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

Guests: Norman Drinkwater, Denny Hackel, Casey Nagy, Jake Smith

The meeting was called to order at 2:02 p.m.

The minutes of May 10, 2018, were approved.

Kevin Niemi reported that he met with the CALS Center Directors on Monday afternoon.  There are about 15 centers in CALS mostly run by faculty directors.  Part of the meeting was spent making them aware of opportunities for their academic staff including merit increases, awards, and professional development grants.  He also talked about the CALS CASI and the importance of the Title and Total Compensation study to their staff.

The UW System Representatives will be meeting with President Cross regarding shared governance and are working on a list of agenda items.

Heather Daniels reported that the CASI brown bag went well.  There was a lot of time spent discussing the new online performance evaluation system.  She met with Mark Walters regarding Title and Total Compensation study meetings with academic staff governance.  The plan is for monthly meetings with ASEC to continue.  Russell Dimond has put together some more data from the Academic Staff Work Life Survey in regards to department/unit climate.  He will visit ASEC in July to discuss it in further detail.

Heather also reported on a meeting with the Wisconsin Alumni Association and the UW Foundation.  They would like to start a new award for academic staff for “Institutional Advancement.”  The award would be for $2500 and thus isn’t appropriate to include as an Excellence Award.  It could be run through her office as a single award like the Underkofler works.  The Alumni Association and Foundation will be meeting to discuss specifics of the award further and will report back to Heather and Nick Ewoldt, chair of PDRC, this summer. 

The Veterinary Medicine CASI held an event regarding emergency response management and had about 60 people attend.  

The Nursing CASI spearheaded a half-day professional development conference for academic staff on the west end of campus.  It was well received.  

•Appointments

Motion to appoint Kristi Obmascher and Elizabeth Jach to the Committee on Women in the University; Jonathan Thom to the Personnel Policies and Procedures Committee; Chris Logterman to the Mentoring Committee; and Katie Effertz to the Recreational Sports Board (Niemi). Seconded. Approved.

•Questions for Dan Langer

Dan Langer will visit with ASEC on June 7 and has asked for specific topics so he can bring members of his staff.  Heather will notify Dan that ASEC would like to hear about purchasing card changes, savings with Concur, hard copy paper forms and general internal controls philosophy.  

•ASEC Leadership Election Processes

Heather will send out a call for nominations to ASEC.  Nominations will be due on June 6, and elections will take place on June 7.

•Next ASEC Meeting

ASEC decided to cancel its May 31 due to lack of quorum.

The next big test for the transition will be when the conference centers and auxiliary services move on July 1.  UW-Extension information technology won’t be able to transition everything the week of July 1 due to the movement of all the UW Colleges.  Casey has asked for a timeline so he will know the sequence of when things will happen.

The Tiger team has been assembled to help with immediate post-transition issues.  It includes one person from IT, 3 from finance and 2 from human resources.  

Heidi Zoerb and Casey met with the UW Foundation to discuss the entities moving to UW-Madison from Extension and the various foundation and friend organizations associated with those entities.   

He has convened a working group on Risk Management issues.  The UW-Extension risk management director is compiling an inventory of programs he oversees.  Casey will be circulating the MOU that has been developed for the Department of Labor Education to MEGIC, the shared governance committee associated with the transition.  He welcomes feedback on the MOU.  The other two MOUs are close to completion and very similar to the one for the Department of Labor Education.  

Vice Chancellor Norman Drinkwater provided updates on searches for leadership within the OVCRGE.  Marsha Mailick is not returning and the expectation is that a search will be initiated in late summer or early fall.  The plan is to have the next VCRGE starting no later than the end of the 2018-19 academic year.  There are also two Associate Vice Chancellor positions that need to be filled.  The Associate Vice Chancellor in Biological Sciences PVL is now out.  This position will be filled in the fall.  In addition, the Associate Vice Chancellor in the Arts and Humanities will become vacant at the end of August.  A search for this position will be initiated soon.  

The fourth round of the UW2020 grants were awarded about a month ago.  They plan to do another round next year.  They are also in the middle of evaluating the strategic initiative proposals for data science.  There was a strong application pool with 54 applications totaling $10 million.  The topic for the strategic initiative for next year will be Contemporary Social Problems Initiative: Providing Economic Prosperity, Enhancing Social and Psychological Well-Being and Improving Health Outcomes.  It is being done in partnership with Schmidt Futures, which recently awarded funding to UW-Madison as part of its Alliance for the American Dream program.  

Vice Chancellor Drinkwater also talked about working to simplify contract negotiation.  They are starting with Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs) that follow a standard language agreement.  The plan is to approve these in a matter of days.  The strategy for simplifying contract negotiations is to manage risk.  Norman also reiterated support from the Office of Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education in developing a strong research professor track for academic staff scientist, which would be consistent with many of our peers.  

Meeting adjourned at 4:13 p.m.