Minutes for April 21, 2025

UC members present: Bernard-Donals, Jones, Kendall, Li, Stein, Zweibel

Others present: Greg Bump, Lesley Fisher, Becky Jacobs, Paige Kirkham, Jen Oasen, Julie Scharm, Jenny Skibba

Chair Li called the meeting to order at 1:00 pm.

The minutes from the April 14, 2025, meeting were approved by automatic consent.

Rob Cramer was accompanied by Cheryl Adams Kadera, Administrative Transformation Project, Karen Massetti-Moran, and Patrick Sheehan, OHR, gave an overview of the implementation of Workday and changes for faculty. Faculty will need to use Workday for expense reports, purchase requests and to enter leave. They will also use Workday as managers for performance reviews, leave/absence requests, and remote work agreements. UW-Madison will wait a year before implementing an optional program to pay 9 month employees over 12 months.

Michelle Felber and Jack O’Meara for PROFS shared information about the federal forum being held on Thursday, April 24. The steering committee has been discussing how to become involved in the ongoing lawsuits over actions by the federal government, and they have reached out to Law Forward. At the state level, the budget process is moving slow due to uncertainty at the federal level.

Bill Karpus, Dean of the Graduate School, shared flexibilities that could be offered to any graduate students with visa issues including virtual dissertation defenses. In regarding to applications and admissions for the coming year, application numbers are slightly up and admissions numbers were lower. Right now the number of acceptances are currently a bit lower than at this time last year. He also shared that NSF made half the number of graduate fellowships available this year as they have in past years.

Ajay Sethi, co-chair of the Health Care Advisory Committee, said this committee is made up primarily of students since it provides advice to University Health Services. The report is for 3 years, and the committee has spent time discussing COVID, mental health services, vaccine provisions and the UHS budget. Topics more recently discussed include food insecurity and emergency contraception.

Devin Kennedy, chair of the Library Resources Committee for the Arts, Social Sciences Humanities, provided the UC with the committee’s first annual report. The purpose of the committee is to address user needs for folks from these fields where books are the data for research. They discuss issues like resource acquisition, budgeting, and library space. He reported there was a significant change in the e-book policy this year, which will allow subject librarians to use their discretion about purchasing a physical book versus an e-book.

Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin shared that there was a ceremonial groundbreaking for the new College of Engineering building that included both the governor and legislators. Percival Matthews from the School of Education has been appointed special assistant to the chancellor for access and community.

The DEI audit by the Legislative Audit Bureau has been released, and it does not include any recommendations for the Universities of Wisconsin audit. President Rothman has responded, and he and the chancellor will be at an Audit Committee meeting this week.

UW-Madison has not seen any more SEVIS records deleted. About 1500 deleted records had been identified nationwide. The reasons for termination are often not know and for some very minor offenses like a traffic ticket. The chancellor wrote an op-ed for the Wisconsin State Journal celebrating the UW-Madison international community. UW-Madison continues to work in partnership with APLU and AAU on collective actions.

Chloe Shomo, ASM Basic Needs Campaign Coordinator, and Kasie Strahl, Assistant Director for Student Engagement with the Office of Student Financial Aid, presented information on work they have been doing. An ASM survey in 2024 found that 38% of students reporting skipping a meal once a month for financial reasons. They conducted a basic needs survey this year with a 28% response rate that is currently being analyzed.

There is a new centralized website for basic needs (https://basicneeds.students.wisc.edu/). In addition, a basic needs case manager will be joining campus this fall. They are looking to create an advisory committee, a basic needs center, add a statement to syllabi, and assess the results of the survey and create recommendations.

The UC asked Secretary Daniels to ask April Haynes for an amendment to Faculty legislation 303 before it goes on the agenda for the April 28 meeting. They also asked for Secretary Daniels to request an amendment to the Rutgers resolution to address that UW-Madison cannot legally do all of the things asked in the resolution.

Li adjourned the meeting at 4:23 pm.

Minutes submitted by Heather Daniels, secretary of the faculty.