Members Present: Bruno Browning; Donna Cole; Aaron Crandall; Jenny Dahlberg; Kevin Niemi, chair; Deb Shapiro; Lindsey Stoddard Cameron

Guests: Diane Blaskowski, Lois Brooks, Ron Harris, Laurent Heller, Scott Hildebrandt, Katelynn Howen, Tom Jordan, Sarah Mangelsdorf, Tamara Walker

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

The minutes of November 8, 2018, were approved.

Kevin Niemi, ASEC chair, reported that there was a meeting for governance leaders on the state budget. It has been many years since there was a split government in the state. A lame duck session will likely be called with possible actions curtailing the power of governor. Evers is on record saying he will continue the tuition freeze, but would propose back filling it. There are 9 possible seats of the Board of Regents that would become vacant during the next four years.

The new state budget year will begin on July 1, 2019. There is a $620 million positive balance in the state budget. UW System is requesting bonding authority for program revenue and gift building projects.

The third academic staff chat on how to deal with stress was very well attended. There seems to be a need for staff in this area.

Heather Daniels, Secretary of the Academic Staff, reported that ASEC has been invited to attend governance sessions for the Dean of the School of Business candidate visits. Heather also emailed President Cross about a sample question contained in the UW System policy regarding recruitment, assessment and selection that could lead victims of sexual assault or harassment to answer yes if they had left a place of employment during an investigation. President Cross responded that they would work on the wording.

•Review of pay adjustment data presented at Assembly

ASEC discussed the pay adjustment data that was presented at the Assembly. ASEC had some concerns including the amount of adjustments that went to limited employees and the sizeable difference in the percentage of academic staff receiving a pay adjustment in the last three years.

Sarah Mangelsdorf discussed the proposed revisions to the UW System Program Productivity Policy. UW System is still collecting comments on the revisions. ASEC is in the process of drafting feedback.

The Office of Strategic Consulting is leading a new project on creating a policy library for the UW-Madison campus. Part of the purpose in addition to having the policies easily accessible would be to identify areas of policies that may conflict. Heather indicated that Charles Meyer from that office had been in touch with her about this project.

There are two Dean reviews this year: Pharmacy and International Division. Committees will be submitting their reports soon.

Laurent Heller discussed the data presented to the Assembly on pay adjustments. ASEC asked to receive further information on the different types of limited employees that received pay adjustments. There was also discussion about the lack of information given to employees about pay adjustments. Vice Chancellor Heller indicated he was open to more conversation about pay adjustments with ASEC.

Diane Blaskowski shared with ASEC that the Benefits Preference survey was sent out on Monday, November 26. So far they have a 13% response rate.  For UW-Madison approximately 1,100 surveys will be done on paper and 23,000 were sent out electronically. Reminders for the survey will be sent on Fridays.

Katelyn Howen provided information on the standard job description reviews. The deadline for the reviews is December 31. There are over 300 subject matter experts on campus reviewing the job descriptions. So far 20 have completed their feedback and another 86 have begun to give feedback. They are holding some drop-in sessions for reviewers so individuals can come and ask questions or have uninterrupted work time.  The Office of Human Resources are developing criteria around what constitutes an acceptable review of a standard job description (how many reviewers, etc).

•Review January Assembly Agenda

Heather prepared a draft agenda for ASEC to review. Even though the January meeting would be a bit later than usual, there were no current business items pending to indicate that a meeting should be held in January.

•December Assembly Agenda

Motion to approve the agenda (Dahlberg). Seconded. Approved.

There are millions of attempts to hack UW IT systems every day. There is a lot of payroll deposit and financial aid theft happening in the US. Multifactor authentication decreases the threat level. Employees will be able to use an app on their smart phone or a fob. This won’t prevent a compromise, but it will allow more protection since hackers won’t be able do that second step. The UW-Madison campus will require multifactor authentication, and it will be fully implemented for employees by the end of March 2019. 

If employees don’t have their phone or fob, they can get a 12-hour passcode from DoIT or can request 10 codes for future use. They are working on a self-service 12-hour passcode generator. They are trying to smooth out services so people don’t have to log in multiple times a day. Student employees will not be included in this system until the summer.

Meeting adjourned at 4:35 p.m.