Academic Staff Executive Committee Minutes 09-26-19

Members Present: Donna Cole; Jenny Dahlberg, chair; Tim Dalby; Stephanie Elkins; Leslie Petty; Deb Shapiro; Lindsey Stoddard Cameron; Bill Tishler

Guests: Michael Bernard-Donals, Rebecca Blank, Diane Blaskowski, Ron Harris, Laurent Heller, Alyson Kim, Jake Smith, Brian Steen, Mark Walters

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

The minutes of September 19, 2019 were approved.

Chancellor Blank reported on the incoming class.  It is larger than expected due to higher acceptance rates. The class has the fourth largest number of Wisconsin students. UW-Madison is attracting more Wisconsin students with high grades and test scores, who used to go out of state, due to recruiting and outreach to these students. 

For compensation, the state has approved a 2% pay plan in January 2020 and another 2% in January 2021. They are also providing the same amount of funding for compensation for staff this year to address merit, equity and market. For faculty compensation, UW-Madison moved up one place to 11 in the Big Ten. She is pleased that we will have market comparisons for staff following the TTC project. They also moved the minimum wage for students to $10 per hour. 

The work for all employees for the Title and Total Compensation project will start in earnest in December. Salaries will not be lowered and no jobs will be lost as part of this exercise. They expect an appeal rate up to 10%. 

The UW System is looking towards moving to a twice monthly payroll for all employees.  This would allow smoothing of benefits payments. Right now University Staff have their benefits all taken out of one paycheck. 

In regards to diversity, the “Our Shared Future” heritage marker was dedicated this summer and will eventually be permanently placed next to South Hall. It recognizes the complicated history of the Ho-Chunk and UW-Madison including the forced removal of Ho-Chunk from the land and the resilience of the Ho-Chunk people to remain here. During the construction around South Hall, the marker will be hosted by various units who will need to incorporate the plaque into teaching and learning. Bascom Hall is hosting the plaque in September. UW-Madison is hiring a tribal relationship specialist.

There is the “I am UW” campaign to create a sense of unity and diversity for students. Students shared 4 of their identities and these are posted along with a picture of the student around campus. The campaign has been very well received.

UW-Madison is expanding the availability of online courses and degrees.  There are professional master’s degrees that will be available online as well as undergraduate degrees for those with some college credits who want to finish their degrees. There will be 3-5 majors selected based on demand and market. The first major will be personal finance, which is planned to launch next fall. In order to accomplish this, there will need to be courses that will meet distribution requirements as well as courses particular to the major. The market for online courses is still regional. 

In other areas, there is a committee working on a gap year program for students admitted to UW-Madison who want to delay their start in college by a year. There are also programs allowing students to begin in the summer. CALS, Engineering and L&S currently have programs and more will likely be added. 

Laurent Heller provided ASEC with a tutorial on cash balance versus accrual accounting. 

In regards to ATP, ASEC encouraged Vice Chancellor Heller to have ATP at the campus research administrators meeting to inform those in the research space how ATP will impact them. Jenny Dahlberg shared that many of the research administrators don’t know that the project also includes research administration. He shared that there are some systems that work well on campus, and we should try to keep these.

During the last biennial budget, UW System was told to hire an external audit firm, so there was both an external audit as well as an audit by Legislative Audit Bureau of the campus finances. The experience with the external auditor was really positive. 

A Portfolio Management Office has been created within the Office of Strategic Consulting. They will handle change projects within the Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration office. There is a website for the office that is about to go live.

Jenny Dahlberg, ASEC chair, reported there was a meeting with Mark Walters from the Office of Human Resources. There was a discussion about switching from a monthly to a biweekly or twice a month payroll. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) announcement regarding a new salary minimum has been published. It is still unclear how many academic staff will be affected. The west-end CASIs are going to host a TTC forum in mid-October.  

Heather Daniels, Secretary of the Academic Staff, reported that Patrick Sims will be a guest at the next ASEC meeting to discuss staff diversity.

Donna Cole attend her first SMPH CASI Meeting.

 

Bill Tishler reported that the University Committee discussed the teaching professor draft guidelines with the Provost. 

Lindsey Stoddard Cameron reported that the Campus Planning Committee met and heard presentations from Engineering, School of Medicine and Public Health as well as Facilities Planning and Management regarding campus utilities.

• October Assembly Agenda

The Chancellor will be speaking at the meeting as well as the Employee Assistance Office. There will be a vote on ASPP changes as well as a vote on a resolution regarding Our Shared Future. The agenda will be finalized and voted on at the next meeting.

Michael Bernard-Donals shared the draft teaching professor guidelines. Mark Walters charged the committee.  They focused on the differences between the ranks, how to map to the position through TTC, how to obtain the position following TTC and how someone gets promoted. The process for promotion mirrors what happens for faculty promotion and the hiring process mirrors the usual hiring process on campus. Two items of continuing conversation include degree requirements and inclusion of scholarship as a duty. There is a request from some departments on campus to allow Master’s degree holders to obtain this title since the standard in the discipline for teaching is a Master’s degree (esuch as iSchool, computer science, journalism).  ASEC was in agreement with this approach.

The duties for teaching professor as outlined by the draft guidelines include good teaching; involvement in unit level curricular decision making; curriculum development; conduct of scholarship and creative activity in the area of teaching and learning. A compromise would be to include engagement with scholarship and creative activity in the area of teaching and learning for the assistant professor level and require production as an associate or full teaching professor. ASEC felt that there needed to be a requirement around scholarship, because UW-Madison should want its best teachers to share information about their teaching with others. They were also supportive of the compromise of having assistant professors engage rather than produce scholarship. 

The Distinguished Prefix will continue to exist in the new system. They don’t know exactly what this will look like, but it is likely to be similar to how it looks today.

The terms promotion and progression are used interchangeably in the current system and will take on two distinct definitions in the new system. Promotion in the new system will mean moving to a new job that requires new responsibilities. Progression will mean moving in the pay range as a result of additional expertise and autonomy or other compensation adjustment. 

Regarding how someone can receive a raise, they anticipate keeping most or all of the mechanisms that are in place now. They are researching whether there are additional types of adjustments that could be added based on what our peers use. 

For the mapping process, approximately 17% of staff were not mapped to a title, 31% of staff were mapped to a single title, and 52% of staff were mapped to more than 1 title. The schools/colleges/divisions are currently working on completing those worksheets.

Meeting adjourned at 4:43 p.m.