Academic Staff Executive Committee Minutes 10-18-18

Members Present: Bruno Browning; Donna Cole; Jenny Dahlberg; Beth Giles; Mallory Musolf; 

Kevin Niemi, chair; Deb Shapiro; Lindsey Stoddard Cameron

Guests: Diane Blaskowski, Ron Harris, Sarah Mangelsdorf, Lori Reesor, Jake Smith, Steve Smith, Mark Walters

The meeting was called to order at 2:02 p.m.

The minutes of October 4, 2018, were approved.

Heather Daniels, Secretary of the Academic Staff, reported that both Laurent Heller and Rebecca Blank acknowledged the resolution on compensation passed by the Academic Staff Assembly. She also reported that the Ad Hoc Committee on Academic Staff TTC Communications reconvened. The committee will be meeting with Mark Walters next to discuss the benefits survey.

Jake Smith, Deputy Secretary of the Academic Staff, reported that the Benefits Fair seemed to go well and that the booth was pretty busy the entire day.

Kevin Niemi, ASEC chair, reported that the Madison Academic Staff Network Breakfast seemed well attended. Mallory will attend the UW System Representatives meeting as Kevin is unable to attend. 

Provost Mangelsdorf provided ASEC with an update on the recent report by the Task Force on Computing at UW-Madison, which was made up of a combination of alums, industry leaders, and faculty members. The task force was mainly looking at the computer science program. There has been concern expressed about the ranking of that department. The Chancellor charged a group to study this issue back in November 2017; the report was released this month. The report includes recommendations to elevate the profile of computing and data science on the UW-Madison campus. One of the recommendations is the creation of a new college or school.  Some of the recommendations will be implemented, but it is not clear how fast that will happen.  A UW-Madison working group has been put together to look at the report and to write a white paper about options to implement some of the ideas.

There is already an effort underway to create a Data Science Institute, an interdisciplinary research center. The report supports the creation of this center. It would not offer degrees or have faculty lines, but would collaborate in research initiatives. There is also a Data Science major in the pipeline for approval. 

UW-Madison dropped in US News and World Report rankings this year. It is the fastest drop in the rankings and related to funding. 20% of the ranking is called faculty resources, which includes compensation and class size. Madison is ranked 131st in this category; we were 124th last year. The financial resources ranking is 61st. A lot of other metrics, mainly student metrics, have been improving at UW-Madison, but these are smaller portions of the ranking.

The Benefits Survey will be launched in November.  It will look at what employees value as far as additional benefits. So far OHR has noticed that family leave is a big issue. 

Diane Blaskowski was introduced by Mark Walters as heading the benefits part of TTC.  They are undertaking several activities for the benefits portion of TTC. There is the Benefits Value Analysis, which measures our benefits compared to other universities and private employers.  UW-Madison and UW System has requested 4 data cuts: UW-Madison public peers; UW System comprehensive peers; private sector; and UW-Madison private peers.

The Benefits Preference Survey will be conducted by Mercer. This will take place between November 26 and December 14, and the survey should take about 15 minutes to complete. The data collected will be confidential, and aggregate data will come back to the university in January or February. The majority of surveys will be completed via email. They will also be holding sessions for English-language learners to complete the survey. These will be paper surveys that will be scanned. This is not a ranking survey, but is looking at enhancing benefits. The anticipated response rate is 70%. 

Standard job descriptions are continuing to go through a quality assurance process. Right now OHR is standardizing them by making sure the descriptions use similar statements. The 400 subject matter experts who have been recruited to review the standard job descriptions will get training in early November to review them. They will also be asked to provide information on the knowledge, skills and abilities section of the standard job descriptions.  A number of descriptions have these, but they need to be enhanced. 

•Motion to appoint Kristin Dalby and Weijia Li to the Immigration and International Issues Committee (Dahlberg).Seconded. Approved.

•Motion to appoint Peggy Hacker to the “Return to Work” Work Group (Browning). Seconded. Approved. 

•November Assembly Meeting

David Darling, Associate Vice Chancellor for Facilities Planning and Management will be the guest speaker.  The Nominating Committee has agreed to give an overview of their committee.There will also be a resolution regarding the consensual relationships policy to be voted on.   

•Leave Differences Review

ASEC discussed the current differences between leave allocations for academic staff and university staff.  Both have advantages.  The academic staff receive more benefits up front and those don’t change over the course of employment, while university staff receive less in the beginning but surpass academic staff as an employee stays longer.

•Topics for Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration

Discretionary Compensation Fund Analysis 

Centralizing services under UWS

Accounting edits-follow up

The search process for the Director of University Health Services has started. They kept the same academic staff representatives on the committee and changed some of the other seats. 

Lori is getting ready for the Dean of Students Search and Screen process. Her plan is to have the search and screen committee co-chaired by a student and a faculty member. She would like to have one representative from academic staff governance. She is likely to add other academic staff to the committee as well. The committee will be made up of a mix of people from inside and outside the Division of Student Life. Heather will send out call for nominations to academic staff. 

In addition, Lori has implemented an organizational design exercise. The managers within the Division of Student Life are meeting and looking at organizational structures at other universities. There are three different teams doing this exercise, and each will give its own recommendation. The exercise will take about one month. 

Meeting adjourned at 4:47p.m.