Approved 06-29-23

ASEC Minutes

2:00 – 4:30 p.m. Thursday, June 15, 2023

53 Bascom Hall

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

Members Present: Donna Cole, vice chair; Tim Dalby; Stephanie Elkins; Alissa Ewer; Julie Hunt Johnson; Stephanie Jones; Lindsey Stoddard Cameron

Guests: Lynn Freeman, Luisa Gerasimo, Karen Massetti-Moran, Eric Wilcots

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

The minutes of June 1 were approved.

General Reports

Donna Cole, ASEC Vice Chair, reported on a meeting that she, Mallory, Albert, and Jake had with Beth Meyerand to discuss the draft charge for the ad hoc committee on researcher/scientist concerns.

Jake Smith, Secretary of the Academic Staff, reported on the finalist sessions for the Vice Chancellor for Strategic Communications position. Jake provided an update on the proposed cuts in the state budget allocation for UW System. At its meeting on June 19, the University Committee will be discussing a review of the reporting line for the Graduate School Dean. Paul Seitz, Director of Strategic Initiatives for the VCFA Office, will be coming to ASEC on June 29 to review results from the Staff Climate Survey.

Liaison Reports

Donna Cole reported on the School of Medicine and Public Health CASI. The CASI is discussing what their structure looks like to ensure sufficient representation. They have looked at data on sizes of other CASIs in relationship to the size of academic staff in their schools/colleges/divisions to get a sense of what average representation numbers look like.

Tim Dalby reported on the June 14 meeting of the Personnel Policies and Procedures Committee. John Zumbrunnen and Beth Meyerand attended the meeting to discuss issues related to instructional academic staff workload. Any potential work in this space will occur after Provost Isbell’s start date.

Guest: Eric Wilcots, Interim Provost

Interim Provost Wilcots discussed the potential charge for the researcher/scientist committee with Steve Ackerman and Rob Cramer. The idea would be to have the VCRGE charge the committee. There will be further discussions of who should chair/co-chair the committee. ASEC encouraged a co-chair approach and discussed the timeline for the committee’s work. ASEC agreed that there should be a mid-year check-in to gauge the committee’s progress.

Regarding the UW System budget, administration continues to advocate for investment in the institution and is monitoring the conversations related to DEI positions. There are also efforts still underway to get support for the Engineering building, potentially through standalone legislation.

Interim Provost Wilcots discussed the work that has been done on campus-wide diversity training in the past year. Nothing will be implemented imminently. There has been some movement on training around the First Amendment and free speech. Campus is also waiting to see what the Supreme Court decides in the Harvard and North Carolina cases.

Interim Provost Wilcots talked about the status of RAMP and ATP-readiness within the College of Letters and Science. There are many change management issues to address for RAMP and ATP, but research administration in L&S is ready. There is broad understanding that delaying implementation of RAMP will cause negative downstream impacts on other aspects of the project. Communication has focused on availability of training, as well as the importance of getting proposals in as early as possible. It will be helpful to have the Cayuse system available as a backup in the early days of implementation.

This year’s Go Big Read selection has been announced, which is How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion by David McRaney. Interim Provost Wilcots also reported that Lois Brooks and her team at DoIT are putting together a biweekly webinar series on ChatGPT and artificial intelligence.

Recessed at 2:56pm.

Reconvened at 3:00pm.

Motion to Convene in Closed Session Pursuant to Wis. Stats. 19.85(1)(c), and (f) to Discuss Appointments to the Budget Committee, Professional Development and Recognition Committee, and Student Panels; and Nominations to the Area Review Committee-Administration/Student Services/Library, Area Review Committee-Biological/Medical Sciences, and Distinguished Status Review Committee (Stoddard Cameron). Seconded. Approved.

Motion to Reconvene in Open Session (Stoddard Cameron). Seconded. Approved.

Business

• Appointments and Nominations – for vote

Motion to nominate Greg Putnam to the Area Review Committee-Administration/Student Services/Library; Mary Hayney to the Area Review Committee-Biological/Medical Sciences; and Jim Greco, Liam Gumley, Jamie Henke, Betsy Lundgren, and Becky Ryan to the Distinguished Status Review Committee (Johnson). Seconded. Approved.

Motion to appoint Shelley Calhoun to the Budget Committee, Audra Zia Koscik to the Student Panels, and Abbie Wagaman to the Professional Development and Recognition Committee (Ewer). Seconded. Approved.

Guests: Karen Massetti-Moran, Deputy Chief Human Resources Officer; and Lynn Freeman, Chief Employee Learning Officer, Office of Human Resources (Career Progression)

OHR presented a session on career progression at this year’s Academic Staff Institute. As a result of the interest in that session, OHR also recorded a video with the information in the session about promotion and progression. OHR is simultaneously working on career development tools for employees that are self-guided, in order to put agency in the employee’s hands. With a skills-driven approach, OHR is developing tools that are specific to job groups. They will be piloting the tools with the HR, Finance, and Libraries, Archives, and Museums job groups. There will be self-guided courses available anytime on the OHR website. They will be designed to be courses that employees and managers can return to as needed. An employee would start with self-assessment through a knowledge/skills builder for particular jobs to assess where they can grow (e.g., learning on the job, learning through courses, certificates). There will also be a section on how to have a conversation with your manager about developing your career, as well as other resources for self-exploration. ASEC asked a question about supervisory engagement in this process or lack thereof, with the research space as an example. OHR is working on a version of the Principles of Supervision and Management course directed toward principal investigators, but a big part of this also involves culture change over time. They are also thinking about competencies available through the Department of Labor’s O*Net resource and how those match to knowledge and skills within the Standard Job Description Library. There was also discussion about scalability for this process to work for all employees in ways relevant to their specific roles. OHR will be communicating with HR managers, managers in the pilot job groups, and then employees within those groups. OHR has also hired an additional career counselor that will start seeing employees in July.

Regarding use of business titles, it will take time for there to be standardization around use of prefixes. OHR has hired employees in the Compensation Center of Excellence to work on foundational pieces around this and how allocation patterns might work, which will likely be unique to each job group.

Business

• Topics for Guests

VCFA – implementation of RAMP, budget update and implications, Engineering Building update, West Campus update from feedback sessions

OHR – care.com update and Life Matters (communication, vetting of services); website update, paid parental leave, exit/stay interviews

Meeting adjourned at 4:18 p.m.

Minutes submitted by Jake Smith, Secretary of the Academic Staff