Approved 9-8-16

Members Present:  Bruno Browning; Aaron Crandall, Jenny Dahlberg; Sarah Kuba; Robert Newsom; Kevin Niemi, Chair

Guests: Sarah Mangelsdorf, Jake Smith

The meeting was called to order at 2:11 p.m.

The minutes of August 25, 2016, were approved.

General Reports

•    Chair Kevin Niemi reported on the need to revisit names for the Dean of the School of Business Search and Screen committee.  All governance groups have been asked to send forward more names from candidates within the School of Business.

ASEC discussed how they would like Kevin to handle timekeeping of meetings in his role as chair.  ASEC decided they would like Kevin to be flexible in his role.

Members of the ASPRO (Academic Staff Professionals Representation Organization) board met with UW System President Ray Cross.  They discussed the Board of Regents budget request, possible tuition flexibility in the 2nd year of the biennium, faculty workloads, and state revenue projections.

Kevin reported receiving an email from AAUP (American Association of University Professors regarding the new Amazon pick up site.

•    Secretary of the Academic Staff Heather Daniels reported on her presentation to department chairs during an afternoon session of the Leadership Summit.  She was on a panel about how to support staff.

Heather met with the co-chairs of the Districting and Representation Committee regarding ASPP changes regarding district size.  They established a timeline for this process.  There are two steps.  The first step will involve a discussion at the October Assembly regarding changing sizes of districts versus changing number of districts.  If the Assembly wishes to amend the size, there will need to be a petition signed by 100 academic staff.  This will be followed by an open meeting for all academic staff to discuss the issue and then a vote of all academic staff.

Heather reported that the University Committee discussed IT governance including the possibility of doubling the number of faculty on the Information Technology Committee.  The Chancellor reported that the Board of Regents did not request an increase in costs to continue in their biennial budget.

Guest: Sarah Mangelsdorf, Provost

Provost Mangelsdorf talked about the Leadership Summit that occurred this week.  They are rethinking the purpose of this event.  Right now the audience is a mix of academic and non-academic leaders.  The speakers sometimes only share information that will be of interest to the academic leaders.

In regards to the climate survey, the student survey is still being worked on.  There is going to be a large meeting to discuss the survey in the next week.  The draft survey is rather long and needs to have some questions reframed.  Regarding the survey for staff, it has come to her attention that several schools/colleges/divisions including L&S, SOHE, VCFA, Vet Med, and possibly others have done or are doing climate surveys.  She is going to query the Deans and Directors regarding climate surveys.  It may be more important to make sure that all units are doing something, rather than having a campus-wide identical survey.  If that’s the case, then it would be important to have some common questions across all surveys even if majority of questions are different.

Liaison Reports

CEBC: Jenny Dahlberg will be attending CEBC meetings as a liaison.

PPPC: Bruno and Heather met with the co-chairs to outline an agenda for needed changes to ASPP this coming year.

Business

•    Resolution Calling on UW President and Board of Regents to Action

ASEC discussed the resolution and a few additional chagnes.  There was a motion that ASEC put forth the resolution with the changes discussed as a resolution from ASEC (Crandall). Seconded. Approved.

•    September Assembly Agenda

There was a motion to approve the agenda (Newsom). Seconded. Approved.

•    Pre-Assembly Orientation

ASEC reviewed the agenda.  Heather requested that as many members of ASEC attend this as possible.

•    Shared Governance Participation Letter

ASEC reviewed the letter from last year and did not have any changes.

•    Topics for Chancellor

ASEC members should send topics to Bruno.

Meeting adjourned at 4:03 p.m.

Minutes submitted by Heather Daniels, Secretary of the Academic Staff