Approved 12-21-17
Members Present:  Bruno Browning; Aaron Crandall; Jenny Dahlberg; Beth Giles; Kevin Niemi, chair; Jim Rogers; Deb Shapiro; Lindsey Stoddard Cameron

Guests: Michael Bernard-Donals, Ron Harris, Casey Nagy, Jake Smith

The meeting was called to order at 2:04 p.m.

The minutes of November 30, 2017, were approved with one correction.

General Reports
ASEC Chair Kevin Niemi reported that the UW System Academic Staff representatives would be meeting next week.  They plan to discuss distribution of the pay plan on different campuses as well as shared governance participation in the merger plans.

Secretary of the Academic Staff Heather Daniels reported that ASEC has been asked to put forward nominations for two seats on the Protest Oversight Group.  This group would be charged in part with evaluating campus response to protests on campus.

Liaison Reports
Jim Rogers met with the Engineering CASI.  They are looking at the results of the work life survey for academic staff for the College of Engineering and plan to bring forward issues from that survey to a forum for staff this spring.

Lindsey Stoddard Cameron reported that the Faculty Senate endorsed the new Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence policy at its December meeting.

Beth Giles attended the Education Committee meeting of the Board of Regents.  The Board passed both the performance metrics and workload policies.

Guest: Michael Bernard-Donals, Vice Provost for Faculty and Staff
Michael Bernard-Donals indicated that he appreciated the feedback regarding schools/colleges/divisions and units that haven’t communicated a process for the Discretionary Compensation Fund to employees.  He will look at including a timeline for this type of communication within the memo for next year.  Bruno mentioned that the College of Letters and Science required him to produce a copy of the email he sent to employees informing them about the process before any raises were approved.   

Vice Provost Bernard-Donals discussed sexual harassment tracking with ASEC.  It is currently tracked in many different locations.  There was discussion about whether more central tracking needs to happen and whether things could be tracked at a more local level. 

He also reported on the recent academic staff chat on the research enterprise.  There was a lot of concern around indirect costs.  There seems to be a lack of transparency around how different units distribute these funds and why units are not seeing much, if any return of this funding.  There was also discussion about bridge funding for researchers as well as PIs not including professional development for staff on grant applications.

Guest: Casey Nagy, Provost Office Consultant
Casey Nagy discussed the merging of UW Cooperative Extension into UW-Madison.  He has put together a Steering Team to look at all of the issues.  Heidi Zoerb, who has spent the last year working at UW-Extension, is deputy chair on this project.  The Steering Committee consists largely of those who are leading the various working groups for this project.  They include Karl Martin (Dean at Extension), Carrie Springer (Communications), Warner Gade (IT), Dan Gyerly (Facilities), Bil Man (Auxiliary Services), Mark Walters (Human Resources), Carol Edquist (Budget) as well as three others who work at UW Cooperative Extension running either state-wide or local programs..  Ray Taffora is providing legal assistance as needed.  

Volunteer Management will be a stand-alone committee.  There are thousands of volunteers who work with UW Cooperative Extension.  They will be looking at volunteers not only at Cooperative Extension, but also at UW-Madison.  There is also a communications committee that is meeting weekly and developing a communications strategy to touch base with stakeholders during this progress. 

There are significant governance issues that need to be considered during the process.  His suggestion on how to incorporate governance into this process would be to have an advisory council that is governance-specific and populated by governance appointees.  This group could meet as often as they wish.  Casey said he would share agendas and a narrative of the issues being addressed by the working groups.  ASEC agreed to this idea with the notion that they could revisit other mechanisms to involve governance if needed.

Meeting adjourned at 5:04 p.m.