Members Present: Donna Cole; Aaron Crandall; Jenny Dahlberg; Tim Dalby; Beth Giles; Mallory Musolf; Kevin Niemi, chair; Lindsey Stoddard Cameron

Guests: Diane Blaskowski, Ron Harris, Laurent Heller, Heather Mc Fadden, Meghan Owens, Mark Walters

The meeting was called to order at 2:03 p.m.

The minutes of January 10, 2019, were approved.

Vice Chancellor Heller reported on the impacts of the partial federal government shutdown to campus. The impacts are minimal, with a very small number of stop-work notices and no impacts to graduate students. Administration is thinking about how spending on grants from affected agencies will be handled if the shutdown continues for several more weeks. Laurent also reported that he met with the new Department of Administration Secretary this week. We will be requesting delegated bonding and construction authority. There has been continued work on the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) project. Laurent has met with President Cross, Chancellor Blank, and various CIOs across System. There will be some common elements to work out with System, but Madison will be driving the project. Executive and steering committees will be set up for the project should it go forward. The project will include HR and financial systems. Laurent also discussed data that ASEC requested regarding salary adjustments for limited employees, and encouraged ASEC to have HR forward that data to them. Finally, Laurent mentioned that Athletics is planning to outsource the remaining components of its food service operation. Athletics is unusual, in that their operation was already partially outsourced. Laurent’s requirements for this to go forward was that equivalent wages and benefits be written into the RFP, and that affected employees would have to be hired by the new vendor or that another university job would be found for affected employees.

Jake Smith, Deputy Secretary of the Academic Staff, reported that two of ASEC’s three nominees for the Provost Search and Screen Committee were appointed, Lee DeBaillie and Elaine Klein. The keynote speaker for this year’s Academic Staff Institute will be Erin Barbato, Director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the Law School. The Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs invited two members of ASEC to attend the governance meetings for the UHS Executive Director finalists. Aaron and Jenny volunteered to make all three sessions.

Mark reported that work on the standard job descriptions was continuing. There are 400 subject matter experts that are reviewing them now. The deadline for review was originally December 31, but this has been pushed to February 28. There are focus groups working on larger concerns from GLS and IT. All comments received in this process will be documented, as will what was done with those comments. 60% of the surveys reviewing SJDs have been completed so far, and HR is solidifying the methodology for review of the feedback. Instructional descriptions have been drafted, and they are getting ready to roll them out to the SMEs. ASEC shared concerns with communication about the SJDs and some teams’ work on the process not being taken into account. Mark discussed lessons learned so far in the project, and mentioned that Don Schutt and Lindsay Lemmer have been brought on to handle change management and communication, respectively. A new project manager has been brought in as well. The benefits preference survey deadline was extended again to January 4. Overall there was a 47% response rate System-wide, with a 45% response rate at Madison. HR expects to have compiled results around the third week of February and will then align those results with the Benefits Value Analysis (BVA) results. Mark also discussed a proposal that the TTC Advisory Council would be discontinued and that the functions of that group would move to the UW System Reps group. Reps will consider a draft of this proposal at the February 1 meeting.

•Nominations

Motion to approve the Nominating Committee slate. (Stoddard Cameron). Seconded. Approved.

•Appointments

Motion to appoint Ellen Smith to the University Curriculum Committee (Crandall). Seconded. Approved.

•February Assembly Agenda

ASEC asked Jake to reach out to the Mentoring Committee co-chairs about giving a committee overview at the February meeting. ASEC will approve the agenda at the next meeting.

•Work Life Survey Presentation for Provost

Lindsey provided ASEC with a preliminary draft of a document for the Provost. ASEC gave feedback on how to revise it, and Lindsey will also discuss the document with Michael Bernard-Donals.

 

Meeting adjourned at 4:12 p.m.