ASEC Minutes
2:00 – 4:30 p.m. Thursday, October 25, 2018
53 Bascom Hall
Members Present: Bruno Browning; Donna Cole; Jenny Dahlberg; Mallory Musolf; Kevin Niemi, chair; Lindsey Stoddard Cameron
Guests: Steve Cramer; Laurent Heller; Jake Smith
The meeting was called to order at 2:02 p.m.
The minutes of October 18, 2018, were approved.
General Reports
Kevin Niemi, ASEC chair, reported that the UW System Academic Staff Representatives will be meeting on November 9. He is working on the agenda that will include concerns from UW Colleges Online academic staff about their future employment as well as how different campuses are ensuring shared representation of merged colleges.
Heather Daniels, Secretary of the Academic Staff, reported that she participated in a panel discussion about Assembly representation for academic staff in Public Media. They are discussing how they wish to be represented in the Assembly. She also provided an update on resolutions before the University Committee (UC). The two resolutions on Professor titles for academic staff will go to the Faculty Senate for a first reading on Monday, November 5. The TAA also attended the UC meeting and discussed a resolution asking that graduate assistants no longer be responsible for paying fees that are associated with tuition expenses.
Liaison Reports
Jake Smith, Deputy Secretary, reported that he attended a SMPH CASI meeting where they did a SWOT analysis of the CASI. This was part of their self-review. Charles Meyer, Office of Strategic Consulting, did a good job of facilitating, and the exercise seemed to be well received.
Guest: Laurent Heller, Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration
Vice Chancellor Heller shared that UW System is moving towards a central services model for human resources, business services, etc. UW-Madison will not necessarily be included in this.
He also discussed the Enterprise Resource Planning project (ERP). This last spring and summer, they compiled an inventory of shadow systems and bolt-ons to make up for deficiencies in the human resources and financial campus systems. There are a lot of these, and we spend a lot of resources maintaining them. He wants to explore how technology can make the work easier and more effective and how business needs and work processes can drive the technology. This project is still in the planning phases and has not yet been given the green light.
Laurent also asked to present data regarding the Discretionary Compensation Fund and Bonus Funds to the Assembly this fall. He is presiding at the November Assembly meeting and will present this information during that meeting.
Guest: Steve Cramer, Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning
Vice Provost Cramer reported that he has been spending a lot of time working on the Student Digital Ecosystem during the past three years. The ecosystem includes reporting tools and curriculum management system as well as teaching and learning tools like learning management systems and learning assessment.
Handshake is a new campus-wide career services system that was purchased to replace separate systems. One area they are still working on is advising technology. A new area that he is focused on this year is academic integrity. Many other universities are already ahead of UW-Madison in this area. It encompasses things like e-proctoring for online tests and plagiarism detection software.
Other areas of focus this year include learning analytics. There is also an e-textbook project underway. Data from the use of these textbooks can be displayed. There are a lot of policy and privacy issues. These texts could be ready to go by the end of the academic year.
They are also looking at classroom scheduling. The current system we have is a bottom up system, but we have the capability now to do scheduling different. Incentives such as desirable classrooms could be used to encourage different scheduling.
Business
•November Assembly Agenda
Laurent Heller’s presentation will be added to the agenda. The agenda will need to be approved at the next meeting.
•Next Steps for TTC Project Standard Job Description reviews
ASEC discussed how to get feedback on this process from the Subject Matter Experts that ASEC appointed. They discussed sending a letter to these academic staff. ASEC is quite interested in how career progression will work and would appreciate any insight from the reviewers as the standard job descriptions are being reviewed.
Meeting adjourned at 3:54 p.m.
Minutes submitted by Heather Daniels, Secretary of the Academic Staff