Members Present: Bruno Browning; Aaron Crandall; Jenny Dahlberg; Beth Giles; Mallory Musolf; Kevin Niemi, chair; Jim Rogers; Deb Shapiro; Lindsey Stoddard Cameron

Guests: Marci Birkes, Ron Harris, Mary Luther, Casey Nagy, Jake Smith

The meeting was called to order at 2:03 p.m.

The minutes of March 1, 2018, were approved.

ASEC Chair Kevin Niemi reported that the UW System academic staff representatives are meeting tomorrow.  They will be discussing shared governance, pay plans, and UW-Stevens Point proposal regarding liberal arts majors being closed. 

Secretary of the Academic Staff Heather Daniels reported that ASEC had just received a request regarding the appointment of an academic staff member to the Meyerhoff Award selection committee.  ASEC asked Heather to send an announcement out and gather nominees.  Heather reported that there had been three people who expressed interest in serving on the UW-Madison/UW-Extension Academic Staff Governance Working Group.  ASEC can vote on the committee members at the next meeting.  

Heather has reached out to Nadine Connor and the University Committee regarding the recommendations from the Ad Hoc Committee on Research Scientist Titles.  Nadine will visit ASEC later this month.  ASEC has been invited to participate in finalist visits for the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and the Vice Provost for Libraries.  Heather will send an email to ASEC soliciting availability.

Jenny Dahlberg reported that the Vet Med CASI is working on scheduling an active shooter training/demonstration.  Aaron Crandall reported that the SMPH CASI met and discussed the employee tuition benefit report by the Law School CASI.  They will endorse the report.  They are also working with SMPH university staff to create their own CASI.

Mary Luther discussed the idea of a benefits survey.  The idea for the survey originally came from the OHR Alignment team.  The team had been reviewing the report created on benefits during HR Design and felt it would be good to survey campus.  

They have looked at internal and external options for a survey and have received some quotes.  Mercer has a survey that could be used.  There are discussions with UW System regarding whether UW System would survey their campuses and the timing of a survey.  ASEC urged that the survey be conducted at the same time for both C and A basis employees.  The survey would help the Office of Human Resources understand what benefits are most important to employees.  

Mary Luther also mentioned tuition reimbursement was one of the benefits they will be looking at. 

Casey Nagy reported that the human resources and finance working groups are meeting to identify issues for their groups that are co-dependent as well as independent.  This work should be done by the end of March.  They will also have other working groups identify co-dependent issues.  He expects that a first draft of a timetable for the sequence of transition events to be ready in mid-April.  The timetable will be a working document and updated as additional information is acquired.  

Public media is coming to UW-Madison.  A working group will begin the same process of issue identification for this group.  They will be treated similarly to auxiliary services since the number of employees is rather small.  

UW-Madison RSP is already helping the grants office at UW-Extension due to staff departures.  They are also looking at transitioning employee assistance to UW-Madison services as UW-Extension’s contracted services are up for renewal.  They will look for additional opportunities to transition various pieces as they arise.

There will be a statement regarding what July 1 looks like and what it doesn’t look like that should come out next week.  Each unit will choose how to disseminate the statement.

Additional updates included testing whether employees will be able to be transferred in bulk or whether they will have to be hand entered; ongoing effort on how to cover costs associated with the transition; the charge to the tenure working group is almost finalized; creation of a new list of issues missed in the original work groups, which are being dealt with using a small team.  

•March Assembly Preparation

Jenny Dahlberg volunteered to make the motion regarding the Ad Hoc Committee on Research Scientist Titles recommendations.

•April Assembly Agenda

ASEC discussed moving ASPP Chapter 7 changes from March to the April agenda.  These are a couple changes that need to be made to the document.  

•Ad Hoc Committee-ASPRO

Motion to form an ad hoc committee to put together a plan to increase ASPRO membership (Rogers). Seconded. Approved.

•Questions for the Chancellor

UW Cooperative Extension move to Madison

Extension dialogue/opportunities for improvements on Madison campus

Campus building safety

UW-Stevens Point proposal

Bucky’s Tuition Promise

What is the increase in admits for freshman?

How will we accommodate new faculty and staff physically with the increase in the number of undergraduates?

Meeting adjourned at 4:14 p.m.