[ Inaudible ] >> Yeah, because she says, we have to be a quorum. >> I'm waiting for a high sign that we're at quorum. It looks like it to me, but I need to know that officially. All right. I'm formally calling this meeting to order. It is wonderful to see all of you. You notice we've got new seats since you were last year. Just to show you what a fine University this is. We've improved your comfort. Can I ask all of the faculty to rise for the reading of the memorial resolutions? Let me recognize Professor Bassam Shakhashiri to present the memorial resolution Professor Emeritus Phillip Certain, a song. >> Phillip Certain, emeritus professor of chemistry, and the emeritus dean of the College of Letters and Science, died on August 11, 2020 in Madison. He was 76 years old and had lived gallantly for several years with progressive supranuclear palsy. Phil was recognized as a scientist, teacher, scholar, administrator, and community leader. Phil was admired for his integrity, dignity, and decency in all aspects. Phil was deeply committed to broadening access to the university and to increasing diversity among students and faculty. He recruited and mentored women and underrepresented minorities for faculty and staff positions and for academic leadership appointments. Phil was a caring colleague and leader. Colleagues, please read the two gifts that he left us. Phil was a remarkable man whose action and contributions shall help generations live the Wisconsin Idea. Phil Certain for 50 years was my special friend. >> Thank you, Bassam. Phil Certain, both as a researcher and as an administrator and dean, just made huge contributions to this campus and his wife Melinda Certain, I am told is listening in virtually, if we could have a round of applause for him. [ Applause ] Let me recognize Professor Vanessa Leone to present the memorial resolution for Professor Mark Cook. >> Hello, I'm one of my Cook's former trainees and now assistant professor in his home department. It is truly an honor to read this resolution on behalf of Mark's colleagues and family. Mark E. Cook, animal science professor from 1983 to 2017, died on September 9 2017. Mark and his wife Ellen, both from Houma, Louisiana, have three children and five grandchildren. Mark, a self-proclaimed "chickenologist", was inducted into the Poultry Science Hall of Fame in 2019. As a prolific scientist, visionary, entrepreneur and inspiring instructor, Mark supported research programs from his patent royalties, started spin off companies and instilled creativity. Mark co-authored the campus D2P funding initiative. Mark appreciated faculty governance and chaired the university committee for Faculty Senate meetings in this very room. He really is sorely missed by family, students and colleagues alike. Thank you. >> Thank you, Vanessa. I think Mark was the UC chair in my first year, I believe. And Mark's son, Craig Cook is here. Thank you for coming. [ Applause ] Let me recognize Professor Robert Kotloski to present the memorial resolution for Professor Emeritus Peter Eichmann. >> Dr. Peter L. Eichmann, professor emeritus of neurology, died on January 7 2021, at age 95. He joined the UW faculty in 1957, and in 1965, was promoted to the rank of professor of medicine and neurology. He was one of the most influential neurologists in the State of Wisconsin until his retirement in 1991. At age 39 years old, he was the youngest dean of the University of Wisconsin medical school, serving between 1965 to 1971. He was chair of the university committee from 1984 to 1985. Throughout his life, he was a strong advocate for individuals with disabilities. Dr. Eichmann was an expert clinician with a superb bedside manner. We will miss his gentle demeanor, kindness and generosity which were evident for all his trainees, patients and their families. >> Thank you very much. Let me recognize Professor Jerlando Jackson to present the memorial resolution for Professor Emeritus Donald McCarty. >> Hello to the chancellor, provost, Faculty Senate and the McCarty family. I am, as mentioned, Jerlando Jackson, department chair of educational leadership and policy analysis, and I have the opportunity to share with you resolution for Dr. Don McCarty, who was an emeritus professor and former dean of the school of education, served for nine years as dean of our school of education and dedicated another 18 in the department now known as educational leadership and policy analysis, then known as the department of educational administration. His work focused in particular on teacher education and the politics of education. Additionally, he served an instrumental role in establishing UW-Madison's first committee on equity. With this significant contribu -- with his significant contributions and passionate mentorship of his students and other faculty, Dr. McCarty left a significant legacy in our department in the school of education, UW-Madison at large as well as the general leadership community that we all are a part of. Thank you. And we do have representatives of the McCarty family, if they would please stand for recognition. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Thank you to Jerlando, and this is a Professor McCarty's daughter Marie and grandson Patrick, thank you for coming. Let me recognize for professor emeritus of Aliko Songolo, to present the memorial resolution Professor Tejumola Olaniyan. >> Tejumola Olaniyan Louise Durham Mead, professor of English and African cultural studies, as well as Wole Soyinka professor of the humanities at the University of Wisconsin Madison, passed away suddenly at his home in Madison, on November 30th, 2019. He was 60. A member of the UW faculty for 18 years, Olaniyan was a world renowned scholar of African and African Diaspora cultural studies, who published nine books and dozens of journal articles, but who also, devoted tireless energy to building academic institutions and mentoring the next generation of scholars. He is fondly remembered for his wit and warmth and humbly admired by colleagues and students around the world. Thank you >> Thank you very much. [ Applause ] And I am told that Professor Olaniyan's wife, Moji, is here. Are you here? Along with a number of friends. Thank you for coming. [ Applause ] That is the end of the memorial resolutions. Please be seated. And those of you who are here from memorial resolutions are welcome to stay but it may be a long meeting so, we would not be unhappy if you decided to leave. Welcome to everyone. As I said, it's great to see you all back face-to-face. And I want to thank you for your leadership, for your partnership over this past year and certainly as we transition into this new semester. I know it's been a difficult 18 months for many people, but we are back and we're back in-person and functioning almost normally with a few masks on us and a few other testing processes. I want to say a special welcome and thank you to the new UC chair, Eric Sandgren. This is his first meeting since coming into that position. Thank you for taking that on, Eric. And we have two new UC members, Susan Thibeault. Susan, thank you for taking this on. And Fernando Tejedo-Herrero, thank you, Fernando for being here. And I know we have a number of new senators. Everyone who's new senator, raise your hand. Welcome to all of you. It's good to see you. There are also three individuals in new senior leadership roles among my executive team. One is Nancy Lynch, the new vice chancellor for legal affairs, replacing Ray Taffora. Nancy was Ray's deputy. She's been here for a long time and many of you will know her. She's actually meeting with the governor staff. So she has a good excuse as to why she isn't here to see you. Rob Cramer is our interim vice chancellor for financial -- finance and administration, replacing Lauren Heller. Rob was in the same position at the system, and then came over to run facilities and has moved into this interim position. And we've got a lot of issues in front of us and he's just been great. And Rob is also at some other meeting relating to facilities right now. The third person who I think is here, LaVar Charleston, are you back there somewhere? There you are. LaVar is our new chief diversity officer and deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion comes from the school of education, where he was their first chief diversity officer, but has had a very distinguished career is an academic staff member doing research on the set of issues running a research center, has a national reputation for some of his publications. And I'm just delighted that LaVar was willing to come into this job. So, he's someone you'll want to get to know. Thank you, LaVar. I also want to congratulate a former member of the Faculty Senate, Chris Walker. I think I saw Chris back here somewhere. Is he here? Maybe not. You know, Chris was appointed the director of the division of arts effective July 1st, and it's always good to see people moving into those positions. Before I turn to some other topics, let me share some of the good things happening on campus. If you have listened to the provost talk to any group in the last month, you've heard the announcement that the Washington Monthly recently named us the top public university in the country. We are fourth overall in the country. followed, you know, we follow Stanford, MIT, Duke, then the University of Wisconsin at Madison and trailing far behind is Harvard is number five. This ranking is particularly important because it measures things we care a lot about, namely the impact on the country through education, research and public service, which is at the heart of our mission. So we're quite proud of that ranking. It's clearly the best rankings of any of those out there. We have welcomed an excellent new freshmen class this fall a little bigger than we were actually counting on. It was a bit of a surprise. And it's the largest class in our history, 8,400 students chosen from a record, 54,000 applications. The class includes the highest number of Wisconsin students in the past 20 years. Students from every state except North Dakota, I have no idea why North Dakota isn't here, and international students from 45 countries outside the US. The share of students of color in our freshman class is just over 25%, an all-time high. And the share of underrepresented students of color in the freshman class is also at an all-time high of 15%. Both of those are up substantially from just a few years ago. And thanks to improved scholarships and recruitment of our very top scholars. This is the fifth year in a row that we're projecting an increase in the number of national merit finalists from the State of Wisconsin and attracting the very best student of Wisconsin to stay here in the state and come to UW-Madison is always a priority. We did not set out to enroll a class this size. It was a difficult year in admissions for all sorts of reasons. But I have to say to be a hot school nationally with more people accepting your offers than you had originally projected is not a bad problem to have. And we have worked to expand class sections for freshmen advisors of the student services, just as we also hired nine new mental health providers as well. In addition to new students, we also have new faculty, many of you have them in your departments. Despite all the challenges of the pandemic here, many schools were not hiring at all. Over the past year, we've hired 80 new faculty, which is just great and welcome to all of them. I hope you'll -- you're all working them inside your departments. Finally, an issue I know many of you care deeply about environmental sustainability. Last April, we were one to five universities nationwide and the first one the big 10, to win a prestigious national designation as a Green Ribbon School, reflecting our commitment to creating a campus that is more sustainable and resilient. And we just had a ceremony in the department of education in Washington, DC last week, giving a set award and that's a good award. We got a lot of work to do on that front but it's good to be known that we are making progress in the lead on some of that. Turning to the issue of the day, COVID. We are monitoring numbers from the campus and from the community daily. And we're seeing what we expected to see which is good news. Our cases went up just a little bit right after 46,000 students arrived on campus, but they came down very quickly. The last week or so we've had somewhere between 5, 10, 15 cases a day, very highly focused among the unvaccinated. And that number, if anything, this looks like it's decreasing. And if that's where we are in a community of 66,000 people, when we're all here on campus, we're in very good shape. Students and employees who are not vaccinated, as you all know, are required to test regularly. They're the main source of a lot of those testing results. But the percentage that we're getting out of those tests is around 1%. And you know, that's very successful and very good. As you know, we've mandated indoor masking for everyone consistent with current Dane County requirements, in addition to that testing. The best news here and I think you probably all know that says we have a wonderful grad -- vaccination rate. And I'm very impressed and appreciative of the responsiveness of our students to our efforts to increase vaccinations. Ninety-three percent of our students and that number will continue to go up because not everyone's gotten both shots. Nearly 95% of our employees, and more than 99% of our faculty are fully vaccinated. And more than anything else, that is an assurance that we are going to stay stable with where we are right now. You know, COVID is an endemic disease at this point, we are going to see COVID cases on campus this year, as well as next. But vaccination is our absolutely best defense and we continue to consult weekly with a team of just great public health folks from -- within the university to make sure we're tracking the numbers, tracking what's happening, doing the right thing with the best scientific evidence. I want to thank all of you for what you and your colleagues are doing both in and out of the classroom. I don't have to tell you students are thrilled to be back. I don't know what your reaction has been. But I have never seen students more gleeful at coming back to campus and going to class. I mean, it's just been wildly happy in some cases. Every event we hold for students twice as many show up as we've ever seen before. And I think it is the effect of wanting to be back here, wanting to have a normal year. And I appreciate all of your involvement with that. I'm happy to tell you we've gotten some new numbers this week on our educational outcomes, which are also good news. Our six-year graduation rate is the highest it's ever been. It is a little over 89% that keeps us among the top 10 in US publics. And our four-year graduation rate is also the highest it's ever been. The graduation gap between white and historically underrepresented students continues to fall. We still have work to do on that. And we have expanded our institutional scholarship aid. Over just the last 12 years, we've gone from $25 million of our own internal aid that we give to scholarships to almost 100 million, and that is what's funding Bucky's Tuition Promise. It's with Sewanee expand scholarship aid in many of our programs into diverse students. And it's what's funding getting some of the very top students in in the state here. I'm very pleased with what we've been able to do in terms of we needed the scholarships to expand the quality of our class and it's one of the reasons we're doing so well in class quality. Better scholarships, less time in school means less debt. More than half of our undergraduates, 57% graduated with zero student loan debt in 2020. And that is far, far above the national average. These improvements didn't happen by chance, the result of the strategic effort that we started back in 2014 to identify and eliminate the road blocks that keeps students from graduating on time and we're continuing to work on that. We're also continuing to push on improving educational outcomes through high quality advising, and better teaching through the new center for teaching, learning and mentoring that some of you are familiar with. This sits in the provost office under Johnson Brennan, I'm very excited with the way John is putting this together. Among other things, this will be a clearinghouse for lessons learned from the pandemic, about how to use technology even more effectively as a form of student engagement. So I encourage all of you to pay a little attention to what's happening with this center for teaching, learning and mentoring. It's an exciting new effort. Let me bring you up to date on a few things we're working on with regard to diversity and inclusion, an issue that is always in front of us. I'm first happy to tell you, we had a very substantial increase in applications for underrepresented students of color this year. And as I already noted, that is translated into a substantial increase in enrollment. As I mentioned earlier, we've been successful within the highest share of our freshman class comprised of students of color and underrepresented students of color. We always have more work to do here and the national reckoning with racial justice has fueled a whole new competition for a lot of these students that we need to be very actively involved with. We have to not only offer an outstanding educational experience, but also attractive scholarships. One of the ways we're doing this is with our new Raimey-Noland campaign. I announced this a year ago in the summer. It's an effort to raise money to fund diversity initiatives, scholarships, faculty, programming, a wide variety of things depending on what donors are most interested in. It's named for the first two black students to graduate from the university, Mabel Watson Raimey and William Smith Noland. When I announced this year ago in the summer, I announced a $10 million goal, which I thought, you know, let's see if how long it takes us to get there. Well, I'm pleased to tell you that as of two weeks ago, we're at almost 40 million. And we were clearly not nearly ambitious enough and we are expanding our work on this and the opportunities I think this will create on the scholarship front and on the programming front to really endow some programs that we know are effective, and that we can run into perpetuity is really great. Let me highlight two faculty support efforts into diversity. The first and you all need to know about this. This past academic year, the provost office created what's known as the exceptional service support program to acknowledge extra work by faculty members, often from groups that are underrepresented on campus who spent extra time beyond what most faculty spend, mentoring students and talking with them, and you know, coming to them with issues and concerns. In the first round, this provided course relief to six outstanding faculty members, primarily, junior faculty, and again faculty of color, who often carry a disproportional load of this. We can fund as many as 10 people with the exceptional service support program. But we need help getting the word out. So please watch your inbox for an announcement, share this with your department chair, thinking your department if there's some people who you want to try to nominate for this award. Secondly, we're continuing to invest in the top program, which began in 2018 to provide funds from central campus to make it possible for departments to hire outside of the normal hiring process, going after people they want to recruit from groups that are not well represented within their discipline. In the past three years, we've hired 39 new faculty through top across a wide range of departments. And the program school is diversity in all forms. We've hired women in departments that are heavily male, but about three-fourths of these new faculty are people of color from underrepresented groups. And we plan to keep this program going for at least a couple more years. So again, I hope all the departments are thinking about who do we want to think about that we can hire, who's a top scholar that we can bring in under the top program. And how do we caught them, and in turn, put in an application to try to get some money for this. As you know, there's only so much that we can do from the center to make this campus more diverse and inclusive. Each department and unit needs to identify what are the issues facing you, with your faculty, with your students, with your staff and how do you need to work on those issues. We've seen some really important initiatives at the school, the college, the department level, and we need to keep that going. So I want to thank all of you who've been involved in all of this work. We don't of course always get this right. I know we're going to talk about this later in the meeting. Scheduling the start of classes on the second day of Rosh Hashanah was clearly a misstep. Rabbi Steinberger invited me to speak at Rosh Hashanah services at Hillel, and I told the Congress gets what I am telling you. We have a committee that is reviewing calendars to make sure this does not happen again, not just this year, but every year. Because UW-Madison has to be a place, where Jewish students and indeed students from every faith community feel welcomed and included. Let me turn quickly to research. Our research continues to grow. That's really good news. In fiscal year 2021, which closed at the end of June, we had an increase of more than a hundred grant proposals over the previous year, and grew our grant awards by over 15%. Now, that sounds great, but I will tell you, if you're in the top 10 schools and research scholars, it is stiff, fierce competition. And if you're not growing between eight and 10, and 15%, you're going to drop down, because our competition is growing that fast. So on the one hand, we're doing a great job with growing research. On the other hand, this isn't something we can let up. If we want to stay where we are, we have to keep at it. Let me talk about some of the things we're doing to be strategic about this, because we want to continue to improve the success of these proposals. That means targeting research areas, where we know federal agencies are funding, we're expecting a lot of new federal research dollars to be available in the next year or two. And I've asked Steve Ackerman, our vice chancellor for research, to identify areas that are going to have substantial increase in federal dollars, and talk with faculty, departments, research centers that have the opportunity to solicit those dollars. We need to prepare today for what are the proposals we want to put together, not wait until that RFP comes out. If we are expanding our grants, we also need to improve how we support them. I know that Eric's going to say a little bit more about this, but here's some things we're doing. We are implementing new business systems across the university over the next several years. These are designed to reduce the amount of time faculty have to spend on administrative tasks. It's what we call our administrative transformation project, ATP, everything is in acronym, which you will be hearing more about in the years ahead. And secondly, of course, modernizing our facilities, which is always a challenge given the constraints we have on facility funding around here. We have a number of new research and teaching spaces in the works. Our chemistry building is going to open. It is run into really unacceptable problems but we are working on it. We have an expansion in the vet med school, we broke ground in June. We have a new meat sciences building that opened last November. The center for dairy research has a moving date at the end of this month and completion by the spring. That will include the Babcock dairy plant, those of you who want ice cream to come back to campus. And we just announced a new computer data and information science building three weeks ago that will be funded entirely by donor dollars. They, you know, in the midst of fundraising for that and we hope to break ground on that in the next couple of years as well. None of this is cheaper, easy, which brings me of course to the budget. Those of you who've been around the Faculty Senate know there is always a budget section in every one of my talks. The pandemic created a financial disaster for us. There's no other way to say it, as in every other school in the country. Last winter in spring, we expected our budget hole to be around $320 million dollars. I told you all that in the spring. That includes all the lost revenues that we didn't take in, as well as the extra expenses around public health services and testing and everything else that we incurred. Fortunately, we ended up at the close of the year in June 30th in a better position. We only, and I put this in quotes, we only lost $226 million over the year, which still makes it the worst financial year we've ever seen by quite a bit. What change? The state actually returned $31 million to us that they had lapsed, that was unexpected. Research expenditures despite the lack of travel and furloughs, we thought those would go down and they actually didn't, they went up a little. And while housing and unions lost more than what we were projecting, athletics actually lost less. So, you know, all of that is basically a, you know, relatively good news. But, you know, we are in reasonably good shape as we go into this next year. We have absorbed all of the losses this past year between furloughs and cutting back on research expenditures, putting some of our central funds into this and receiving some federal funds. So we move into this new year with no budget overhang, and that's very important. We did get a new state budget in July. It was a budget year last spring, if you weren't paying attention. As always, there's some good things and bad things about the state budget. I will tell you the worst thing, despite being a very good financial year for the state, the UW System received no increase at all, in any general state money to support new programs, faculty hiring, or inflation cost increases. That's really bad news. And we did not get funding for the new engineering building that many of us thought would be funded and that is very badly needed. We did get funding for a major utilities program to allow us to start planning for that building. And we did get money for a new academic building for the college of letters and sciences, which is also very badly needed. And we got a promise from the state of 2% raises for all faculty and staff in January 22 and January 23. I mean, we pay a third of the cost of those raises, and with no new money coming in, that actually puts us in deficit relative to the state budget. Additional good news, not from the state, but from the hard work of many people across campus, this fall, we are celebrating the end of our current campaign, campaign fundraising. We started this eight years ago, it was supposed to end last year. But we've been so successful at this fundraising campaign, I said, look, we're not celebrating this with some Zoom party in October, November last year, we're waiting until we can get together and celebrate in-person, which we will be doing the last weekend of October, that's homecoming weekend. Our goal was $3.2 billion. Many of our alumni have laughed at that and said, that's, you know, we never going to make that, it's way above what we've ever raised before. Let me be clear, by the end of this year, we're going to be over $4 billion in this campaign, which I am very proud of. There are very few public universities that have been that successful in fundraising campaign. But let me also be clear, this doesn't mean I have $4 billion in slush fund to spend, let me, you know, much of this is allocated into endowment. Almost all of it is tied to gift agreements for very specific projects, in your departments, or for faculty, for scholarships, or in particular, research centers. And as endowment, that means you don't spend the base money, but you spend four and a half percent of it every year based on return. And that means you can fund things into perpetuity, you don't use the money out. A substantial share of this is still pledge, it's in people's wills or other places, and we haven't gotten it yet. And some of it is directly and immediately expendable. For instance, I think there been some really successful wins from this campaign, the increase in our scholarships, I've already mentioned, and we've created 255 new faculty chairs and professorships across campus, which is just great at hiring and retaining our great faculty. So, we're celebrating on homecoming weekend at the last weekend in October, and it is worth the celebration. Let me end with few words about compensation. I put it at the end, because everyone's ears always pick up when I say, compensation, faculty compensation in particular. As you know, in recent years, we've put really significant funding into a compensation program designed to provide merit and market adjustments for faculty. Two years ago, we made a large commitment to raise faculty salaries and let me tell you the result. Since 2000, we were right at the bottom of the big 10 except, you know, Northwestern Two, but that just the publics. Among all the publics we're at the bottom in terms of our full faculty salaries for professor salaries, right. You know, we aren't in Iowa City and we weren't in Bloomington, we're in Madison, and we're still at the bottom of the big 10. That was for almost 20 years. As of this past year, with the additional money we put in, some of you know, we've sort of been moving up those rankings in the last couple of years, we're now number five in faculty salaries in the big 10. And I hope all of your faculty are feeling some of that and understanding that we are now about where we need to be with faculty salaries, which has not been true for decades. And our main goal now is to make sure we don't slip again, to keep this word is. To keep from sliding backwards, we're putting another 2 million into a faculty compensation fund this year for merit and matching salary increases. We're also be funding equity and merit increases for staff. And we're funding a $5 million one-time money bonus fund primarily aimed at rewarding employees who, you know, have done particularly good and hard work over this last year. And of course, as noted, everyone is going to get a 2% pay increase this year as well. So, I'm really pleased with where we are on the compensation front, and we need to keep it there. So the last year was difficult, but we are in a much better place now than we were last fall. And I hope all of you, I said this last spring, are thinking about how we can apply what we learned in this pandemic to improve some aspects of our work, whether it's how staff work, you know, a lot more people are spending some time remotely, you know, for many jobs that works well. I hope teaching has changed in some ways as people have learned new technologies and new tools. You know, this is a great university. And our reputation is as strong as it's ever been. But we can always do things better. And to stay at the top, we have to keep doing things better. So, let me close this as I began with a real thank you. None of this is easy. I know this past year has been particularly hard and I appreciate everything that you and the superb faculty on this campus do for the university. So, let me end there, I'm going to let Eric Sandgren say a few words, and then we'll open up for questions. Eric, it's yours. [ Applause ] >> Thanks. A couple preliminary comments, first, I'm really glad to see that we have comfortable seats in our Faculty Senate room, and I hope they're good. I just want to point out that this, the folding chairs are still the old folding chairs, though they're not so comfortable so maybe we can, you know, do something about that. Second of many people put on glasses to read, and I have to take mine off, because they fog up. So here I go. All right. So, welcome to the new academic year and our first meeting back in-person. And I know that's not the last time that will be discussed. In particular, welcome to our new senators, and thank you to those who are returning. We greatly appreciate all your efforts and involvement. A brief word for those of you who are new to the Senate, if you were unable to attend the Senate orientation last week, there's a video recording of the session available on the secretary of the faculty website. Go to the Faculty Senate page and in the upper right hand of the screen, there is a link to senator information you can find it there. As you know, the first day of instruction for the 2021 fall semester unfortunately was scheduled for the second day of Rosh Hashanah. The university committee apologizes for the challenges this created for our Jewish community and we are committed to preventing this type of conflict in the future. Two agenda items under business and a joint working group are just the first steps in assuring this will not happen in the future. The university committee acknowledges its role in this error and promises to revisit progress in the spring. Let me take a moment to mention PROFS. It is the body created by the Faculty Senate that advocates on behalf of UW-Madison faculty before state government, the board of regents, members of Congress and the public. You -- If -- You should have received a paper copy of their legislative update at the door and you can go online to find direct links to all of those pieces of legislation. The -- If you aren't already, I strongly encourage you to become a member of PROFS. And this part of my discussion with a couple of reminders. The secretary of the faculty office is currently asking for applications for the distinguished teaching awards and the Hilldale awards. Please consider nominating your outstanding colleagues. Since this is my first senate meeting as UC chair, I'm going to share some of my objectives for the coming year. When I ran for the UC, I created a platform with three planks. The first of these was to work to reduce administrative burden. That's a pretty smart political approach, right? It's like apple pie and union popcorn. The second pledge -- The second plank was a pledge to do everything I could to support efforts to bring about a campus that where everyone is welcome and feels like they belong. I'll speak to that more in November. Third, I saw ways to strengthen shared governance, my topic for December. In my experience, the shared governance bodies do a good job of evaluating and commenting on issues brought to us usually by the administration. I think we can and should do a better job of proposal creation. To that end, I propose that we create an ad hoc shared governance committee to complement existing administrative -- administration efforts to provide faculty and staff with more time in their days to accomplish what they were hired to do. The committee charge would be simple. Work with administration to identify campus specific burdens across all disciplines, and suggest ways to reduce them. Regulations aren't going away. Most are in place for a reason. But can we make compliance easier? Can we follow the lead of the animal program and very recently, the IRBs? To remove self-imposed regulations and add user services. How about creating a one-stop shop for all safety requirements? As a faculty member in the biomedical sciences, these ideas occur to me. I'm sure you can add many other possibilities specific to your own disciplines. And the timing is great. Everyone I've spoken to sees the benefit of this approach. In the office of the VCRG, Steve Cramer and associate vice chancellor for research policy and compliance, Nadine Connor, would welcome advocates and ideas to complement their own in this area. And the office of vice chancellor for finance, Rob Cramer and our vice chancellor for environmental health and safety, Chris Strang, are especially enthusiastic about finding ways to better serve their campus constituents. Because of the pandemic, these groups have forged many collaborations and they do not want to see this momentum lost. There's no single solution panacea. But think about this, we have roughly 2,500 faculty, freeing up an extra 1% of their time would have the same effect on productivity is creating 25 additional faculty positions. Please consider volunteering your time and ideas to this effort. Thanks. Now I'll turn the meeting back to the chancellor. [ Applause ] >> Stay up here. So, if there are questions for both of us. We're open for questions, comments, issues. Anyone wants to raise? I think it's on. Yeah. >> All right, much better. I'm Noah Weeth Feinstein, community, environmental sociology. It's been delightful to be teaching in-person again. I've also enjoyed the chance to do some things that were previously done in-person online. And I know that I look around and I suspect that many of you are in the same boat where it's been fun to be able to join certain meetings via Zoom. And I wonder if the administration is looking into ways that particular meetings which were conducted nicely and smoothly over Zoom -- >> So you can say a little more slowly. Say it to me, again. >> I'm wondering if the administration is looking into supporting ways in which particular meetings like, say the Faculty Senate, which were conducted nicely and smoothly over Zoom, might be continued in a hybrid format that would enable those who struggle to be at this building at this time to attend virtually as well. [ Applause ] >> As I said, I thought that issue would come up again. So the university committee did wrestle with that issue. We had a lot of discussions, got information from multiple perspectives. A particularly persuasive piece of information was that at least with respect to hybrid meetings, we don't have access to good technology that allows that to really work. We've done what we can to allow people who can't be here, for instance, faculty and extension to connect. And I think we've -- I think everyone who asked was allowed to do that. And I think we've got 20 or so people who are visiting with us. There's a problem with that, there's a 20-second delay. Not quite so bad as going from here to Mars. But it's still an issue and we're going to work to try to take care of that. Ultimately, I think the -- we had a vote, I didn't want to make the call myself, it wasn't unanimous vote in the university committee. I think one of the more persuasive pieces of inform -- one of the more persuasive perspectives was that here we are requiring most of instruction to occur in-person for students. And it was -- it seemed, to some of us, that it would be hypocritical if we did not expect the same thing of ourselves in our own meetings. And so that's, in part why the issue was decided in the way it was. >> That makes sense. I wouldn't just look around and note that this is demographically a very different group than our average undergraduate course of this size. And there are reasons why one might for public health reasons make a different decision for a similar -- or group of similar size. >> And certainly this is not a discussion it's over. So, we made a decision based on the information we had. I know there are some individuals considering resolutions and we welcome additional contact. We also would like to hear from people who like having meetings in-person, we did hear from some of them, so we know that it's not universally something that's despised. So, any information that you all would like to send would really be appreciated. We really do want to know where you're at about it or where you're at with this. Thanks. >> I will note particularly when you're dealing with controversial issues, and in-person discussion is quite different than a Zoom discussion. You can argue about which is better or worse, but, you know, when we're just getting reports, you know, we could all be on Zoom, but we do occasionally have things here that are much more substantive. Any other comments? >> Hi, this is from Victoria Solomon, who's with extension along the same vein. As a Faculty Senate member representing extension, I respectfully request having Faculty Senate means to be virtual, or having a virtual option for all. I recognize that extension is a geographic minority within UW-Madison. Still, I put this word because standardizing the virtual option makes this more accessible, inclusive and equitable. When only extension education -- educators join virtually, this means that extension is about 40 seconds behind what's happening, particularly in discussion and votes. This means that eccentric colleagues are not truly part of the discussions or votes. On the flip side, when everyone was virtual in the past several meetings, myself and extension colleagues were able to be part of the conversation and vote at the same time as the others. It felt like our votes were fully counted at the same time as others. It is not realistic for extension colleagues to join the meeting in-person. Other than the dean county extension colleagues, I am one of the geographically closest colleagues to the Madison campus. I still plan to join virtually because I am constantly balancing the state and county needs, and the drive time can put serious challenges to balancing those needs. Overall, the virtual meeting is more accessible than in-person. It provides options for community members across Wisconsin to join. While this is not likely a common situation, the overall accessibility is key to upholding Wisconsin idea that the boundaries of the university go far beyond campus. Thank you for considering this. Please let me know the best way to move this consideration forward. >> Thank you. I am not seeing anyone else. Here we go. Turn it on, push it up. >> There you go. >> Karl Broman, District 20, biostatistics and medical informatics. I just wanted to add my support for the comment that was made online that I feel I'm compelled to teach my classes in-person. I did not choose that myself. All my other meetings are remote, currently. This is the first meeting I've been at in-person. And of all the meetings that I've had, I think the Faculty Senate has been really most enjoyable online, sitting at home, that and I felt like it was easier to attend and easier to participate. Yeah. >> All right, I'm not seeing anyone else move to the microphone. I'm sure that conversation will continue within the UC. Let me turn to the minutes of May 3rd, 2021. Cast your mind back to that. Are there any additions or corrections to the minutes? If there are none, I'm going to approve the minutes as distributed. Let me now turn to Professor John Mackay, who will present the annual report to the immigration and international issues committee for 2019 and 20. >> Thank you very much. So this is the annual report for 2019-2020, which is the year before last. We're a little behind with our annual reporting and I hope to be here again soon with last year's annual report. But given that you have the report in front of you, I won't go through the whole thing but just to summarize a few of the main points. So our committee provides general advice and recommendations on issues having to do with immigration and international student, faculty and staff issues. In addition to faculty and staff members and students, we have a number of ex officio members from the International faculty and staff services and International Student Services who keep us up to date on issues that they're facing in their staff work and that's very helpful. I'll just mention a couple of the main things that we worked on during this year having to do with the different constituencies whose issues were addressing. For international students, one of the main issues they face has to do with careers. Because as many of you will know, students who come on a student visa can find it very difficult to find an employer who will sponsor them for a new employment visa, which typically is needed if people want to stay employed long term in the United States. So we looked at some issues related to how career services are serving international students. And one of the things we found was that career advisors who are outside International Student Services are typically not very well trained or even not trained at all in issues that are specific to international students. So we made a recommendation that some kind of training on, specifically international issues be included in the general training for career advisors throughout the university. And that recommendation is sort of moving through some of the administrative structures right now. Another group of students facing challenges are though, and staff I should say, are those who have who are in the program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, who were, which provides protection from deportation for those who were brought to the US as children. There was a sort of quite general resolution advanced through our committee that was passed by the Faculty Senate, in general supportive of this population. A lot of these challenges, of course, stem from sort of political and legal challenges that are outside our control. But there are some issues that sort of we can do something about, because what we've found is that students who are either have DACA, or who are otherwise undocumented, sometimes kind of are not treated consistently by administrative structures as to whether they should be counted as international students or domestic students for certain purposes. So we continue to look at those issues. Lastly, just to let you know of something that's going on, this is not exactly sort of the something that our committee has been the primary orchestrator of, but we're continuing to be engaged with is that there's a restructuring going on, pardon me, a restructuring of the offices that provide visa services on campus right now. So, the previous state of affairs, if I can recall correctly, was that International Student Services was under student services and international faculty and staff services who provide visas to employees was under human resources. And that had the consequence, first of all, that they were not always in connection with each other, they were not under the same structure. And secondly, that people such as postdocs, for example, who are not exactly students, but not exactly long term employees either, kind of fell through the cracks a bit and faced a bit of uncertainty as to who was supposed to be serving them. So, something that's actually sort of just happening this fall is that both of these units are going to be placed under the international division so that they'll be under the same kind of administrative. They'll report to the same dean ultimately, and be closer to each other. So, these issues are kind of ongoing, but yeah, I think I'll stop there and I'd be happy to take any questions. >> Questions. >> Thank you, John. >> OK. Thanks very much. >> Let me recognize Professor Mario Trujillo, to present a two-year report for the recreational sports board. >> Thank you for the introduction. The full report is in Faculty Document number 2961. So you can see all the details there. I just want to highlight three main things. The first one is that the Nick recreational Center opened its doors a little over a year ago. If you had a chance to go and work out there, it's a beautiful facility. It is the same site as the SERF but it has a much bigger square footage. Second point, the demolition of the natatorium was completed in February of this year. And the new natatorium which is going to be called the Bakke Recreation and Wellbeing Center is currently being constructed. It should be finished and open, hopefully without delays in the spring of 2023. And then lastly, COVID-19 has had a substantial impact on RecWell as a result of revenue shortfalls from the many areas that they're involved in. And this so far amounts to approximately half a million dollars. Fortunately, $350,000 has been received as part of reimbursements because they have vaccination clinics, as well as testing facilities there. So with that, any questions? >> Questions. Thank you. Thanks for your committee. Let me recognize Professor Shawn Green, who will present the annual report for the information technology committee. >> So, hello, it's good to be here. So, for the ITC, we are the shared governance advisory body for information technology broadly construed. So it has certainly been a challenging time over the last year and a half, less so for us than the IT professionals over the last year and a half. The report I think goes into kind of detail as to what we've been up to on ITC. I just like to highlight a couple of main things. So I think we on the committee have kind of used the kind of flexibility that we have on the committee to put interim policies in place. Obviously, we had to do that pretty regularly early in the pandemic, when things suddenly shifted online. And we needed to have kind of an interim web conferencing policy. We've tried it to provide the type of information to the vice provost for information technology, and CIO, Lois Brooks, that allows for good decisions to be made going forward. So we noted the survey that we put out, asking about web conferencing needs for the faculty. So, probably seems like a very long time ago, that our web conferences suite was largely WebEx and teams. It's been interesting being in this meeting that Zoom has basically become the Kleenex of web conferencing but that wasn't available prior to fall 2020. We actually, in that case, put a survey out to the faculty asking whether the suite at that time met faculty needs and we are hoping to get maybe 100, 200 responses. Actually got almost 900 responses from the faculty, indicating the places where the web conferencing suite was not meeting faculty, and staff needs. And that was used as really strong data by the vice provost for information technology to argue for the need to purchase Zoom. And so this is my 11th year at UW-Madison, no particular process of going from faculty input to full university license for software was about the quickest I've ever seen. And then going forward, really our goal is to continue to try to provide the type of guidance that gets us to long term data that lets us be a little bit more proactive in the IT space and a little less reactive in the IT space. So, how do we gather data about the research software expenditures, about teaching and learning software expenditures, so we can make long term plans? So, happy to take questions. >> Questions for the IT committee. Thank you. Appreciate all your work. Let me recognize Professor Rob Howard, who will present the annual report for the university library committee, Rob. >> Thank you, everybody. Thank you for this opportunity to present the ULC report. I believe everybody has the report in your packets if you want to follow along, but ULC functions as the liaison between the faculty, staff and students and the University of Wisconsin Library. We provide advice, consultation and recommendations for library services. And in this role, the library or the committee, of course, plays an important role in our self-governance. Last year, the ULC reviewed 12 reports and presentations. We planned for an open access advisory group. And as I think we'll consider later in the meeting. We revised and approved the ULC charge membership and function documents. For this coming year, we've said several priorities, including developing better lines of communication between the ULC constituents and the committee, assisting in the assessment of our digital media priorities on campus, staying connected to the open access advisory group, following along on the plans for remodelling, and continuing to be engaged with the ongoing library strategic plan and facilities master plan, as well as working with Ithaca faculty survey and we're also working on clarifying our relationship with another committee, the Memorial Library committee. That's about it. I'm happy to take any questions, if you have >> Questions for the library committee. It's great to see the library is open and functioning fully. >> That's right. >> Wonderful. Yeah, thank you, Rob. And our last committee report, let me recognize UC chair Eric Sandgren, who present the university committee and Senate annual report, Eric. >> In the interest of time, I'll point out a couple items from the report. Discussion about various topics related to pandemic consumed much of the meetings of the UC last year, from the budget, to instruction, to tenure clock extensions, to welfare and safety. Another area of focus was the promotion from associate professor to professor policy addition to FP and P. The UC held listening sessions met with concerned faculty and revise the policy based on all comments received, and there were a lot of comments received. The Faculty Senate ultimately passed the new policy at its main meeting. Any questions? >> You all live to those days. Any questions? Thank you. Let me again call on Professor Eric Sandgren. We're now getting into the motions, the exciting part, who will make the motion to amend Faculty Document 2570. >> I move adoption of the Faculty Document 2570 with one addition, we add the words and the office of the provost in front of office of the secretary the faculty. The correct text should be on the screen behind me. And it is. >> That's good. >> Because the -- this is brought to you by the UC, there is no second needed. Eric, do you want to make some of the opening comments? >> This motion will add language to the existing instructions on establishing the academic calendar to make sure religious observances are reviewed prior to the calendars coming to the Faculty Senate for a vote. The exact method for review is yet to be determined but the UC felt it was important to insert language about religious observations into this document now. The UC will bring back plans to the Senate for how religious observations will be reviewed at a later date, which will include any additional changes to this document that are necessary. >> We have a motion in front of us. Is there any comments or questions? >> Chad Alan Goldberg for District 71. I support this motion. I commend the university committee for putting this forward. I also wanted to propose a motion, I move to amend this motion by adding a sentence at the end as follows, the secretary of the faculty is encouraged to consult as needed with faculty advisors from relevant academic units, comma, religious leaders, comma, and community organizations. So that would be a sentence at the very end of that. I can repeat that have if you like. >> Yeah, please. Yeah. >> The secretary of the faculty is encouraged to consult as needed with faculty advisors from relevant academic units, comma, religious leaders, comma, and community organizations period. >> Everyone could see that? Is there a second to the motion to amend? We have a second. All right. We are now discussing the amendment only, not the full motion. Are there comments or questions about the amendment? Chad. >> So, Chad Alan Goldberg for District 71, just to explain, I think this adds a little specificity to the motion, but retains flexibility at the same time. We don't want something too rigid that would constrain how this moves forward. That's the reason for proposing this. >> Are there other comments on the amendment? Seeing none, we will vote on the amendment, which is simply the addition of this last sentence. All those in favor of adding the last sentence indicate by saying, aye. >> [Simultaneously] Aye. >> Any opposed? The ayes carry at the -- we're now back to the full proposal, the full motion as amended. Are there comments or discussion of the full motion? Seeing none, if we're ready to vote on the full motion as amended, all of those in favor indicate by saying aye. >> [Simultaneously] Aye. >> Are there any opposed? The motion carries. All right, thank you, all. Let me now recognize Professor Chad Goldberg, who will present the resolution on the academic calendar. This is on page 32 of you documents. It's resolution 2965. >> Thank you, Chancellor Blank. I moved the adoption of the resolution on the academic calendar, diversity, and inclusion Faculty Document 2965. >> Is there a second to that motion? >> Second. >> The motion has been made and seconded. We are now open for discussion. Chad, do you want to make first comment? >> Yes, thank you. So, you already heard about -- So, the reason for this resolution and the chancellor's state of the university remarks earlier today. The reasons for this resolution are already laid out in detail on the resolution itself, so I don't think I need to go into them. This addresses the scheduling conflict the chancellor referenced with Rosh Hashanah. The scheduling conflict, although it was unintended, nevertheless set an exclusionary and unwelcoming tone for Jewish students, staff and faculty, thereby falling short of the university's pledge to be a welcoming and inclusive community for people from every background. I want to commend Chancellor Blank for the apology that she made on July 20th. I want to commend the university committee for its apology that it made today. This resolution offers an apology from the Faculty Senate following the chancellor's leadership and example and the leadership and example of the university committee and it outlines steps to avoid similar conflicts in the future with the major holidays and observances of the Jewish community, as well as other communities on campus. I would say this is a collective feeling for which the Senate to must take responsibility. I want to say that an apology goes a long way when it's sincere and accompanied by a change in one's actions. My tradition, the Jewish tradition, teaches us that just as we have an obligation to apologize and mend our ways, when we have aggrieved others, so too, we have an obligation to extend forgiveness when those others express sincere regret and work to mend their ways. And I offer this resolution in that spirit. Let's mend our ways together. >> The motion has been made and seconded. Are there comments? Yeah. >> I would just like to register my -- >> Let -- Please introduce yourself to them. >> Oh, sorry. Yes, Eric Sandgren, university committee. I would like to register my desire to support this resolution. Here we go. >> Anyone else have comments? If not, we have a motion on the floor. All those in favor of this motion indicate by saying, aye. >> [Simultaneously] Aye. >> Is there anyone opposed? The motion carries? Thank you. We are now going to go into a variety of changes to FP and P. Many of which I think is clean up, but we'll see if you agree with that. Let me start by recognizing Professor Susan Thibeault from the university committee, who's going to present a proposal to standardize the format and language in faculty policies and procedures chapter covering shared governance committees. >> Thank you. So, on behalf of the university committee, I move the adoption of Faculty Document 2966. >> Since the UC is making the motion, there is no need for a second and I'm opening up the floor for discussion. Susan, do you want to make the first comments? >> Sure. Faculty Document 2966 is proposed legislation to apply a standardized template to the way committees are listed in Chapter 6 of FP and P. These clerical updates to the 27 shared governance committees in FP and P Chapter 6 will be presented during the 2021-22 Faculty Senate meetings in groups usually in the same session as the committee's annual report. Any proposed changes to membership or functions will be presented to the Faculty Senate in addition to the clerical changes. The document before you shows the template that is being applied, as well as the specific changes to the informational technology committee, immigration, and internationals committee and the university committee. >> So as they say, this is basically standardizing some language. Are there comments, arguments, concerns? We have a motion. I'm not seeing anyone's desire to speak to it. If so, if all of those in favor of the motion of the amended Faculty Document 2966 indicate by saying, aye. >> [Simultaneously] Aye. >> Is there anyone opposed? All right, that motion carries. Let us turn to again, Professor Mario Trujillo, who'll present a proposal to update the recreational sports board entry and FP and P. >> Thank you. On behalf of the Rec sports boards, I move adoption of Faculty Document 2967. >> This motion needs a second, is there one? >> Second. >> Second. All right. Let's open for discussion. Mario, do you want to start? >> Yes. In 2019, the recreational sports rebranded themselves as university recreation and well-being. The proposal before you updates the name and functions of the committee to reflect this change. The document also contains some clerical corrections. >> So again, this is largely housekeeping. The name of the organization that they are working with has changed and we need to change FP and P to match it. Does anyone concerned about that? If not, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor indicate by saying, aye. >> [Simultaneously] Aye. >> Is there anyone opposed? That motion carries. Thank you very much, Mario. Let me now recognize Professor Rob Howard, who is going to present a proposal to update the university libraries committee entry for FP and P, Rob. >> On behalf of the university library committee, I move adoption of Faculty Document 2968. >> This also needs a second. Is there a second? With the second, the floor is open for discussion. Rob, do you want make the first remarks? >> Please, thank you. In May 2021, the Faculty Senate approved the name and committee composition change for the university library committee. Those changes helped clarify the role of the committee in an effort to continue to improve the current -- and clarify our documents. The ULC considered the committee's description of its function and advise that language to more clearly reflect the work the committee has been doing. And then your language is more streamlined, and includes the important function of advising on issues relative to the University Archives. That language was approved at ULC meeting in late spring, and I hope that you will consider it today. Thanks. >> We have a motion and a second, so again, largely clean up. Is there any conversation or discussion? All of you in favor of the motion indicate by saying, aye. >> [Simultaneously] Aye. >> Any opposed? That motion carries. Thank you. Let me, again, recognize Professor Eric Sandgren from the university committee and this is a first reading of a proposal for updates civil chapters in FP and P to allow for meetings to be held virtually and set up, you know, who's in charge of making that decision. I will note it's a first reading. We will not be taking a vote on this, but we'll be looking for comments, Eric. >> Thank you, Chancellor. Robert's Rules of Orders does not recognize electronic meetings unless an option for electronic meetings is specified in the bylaws of the organization. This document presents the standard language that would be added to all sections of FP and P that refer to meetings. The language is the same for each section, except for the person or committee designated as the decision making authority on the meeting modality. This is the first reading of this document, and I look forward to hearing any questions, comments or concerns that you have. >> This is obviously not just about the Faculty Senate, but about the all of the committees and their meetings. >> Chad Alan Goldberg for District 71. Since this is a first reading, I don't know if motion to amend is an order, maybe not. So, I'll make this into a -- >> Yes, it will not take amendments, but if you want to -- >> Yeah. >> -- make a suggestion, it'll go to the university committee and they'll consider it before they bring something back. >> I understand. Thank you. So, let me make a two suggestions here. So, under 1.30B, I would -- so, where it says that these electronic meetings of the faculty shall be subject to all rules adopted by the university committee to govern them, I would add subject to appeal to the assembled faculty. And similarly, and 2.06B, where it says these electronic meetings of the Faculty Senate shall be subject to all rules adopted by the executive committee to govern them, I would add subject to appeal to the Senate in assembly. And I know that, Jake, our parliamentarian, would probably tell me that this is unnecessary, because this is already in Robert's Rules, and I'm sure he would be right. But I feel like it's important to make explicit anyway, because some folks are more familiar with Robert's Rules than others and this sort of keeps it at the forefront that this is always a possibility. So, I would make these two recommendations to the university committee. >> Will you be sure give that language to Heather so as this committee come -- brings back a final thing, they can look at the proposed language. >> Of course, I'll be happy to do that. >> Thank you, Chad. Are there other comments? >> Karl Broman, District 20, biostatistics and medical informatics. So, I had less formal comments maybe. One is, I guess, in each of the sections where the -- where it's decided -- who decides whether a meeting is remote or not? I would make them the membership of the meeting, also able to make that decision. So for example, for the Faculty Senate, the section here says the chancellor, the chair of the university committee, or a majority vote of the university committee can make a meeting remote. I think that a majority vote of the Faculty Senate should also be sufficient to ask that a meeting be remote. Secondly, there's a lot of repeated text about the definition of an electronic sort of the required specifications of an electronic meeting. I wonder if there'll be some way to like, separate that out in some other section of FP and P define the nature of electronic meetings, rather than have to repeat it every single time for every section. And lastly, I would, I guess, change the language about what are the required specifications for electronic meetings. So it says here, electronic or other communications facilities provide for simultaneous oral communication among all members equivalent to those held in one room or area. I just don't think it really quite captures the nature of remote meetings. And what we actually should asked for remote meetings to be like, I think it'd be maybe better to say, equivalent to being in the same room to just say exactly what we want, which is every participant, can hear the proceedings, and every participant can be heard. And I guess I would also ask that the participants can see the list of participants. And I would add to it that participants can communicate with each other directly. So basically, that the chat be open. So that in contrast to the listening sessions by the regions on the system president search, whether they were using a WebEx webinar software, where people participating can't see who or how many people are there and you can ask questions, but you can't see what other questions are being asked. And you can't communicate with each other. I guess, I wonder about in addition to oral whether we should be direct and say closed -- sort of automatic closed captioning, or live closed captioning should be available when needed. And does it have to be sort of oral? Could we have a Faculty Senate meeting, or a university committee meeting that was entirely text-based, say on Slack? Is -- For your consideration? >> Yes. This is a lot to talk about. >> I will make a comment with regard to who votes on making the meetings virtual. Oftentimes, I think the decision making meeting virtual depends on the agenda. Is there something that people, again, feel really need some face to face conversation, because there is different in kind and sometimes, and agendas often aren't known until a week before. So, you know, that does make it a little more difficult for the full body to vote on something, given the full body does not usually meeting at that point but, yeah. >> This is Yu Hen Hu, electrical engineering computer engineering department. I just want to clarify some issues because when we conducted this kind of meeting, sometimes they are these executive sessions. And we sometimes need to provide the votes, maybe not just I, maybe we have to sign in to vote in paper, if that kind of situation through electronic meeting, if it's being interrupted and maybe that, you know, we should consult or have some rules decide when those things happens, what we do, you know. >> You will pass that along. Any other comments? >> Patrick Nehring from the department of extension faculty. And we would very much support having electronic opportunities to join in, and as my colleague, Victoria Solomon mentioned, we thought it was working quite well when we were all virtual, because we could work and participate on an even level. And just like the national -- today is the first day of National 4-H Week, which is an extension program. 4-H is every corner of the State of Wisconsin. We have department faculty in every corner of the State of Wisconsin. I came here this morning from Green Bay, which took me a long time to get here. But we do have some faculty that are further away than Green Bay. And the electronic participation is something that as faculty out in the State of Wisconsin, we really need to be able to participate. Because, you know, I took the afternoon and the evening off to make it here, but not everyone has that opportunity. >> Thank you. Other comments. OK. >> And I will reiterate my request that we hear from all of you. So, different kinds of meetings have different strengths and weaknesses. And let's hear from all of you where you stand along those lines with respect to the Faculty Senate meetings. That helps us make our decision. >> This was a first reading. It will result in a somewhat revised document probably coming back to the November Faculty Senate, so there is no need to move into a vote. That gets us to the end of the agenda. I want to tell you who -- those of you who are new to the Faculty Senate that today might have seen more pro forma, but I promise you, it'll get more interesting as we go on. So, thank you all for coming and I'm going to declare the meeting adjourned. Thank you.