Academic Staff: a professional and administrative employee other than faculty with duties and types of appointments that are primarily associated with higher education institutions or their administration.  Each academic staff has a principal role related to research, teaching, outreach, student services, information technology, libraries, communications, clinical/health services, or other responsibilities. 

Americans with Disabilities Act: http://www.ada.gov/

DARS is an automated degree audit system licensed to and used by UW–Madison to analyze and report student progress toward the requirements of a UW–Madison degree. In L&S, DARS is the Document of Record of any individual student’s graduation; a DARS is saved as a record that justifies why L&S awarded that student’s L&S degree, major, and/or certificate award at the time of graduation. DARS also stores every alteration to undergraduate program requirements and is the record of all approved curriculum exceptions.

Because DARS is used to audit and award degrees, aggregated DARS data is warehoused and visualized in standing reports,  analyses, and Tableau workbooks and reported in Tableau IDE for academic planning, assessment, and operations.

DARS audits are essential advising reports to plan enrollment in future terms and to identify educational opportunities and pathways through curriculum. DARS is integrated with the Degree Planner module of the Course Search and Enroll application that students use to register for courses and plan their four-year degrees.

When requesting a DARS audit, a student’s status and academic record are processed and applied to the requirements of that program, resulting in an audit that is specific to that student’s unique circumstances. DARS can also be run speculatively by students and advisors. Known as a “What-If” audit, this function of DARS makes it a valuable program selection tool. Using the Degree Planner, DARS will also apply a student’s planned courses in order to facilitate four-year degree planning.

Academic Information Management (AIM) in L&S Student Academic Affairs oversees the creation and encoding of DARS audits for L&S academic programs. AIM uses DARS to audit L&S students for their degree and major awards. AIM consults with academic departments and programs, University and College governance, and other campus partners (e.g. Office of the Registrar) to ensure that program requirements published in Guide are properly encoded in DARS. AIM should be the first point of contact for any questions about how L&S programs are encoded in DARS.

Contact Mike Pflieger for more information.

There are two basic ways that we count the number of employees. When we use headcount, each individual person counts as one employee whether their appointment is full time or part time. When we use "FTE," we are using the "Full Time Equivalent."

The Full Time Equivalent is the total of all positions using the percentage of the appointment rather than the number of individual employees. This is what the headcount looks like for the same employees using each measure:

Employee A - .5 appointment
Employee B - 1.0 appointment
Employee C - .6 appointment
Employee D - .4 appointment

Using Headcount, there are 4 employees
Using FTE, there are 2.5 employees (.5 + 1 + .6 + .4 = 2.5)

A Department ID is the sequence of numbers that identifies a specific campus department, program, or entity. Historically, the Department ID was known as a "UDDS," which stands for "Unit, Division, Department, Subdepartment." This term is still in use in some resources, so we are including it in this glossary listing.

In more practical terms, a Department ID/UDDS is the unique combination of letters and numbers that identify the division, department, and possibly subdepartment, associated with a particular personnel, research, financial, or other activity or transaction.

EXAMPLE:  The full Department ID for a particular Letters & Science Department would be written as : 48XXXX.

"48" stands for "College of Letters & Science"

"XXXX" are the four numbers that identify the specific department, program, project, or other administrative entity.

A list of Letters & Science Department ID/UDDS numbers can be found at:

UW Madison Coding Information Dept ID

Click on the link and you will be directed to the Accounting Services web site.  Click on the Coding link on the left side of the screen.  Click on the Organization/Dept ID.  When the excel list opens click on A48 to find a list of all Letters & Science Departments and descriptions. 

UDDS Look Up Tool

The official lists of majors, certificates, and degrees offered in Letters & Science are available on-line:

• The Guide provides a comprehensive list of undergraduate majors, special degree programs, certificates, and concentrations organized by the respective school or college that offers the academic program.
• The Guide also provides a comprehensive list of graduate degrees, minors, and certificates. The information is organized alphabetically for all university programs.

Income with no work requirement; related to a non-service appointment (e.g. Fellow, Scholar, Trainee). Payment of the funds is not dependent on work or service to the university performed by the recipient.

An outside activity represents a relationship with an entity outside of the UW-Madison which, for the purposes of Conflict of Interest, may overlap with an individual's institutional responsibilities.  An outside activity may involve compensation, leadership, ownership or equity interest in an external entity.

Employment payment, compensation for work performed in service to the university. Income is contingent upon an activity or employee position (e.g. Project Assistant, Research Associate, Teaching Assistant, etc.).

The phrase "sifting and winnowing" refers to UW-Madison's historic tradition of defense of intellectual and academic freedom. The words are taken from an 1894 report of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents and were originally used to explain the board's refusal to censure a professor accused of socialist and pro-union activity. The words are mounted on a plaque on the front of Bascom Hall:

Titles in the Student Assistant title group are used for graduate students who: hold a fellowship, scholarship or traineeship; hold an appointment which is intended primarily to further the education and training of the student; are employed to assist with research training or other academic programs or projects; and/or have been assigned teaching responsibilities in an instructional department under the supervision of a faculty member.

In addition, Student Assistant titles are available to undergraduate students when: no qualified graduate student is available to perform a function that would normally be assigned to graduate students (i.e., Undergraduate Assistant - requires advance approval of the dean); or when the terms of a supporting grant or contract preclude the use of other normally appropriate titles (Undergraduate Intern).

SOURCE: Office of Human Resources, UW-Madison Unclassified Title Guideline; Summary of Unclassified Appointment Types