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

Guest: Bill Karpus, Casey Nagy, Jake Smith, Bill Tishler

The meeting was called to order at 2:05 p.m.

The minutes of February 1, 2018, were approved.

ASEC Chair Kevin Niemi gave a report from the UW System Academic Staff Representatives meeting.  Most campuses are not receiving any information regarding the Title and Total Compensation study from their campus human resources.  He shared the UW-Madison resolution with them.  He also reported on a recent academic staff chat on advocating for oneself.  He observed that some in attendance didn’t understand pay mechanisms.  There were also comments about the generational divide and ageism on campus.  Tom Zinnen contacted him about the phishing email from UW System.

Secretary of the Academic Staff Heather Daniels reported that Chancellor Blank announced a new program to give Wisconsin (WI) residents under the WI median income level free tuition for 4 years at UW-Madison.  A new student hourly will join the office starting Monday.  The Joint Committee on Employment Relations will meet on February 14 to consider pay raise for UW System employees. 

The revised consensual relationship policy may be ready for a first reading at the Assembly meeting in March.  Heather sent out the performance evaluation survey yesterday.  This is the second year this survey has been used, which will make comparison data available.

Beth Giles attended the Education Committee of the Board of Regents meeting on behalf of ASEC.  The meeting went longer than anticipated, and the Provost was only able to present a portion of her presentation.

Jim Rogers reported that he attended the Engineering CASI meeting.  The group is planning a spring meeting for academic staff.  They received a Title and Total Compensation study update from Jason Jankoski.

Bill Karpus provided updates to ASEC.  The graduate assistant stipends for TA/PAs will increase 13% for the fall, which will put UW-Madison stipends near the mid-point of the Big Ten.  There is another large increase that will come likely next year as a part of the effort to increase these stipends.

The Graduate School initiated a funding competition based on the NIH T32 for arts/humanities and social sciences.  The projects involve faculty from different disciplines, and the winning proposals receive 3 years of funding for four trainees.  They have funded two groups and will put out a new call this spring to fund an additional proposal.

The Graduate School is providing one-time funds of up to $5,000 for entering students who have a competing offer at a larger stipend rate.  It seems to have helped recruiting some of the top students.  The first year had a success rate of 40%, and last year the rate was 55%.

UW-Madison is a founding sponsor of Imagine Ph.D., which is an online tool for arts/humanities/social sciences career development.  This tool was just launched in the fall.  The Graduate School is also working on developing a new website.

The Graduate School is participating in two research projects.  One is from the Council of Graduate Schools to survey and study the career pathways of graduate students.  The second project is called Coalition for Next Generation of Life Sciences.  This project will have participants display life sciences graduate and postdoctoral admissions data, time to degree, time in service for postdocs, and career outcomes.  Other participating institutions include Johns Hopkins, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, University of Pennsylvania, University of California-San Francisco, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Cornell University, Duke University, MIT, and University of Michigan.

In regards to diversity efforts, Dean Karpus reported that the Graduate School has not previously participated in the National Name Exchange, which is a list of under-represented undergraduates.  Materials have been submitted for UW-Madison to become a member.  They are looking to enhance Summer Research Programs.  AOF Fellowships are continuing.  This spring there will be a review of all the GRS (Graduate Research Scholars) communities.  There will be a report in April, and the report will be shared with GFEC (Graduate Faculty Executive Committee) and UAPC (University Academic Planning Council).  

Casey gave an update on what is happening regarding the transition of Cooperative Extension and Conference Centers to Madison.  The working groups submitted their list of tasks to be accomplished as well as identifying priorities and challenges.  There are many co-dependencies between different areas and the Steering Committee has started looking at that.  There will need to be a strategic plan on how to move through the issues.  The plan is to give UW-Madison institutional authority over Cooperative Extension as of July 1.  Conference centers will be fully transitioned to UW-Madison by July 1 providing a small model of how to work through the larger transition.

The ad hoc governance group met last week.  They selected two co-chairs, one from Madison and one from Extension.  The co-chairs met with Casey discuss the next agenda.  They may ask each governance executive committee body to identify issues that would warrant governance consideration.  They plan to create an initial inventory of governance issues.  

The governance group may also create working groups for specific issues.  It is expected that a working group will be established to look at tenure, titling and compensation.  There may be another group that looks at a cluster of issues for academic staff titling and compensation.

•February Assembly Preparation

ASEC members volunteered to take on various tasks at the Assembly meeting.

•March Assembly Agenda

ASEC looked at a draft March agenda.  There will be a report and resolution on the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee on Research Scientist Titles.  There will also be an election for a Nominating Committee member.

Meeting adjourned at 4:08 p.m.