being set up: communications, information technology, facilities, human resources, auxiliary services finance, and volunteer management.  Casey Nagy is heading up this effort and Heidi Zoerb is also participating.  She works for CALS, but has been working temporarily for UW Cooperative Extension during the past year.  Those serving on the steering team include Karl Martin, Dean of UW Cooperative Extension, Carrie Spring from Communications from UW-Madison, Dan Byerly, UW-Madison and UW-Extension Facilities, Mark Walters, UW-Madison Human Resources; Tim Norris, from UW-Madison Budget and also UW Extension budget folks. UW Extension faculty have indicated they would like to be their own separate college/school/division at UW-Madison.  They also indicated they want their tenure recognized here.

More details are available regarding the workload of faculty and instructional academic staff.  This must be online and has to be searchable.  It will include information such as the percentage of their appointment paid on instructional funds, the credit hours they taught and how many independent studies they supervised.  Enrollment of a course isn’t included.  The data from last year will be available online early in 2018.  There are instructional staff who are not the instructor of record, but contribute to the instructional mission such as prepping laboratory classes or instructional design.  The Board of Regents have passed a resolution asking campuses to develop a more complete profile of faculty and instructional academic staff workload.

Adjourned at 4:34 pm.

Minutes submitted by Heather Daniels, Secretary of the Academic Staff


KeywordsASA Minutes   Doc ID80093
OwnerLesley F.GroupThe Office of the Secretary/ Academic Staff
Created2018-02-13 14:08:59Updated2020-07-13 15:08:41
SitesThe Office of the Secretary/ Academic Staff
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