Faculty Senate Minutes 2025-10-6
Minutes for October 6, 2025
Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin called the meeting to order at 3:31 p.m. with 167 voting members present (104 needed for quorum). Memorial resolutions were offered for Professor Emeritus Richard D. Durbin (Faculty Document 3250), Professor Emeritus Albert H. Ellingboe (Faculty Document 3251), and Professor Emeritus Luis Sequeira (Faculty Document 3252).
Professor Annie Jones, University Committee chair, shared that the University Committee conducted strategic planning to develop priorities for the year, including supporting assistant professors who are navigating the tenure process in a rapidly changing environment, supporting the development of the student evaluation of teaching policy, and monitoring and responding to Act 15 impacts. The University Committee is hosting a faculty town hall on Monday, October 20, from 3:30pm-4:30pm, in the Wisconsin Idea Room (159) in the Education Building. The town hall will provide an opportunity to learn about shared governance and to share priorities and issues of concern.
Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin shared that U.S News and World Report ranked UW–Madison as the #12 public university in the nation this year. The university welcomed 8,500 freshmen in fall 2025 from a record 74,000 applicants, which is a 12% increase in applications from the previous year. For the first time in years, all 72 Wisconsin counties and all 50 states are represented. The incoming class also has the highest number of first-generation students in 20 years with a record 26% Pell-eligible students. In addition, the university welcomed 3,100 new graduate and professional students this fall, down about 9% from last year. There was also a 7% decline in international enrollment overall, reflecting global and federal headwinds.
The new Morgridge Hall opened this fall, and progress is being made on Irving and Dorothy Levy Hall, the new home for many humanities areas, and the Philip A. Levy Engineering Center. The university earned a STARS Gold sustainability rating for the first time.
The university welcomed 144 new faculty across 73 departments this year; nearly 60 are part of the Research, Innovation and Scholarly Excellence (RISE) Initiative and about 30% arrived with tenure, the highest ever, reflecting a healthy mix of early-career and established scholars.
A new statewide poll shows a 7-point increase among voters of both parties and independents who say Wisconsin is better off because of UW–Madison. About 45% of those polled say the university delivers benefits equal to or greater than the cost to the state (up from about 36% in 2023). More Wisconsinites see the university as accessible, an economic engine and a place that changes lives.
It has been a trying year for American higher education. Issues of political correctness, indirect cost rates and budget constraints have all threatened the future, the very nature and the respect that American higher education has enjoyed since its beginnings. It’s important to face challenges head on, leaning into the reasons we're here, which includes engaging students deeply in learning so that they're prepared to add value to the world and so that they leave the university ready for the future, prepared to have meaningful professional lives, prepared to be lifelong learners and prepared to be informed citizens of a diverse democracy.
During current times of uncertainty, academic freedom and that set of commitments have to remain a north star to build a space where speech is both valued and protected, and a place where academic freedom can flourish unencumbered even and especially when the university might face the risk of federal government efforts to have a direct voice in what we can teach, who we can hire and what research we can pursue.
The federal administration asked nine U.S. universities to sign an agreement, the "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” to uphold the administration's higher education priorities or potentially risk losing out on preferred access to federal funding. UW–Madison has not received it. Dartmouth President Sian Beilock’s message to the Dartmouth community indicated, “I am deeply committed to Dartmouth’s academic mission and values and will always defend our fierce independence. …Higher education is not perfect and that we can do better. At the same time, we will never compromise our academic freedom and our ability to govern ourselves.” These are core principles of academic freedom and institutional independence from federal engagement of a certain kind, and values that have served the university, and the nation, well in being a global leader in the research and educational enterprises.
There is continued uncertainty in the federal research funding landscape. The university continues to monitor executive orders and has filed nearly two dozen declarations challenging their legality and applicability. Many lawsuits have been successful at the district level but as litigation succeeds, there are other methods of potentially bringing about change.
We need to acknowledge that there are concerns about higher education that we should take seriously. A number of critics perceive a liberal bias on university campuses. Democratic pluralism is an important issue to take seriously, as much as scientific research and curriculum. A number of programs are already making good progress, such as the Deliberation Dinners and the Discussion Project. To help give a structure for this work and expand its reach, a new campus-wide project is being developed, The Wisconsin Exchange: Many Perspectives, One Wisconsin. It is designed to advance civil dialogue by cultivating a community where diverse viewpoints are expected, welcomed and respected. A steering committee will conduct an inventory of existing projects and explore the opportunities for new ones. An announcement about this will be sent in the coming weeks.
Another criticism to take seriously is to be more transparent and sometimes more accountable in what we do. The university can try to do a better job of being upfront about the return on investment of the degrees, so that students and families can make informed decisions, and work on additional accountability and clarity around how federal research dollars are spent.
The university has joined professional associations, including the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities and the Association of American Universities, as well as government leaders, to advocate for adoption of the Financial Accountability in Research (FAIR) model, a new approach to indirect cost recovery. The model would add transparency and the approach would establish three different cost categories to reflect project-specific costs, including the cost of regulatory compliance.
There was a federal government shutdown last week. For the moment, the university’s operations, including research, continue.
On the state level, Act 15 seeks to create some additional transparency, accountability and change, especially around faculty teaching workloads and the transferability of credits. The law requires that full-time 9-month faculty and instructional staff teach at least one course per semester and 12 credits per year (15 if on a 12-month contract). That number is reduced for part-time roles and there are exceptions for department chairs and some administrative duties. The regents must submit proposed guidelines, including methods for measuring course buyouts and potential additional exceptions, to the Joint Committee on Employment Relations by December 1, 2025. The policy will take effect on September 1, 2026. Campus leadership is working with Universities of Wisconsin colleagues, other campuses and UW–Madison faculty and staff to develop proposed policies that balance legislative accountability with recognition of the university’s teaching, research and service mission. The core priority is that the proposals that come out from UW System related to Act 15 are workable for UW–Madison.
The law also contains a transfer credit provision, with the goal of giving students clarity about the transfer of their general education credits. The draft regent policy document, released last month, does not change the UW–Madison general education, school/college or major requirements. There is no current plan to change the ethnic studies requirement; it has been an important part of the education UW–Madison provides and has worked well for our students. The policy would require UW–Madison to accept some credits from transfer students from other UW System schools that prior to this policy, might not have been accepted. Throughout this process, campus leadership has asserted the importance of faculty governance over the curriculum.
Interim Provost John Zumbrunnen shared that related to the Act 15 instructional workload requirements, campus leadership is in active conversations with the Universities of Wisconsin to have input and influence on the regents policy document that will go to the Joint Committee on Employment Relations by December 1, 2025. The priority is to ensure an instructional workload policy that reflects the breadth of faculty and staff instructional contributions and that allows the university to remain competitive in recruiting and retaining talented, productive colleagues. There are a number of spaces where the university needs to have flexibility, which is being worked on by a campus-level ad hoc instructional workload advisory group and at the UW System level.
Regarding the transferability of core general education requirements, the UW–Madison curriculum dates back to the 1990s and there are reasons to reconsider parts of it, but that is properly the work of shared governance and faculty governance; this is a core principle that campus leadership has been advocating for. The regents policy document released last week does not require UW–Madison to add or remove any general education requirements; however, it does lay out a requirement that at every Universities of Wisconsin System campus, there will be between 30 and 36 required credits in general education. Right now, UW–Madison requires 30 to 33. It requires those to be spread across 10 to 12 courses in six categories. Each Universities of Wisconsin campus decides how to map learning outcomes and courses onto those six categories. The process of mapping current requirements, including the ethnic studies requirement, under the new categories will occur through established faculty governance processes, including the General Education Committee and the University Curriculum Committee.
During the question period, a faculty senator expressed concerns about the potential physical move of the Graduate School from Bascom Hall in central campus to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Building on the west side of campus, and that it would be detrimental to graduate education for both practical and symbolic reasons, sending a message and creating the appearance that we are downgrading the value and importance of graduate education on campus. The interim provost indicated that campus leadership is continuing to work on this, emphasizing that both graduate education and the west side of campus are important and core to the mission of the university, and that space issues are prevalent.
A faculty senator expressed concern about the defunding of the international division, particularly the effect on regional area studies centers and the study of less commonly taught languages, which is intensified by the push from central campus for RISE hires and the difficulty in hiring in other areas with budget cuts, and asked questions about the support of language and area studies programs that are threatened by Title VI non-continuance. The chancellor recognized the importance of Title VI centers, while also acknowledging federal government reductions in a variety of areas and the need to work through this ongoing challenge. RISE areas of focus came from the deans and the deans decided to prioritize hiring lines within their schools and colleges.
Faculty senators asked about the university’s position on a potential Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education and regarding Act 15, the university’s commitment to using shared governance in setting, maintaining and amending general education requirements, and commitment to the ethnic studies requirement. Regarding the potential compact, the chancellor indicated a need to operate from places of clarity about values and it would be a collective discussion in the governance and system in which the university operates. Regarding Act 15, the chancellor shared that curriculum and curriculum requirements are a core faculty responsibility while also recognizing that the Universities of Wisconsin believes it has a role in defining the system-wide dimensions of general education. Campus leadership has shared that any large-scale changes should involve shared governance, especially faculty governance. The interim provost shared that campus leadership has been advocating for the university’s ability to govern the requirements our students face. Under the regents policy, as currently written, it is possible that some transfer students might graduate from UW–Madison without having taken an ethnic studies course, but that won’t be the case for UW–Madison degree seeking students who start at UW–Madison and it also won’t be the case for who transfer from a non-UW System universities. Majors can also have their own requirements and those requirements can apply to transfer students as well.
The minutes of the May 5, 2025 meeting were approved by consent.
Interim Provost John Zumbrunnen presented an intention to seek Board of Regents approval, later this academic year, to allow UW–Madison to reorganize some existing departments into a new college, broadly speaking in the space of computing, artificial intelligence, data and information. If approved by the Board of Regents, the new administrative division, which would be a college, would be the new home for units currently within the School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences housed in the College of Letters and Science. This follows the recommendations of a 2018 task force which recommended bringing those departments together in a new institutional entity and a 2023 task force which recommended creating a standalone school or college, with those units as its core. The goal is to create a hub of scholarly expertise in computing, data and information sciences that can educate students, conduct core scholarly inquiry needed in those disciplines and serve as a convener and a connector for enriched collaborations across campus. There is a growing importance of scholarly endeavor and education in these spaces that reaches all of campus. The first step is to ask the Board of Regents to approve the creation of this new college in the late fall or spring semester. Following that, there will be governance activity involving the moving of departments and academic programs to a new administrative structure, and a rich campus conversation about the future vision. This topic will be on the November Faculty Senate agenda. A faculty senator asked about creating a new college along with the current administrative hiring cap. The interim provost indicated that campus and college leadership have this in mind, the college has already built a fair amount of the administrative infrastructure and there are opportunities for considering other resources and engagement.
The Faculty Senate suspended the rules to allow for immediate consideration of agenda items #11 and #12, new business item and executive session, by unanimous consent.
Professor Nancy Kendall, University Committee member, presented a first reading of the proposal to amend Faculty Legislation II-314 Misconduct in Scholarly Research (UW-869) to align with changes made at the federal level, with changes in the areas of definitions, adjustment to timelines and records retention (Faculty Document 3256). A vote on this item is anticipated at the November Faculty Senate meeting.
Professor Morton Gernsbacher (Psychology, district 69), Committee on Honorary Degrees chair, moved to convene in closed session pursuant to Wis. Stats. 19.85(1)(c) and (f) to provide the confidential report of the Committee on Honorary Degrees. The motion was seconded and approved at 4:49 p.m. Professor Gernsbacher presented background information on the honorary degree nominees. Senators voted by paper and electronic ballot on the honorary degrees to be bestowed in May 2026. The nominees were approved with 136 votes cast. The names of the candidates remain confidential until an official announcement in the spring.
A faculty senator moved to reconvene in open session. The motion was seconded and approved at 4:59 p.m.
Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin adjourned the meeting at 5:00 p.m.
Heather Daniels, Secretary of the Faculty