Provost Sarah Mangelsdorf called the meeting to order at 3:35 p.m.  

Dave Black read the memorial resolution for Susan Brandscheid.

Automatic Consent: The Academic Staff Assembly minutes of Monday, April 8, 2019, were approved. 

Heather Daniels, Secretary of the Academic Staff, announced the election results. All those elected will serve three-year terms. Megan Flowers, Felipe Gacharna, and Lindsay Lemmer were elected to the Communications Committee. Corryn Cue, Alyson Kim, and Dagna Sheerar were elected to the Compensation and Economic Benefits Committee.  Eileen Ewing and Dave Toland were elected to the Districting and Representation Committee. Christy Lowney, Erin Paul-Schuetter, and Jessica Swenson were elected to the Mentoring Committee. Arturo Diaz, Karyn Matchey, and Alissa Oleck were elected to the Nominating Committee. Jennifer Hadley, Jason Jankoski, and Anna Lewis were elected to the Personnel Policies and Procedures Committee. Nick Ewoldt, Martha Reck, Bonnie Shucha, and Christopher Yue were elected to the Professional Development and Recognition Committee.

Kathi Kilgore serves as the lobbyist for ASPRO (Academic Staff Professionals Representation Organization). ASPRO has its roots on the UW-Madison campus and then expanded to the rest of UW System. 

The Republicans in charge of the legislature have said that they will have the budget through both houses and to the governor by the end of June. The Joint Finance Committee has begun meeting to discuss budget items. ASPRO began meeting with members of the legislature on the budget in March. State government has a new configuration that hasn’t been seen in over a decade with the legislature and executive branches of government controlled by different parties. ASPRO has been talking with legislators about the Board of Regents budget proposal, the need for reinvestment in capital projects as well as the state fully funding the proposed pay plan. The message from legislators has been that they anticipate giving UW System more money, but probably not as much as requested in Governor Evers’ budget. They also anticipate a pay plan of some sort. The money would probably be distributed using the performance-based funding mechanism developed two years ago. The capital budget will be one of the very last things discussed for the budget. ASPRO will continue to advocate for the pay plan to be fully funded. Typically the state has only provided 70% of the pay plan with the rest of the funding coming from tuition.  With tuition being frozen, there isn’t a way to raise new revenue to cover the pay plan.

Governor Evers has one of the strongest veto pens in the nation. It hasn’t been since the early 1900’s that the governor vetoed the entire budget. He can use a line item veto. If the budget is not passed by July 1 or the entire budget is vetoed, the budget rates from the last year will continue.

The Mark Cook Bill passed the Assembly last year, but not the Senate. There was some misunderstanding about what the bill did. There is also a bill that had a hearing about course credits. ASPRO expects further bills to come forward that would directly affect UW-Madison later in the legislative session. 

There were three April forums with 539 different attendees.  The PowerPoint is available on the website as well as the live recording. Overall 80% agreed that they have a good understanding of what was provided during the forum, can share the information they learned with their colleagues and would recommend someone to attend future events. Questions that were submitted during the forum are posted with answers on the FAQ section of the website.

They will be holding July forums. They will hold two on the west campus and two on central campus. They will cover compensation philosophy, market pricing, standard job descriptions, and position descriptions. Standard job descriptions are mostly used for mapping a job onto the market. A position description will be more expansive and similar to what’s in a PVL (position vacancy listing). 

They are working to plan November forums that will mirror the logistics of the July forums. 

They are currently in the process of completing review of the standard job description feedback. This should be completed by June. During the summer, there will be a lot of background work done by the TTC teams including review minimum qualifications, FLSA designation, and mapping current jobs to the new titles. As of December 1, they plan to post all the standard job descriptions on their website. From December 1 through mid-February, the supervisor/employee conversations will take place. They are looking at implementation of the new title system on March 1. 

Kevin Niemi provided an update from ASEC. There are two individuals from UW-Madison joining today’s meeting virtually through a live video feed and Slack to test the technology that will be used as needed for individuals who serve as Assembly Representatives, but are not located on campus. 

If you are in an odd numbered district, and you expressed interested in continuing as an Assembly representative or alternate, please contact the Secretary’s office. 

ASEC has had several conversations about the professorial titles. ASEC also approved a lot of appointments and nominations for the upcoming year. 

Kevin thanked Provost Sarah Mangelsdorf for her service and support of academic staff governance. 

Jenny Dahlberg reported on ASPRO.  It is a very busy time for ASPRO and their lobbyist Kathi Kilgore with the state budget and other bills affecting UW System. Jenny encouraged non-members to consider joining ASPRO.  People interested in joining can contact jenny.dahlberg@wisc.edu to find out more about a free membership deal.

The Academic Staff Assembly voted to elect Leslie Petty to the Academic Staff Executive Committee.

Tim Dalby (ASEC) moved that the Academic Staff Assembly approve the resolution. Seconded. Motion approved.

Dean Karl Scholz will start as the new Provost in early August. Jim Henderson, former Vice President for Academic Affairs, will act as Interim Provost until Dean Scholz takes over. There was a search for the Dean of Students and Christina Olstad from Towson University will begin in this role on July 1. There will be an announcement soon about who will serve as the Interim Dean of the College of Letters and Science. Searches that will begin in the fall include the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education and the Dean of the College of Letters and Science. 

The Faculty Senate did approve the Teaching and Research Professor title series. The Senate took up the Professor of Practice title at their last meeting and due to a lot of questions about the title, referred it to a committee.

The Provost expressed her appreciation of the shared governance tradition for staff at UW-Madison. She has enjoyed her conversations with ASEC and the Assembly during her tenure. 

Adjourned at 4:39 pm.