Members Present: Donna Cole; Stephanie Elkins; Mallory Musolf, vice-chair; Leslie Petty; Deb Shapiro; Lindsey Stoddard Cameron; Bill Tishler

Guests: Michael Bernard-Donals, Laurent Heller, Jim Henderson, Alyson Kim, Lori Reesor

The meeting was called to order at 2:00 p.m.

The minutes of July 11, 2019 were approved.

Vice Chancellor Reesor reviewed the new organizational chart for her areas of responsibility. The objective of the reorganization was to pull more of the student services organizations together. There are some openings yet to fill, but Lori is excited about the new structure, which affords many synergies and opportunities. 

Mallory Musolf, vice-chair of ASEC, reported that there were technical difficulties with the TTC Advisory Council call. Another call will be held on August 16. Mallory also discussed with ASEC the notion of inviting Mark Walters to discuss his vision for OHR now that he is in his role as Chief Human Resources Officer. ASEC asked Heather to invite him to a future meeting.

Heather Daniels, Secretary of the Academic Staff, reported that she did a meet-and-greet with Hope Broadus, the new Human Resources Manager for the School of Medicine and Public Health. Heather and Jenny met with Michael Bernard-Donals to finalize the topics for this year’s academic staff chats. Topics will include innovation in the classroom, a pair of chats on the performance evaluation process (one for supervisors and one for employees), work/life balance for those dealing with family care issues, wellness and stability in a stressful world, and 2 virtual chats for off-campus employees (how to stay in touch with campus, and onboarding of Extension faculty that switched to academic staff). Heather and Deb attended the Shared Governance TTC Advisory Committee on July 16. They were asked about whether to release standard job descriptions to everyone sooner than December 1. They recommended that they be released to everyone at the same time. They were planning to release them to managers. Other items discussed included the compensation philosophy and the appeals process. The distinguished prefix will be a topic at the next meeting. Heather also reported that the DCS Course Grants program is moving to the Division of Continuing Studies. It will now be a lottery process instead of an application process.

Stephanie reported that Wisconsin Public Media is in the process of getting a CASI in place.

Provost Henderson responded to ASEC’s question regarding his thoughts on the Office of the Provost that he might share with incoming Provost Karl Scholz. Jim stated that the structure of the office is different than he’s seen in other institutions, particularly in terms of the number of direct reports the Provost has. The decentralized budget process has also been interesting. Jim was surprised by the amount of time that faculty discipline cases take up, and he said that he was very impressed at the thoughtful way in which they are handled. On the issue of clinical nursing hours, Jim met with Norman Drinkwater and the deans about this issue. There will be a group to look at this issue and how it is handled by other universities. Figuring out the right boundaries for work outside of UW-Madison in this space is important. Jim also reported on the status of a project regarding the visa process on campus. A group chaired by Dean Soyeon Shim has been put together to talk about what the best structure would be. Student Affairs, HR, the Division of Continuing Studies, the Office of the VCRGE, and the International Division are all represented. The group will be given its charge next week, and the Chancellor is asking for a recommendation by September. On the subject of enrollment management, campus continues to look at what figures look like for the fall, but the outlook for the freshman class is strong. Enrollments are up for summer session as well. Jim has talked with Steve Hahn about increasing the number of transfer students to UW-Madison.

Vice Chancellor Heller fielded a question regarding the construction of a 5G network in the state and what impacts that would have to existing campus networks. Laurent said that he would be talk with Lois Brooks about this and encouraged ASEC to do the same. On the topic of the Administrative Transformation Project, Laurent reported that a few employees have been added, and that Steve Kisch has been brought on as a consultant to the project through the pre-planning phase. There was a brief presentation at the July Board of Regents meeting. Laurent reviewed his site visit to UT-Austin, and said that the team will be going to Yale next. The team has been talking to campus units about how HR and finance are currently done in those schools/colleges/divisions and documenting that information to assess needs. There will be a possible presentation to ASEC, the Assembly, or both. There will also be open forums as part of the selection process for whatever platform campus chooses to use. Laurent also announced that John Horn has been appointed to the newly created position of Chief of Staff for Laurent’s office. ASEC discussed the challenges and opportunities for more diverse hiring in the VCFA organization and the university at large.

Vice Provost Bernard-Donals updated ASEC on the progress of the teaching professor workgroup. The group met for the third time on July 24, and they have determined their proposal for the different ranks in the series, working from what was passed in the Faculty Senate. They also used clinical processes as guidelines, as well as guidelines used by the University of Illinois. The group also finalized the process for mapping people into the series along those ranks. They are now moving from this area to the process that would be used in units to determine who is eligible. They will also tackle the issues of moving into the new titles from other titles, as well as hiring directly into the new titles. They are discussing the constitution of evaluation committees within departments where, in principle, there would be a balance of representation between faculty and instructional academic staff where possible. Another issue that is outstanding is how coordination between the campus working group and the school/college/division working groups will work. Michael also brought up the notion of how to assure continued advancement in the new TTC system. For people who will only have one level, how do we ensure regular opportunities for pay increases? Michael and ASEC discussed ideas around ensuring 5-10% increase in new/correlative title series, policies around equity, mandatory time-in-position triggers, and the question of how the deployment of TTC will affect people in or near their time for promotion. Michael also mentioned wanting to ensure that discussions of compensation, benefits, and levels are not separate concepts but rather integrated conversations.

• Appointments

• Update: 18-19 Academic Staff Assembly Statistics

• Assembly Orientation

• Board of Regents Free Speech Policy Hearing

Meeting adjourned at 4:42 p.m.