Minutes for October 21, 2024

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

Others present: Michaela Aust, Lesley Fisher, Ashley Hagen, Becky Jacobs, John Horn, Julie Scharm, Dom Zappia

Chair Li called the meeting to order at 12:32 pm.

The minutes from October 14, 2024, meeting were approved by automatic consent.

Jon Eckhardt, professor in the Wisconsin School of Business, discussed the recent report on Entrepreneurship. They talked with hundreds of individuals and had four main recommendations. They are making an institutional commitment to excellence in entrepreneurship with a focus on founders, establishing campus leadership and structure to bolster entrepreneurship, creating a culture to promote and celebrate entrepreneurship, and expanding access to capital. He is serving as special assistant to the chancellor to move this work forward. He asked the University Committee to think about what a good administrative structure would look like, what kind of faculty governance should be created, how to relieve conflict of commitment issues, and how to include entrepreneurship in tenure and promotion cases.

Rob Cramer, Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration, discussed sustainability. They are looking at HVAC systems and hope to get to zero emissions by 2048 or sooner. There are 5 options available to meet this goal. CDIS will be LEED certified platinum, which is the highest rating. They will also soon begin construction on the Lakeshore Nature Preserve Visitor Center, which will be the first net positive building on campus. The campus is anticipating a gold certification for STARS. They are also looking at improving the campus composting program.

In regards to Workday, efforts are being made to identify key cutover dates. Employee reimbursements will be paused on June 9, There will be a data freeze on transactions from June 29 through July 6.

Michelle Felber and Jack O’Meara from PROFS reported that the last Legislative Council Study Group on UW System meeting was happening this week. A report of the committee be released in November. There are a large number of proposals that have been shared with the committee.

Bill Karpus, Dean of the Graduate School, reported that Graduate Faculty Executive Committee (GFEC) took about 90 actions in the last academic year. They are quite active in graduate affairs on campus. The actions taken were about 35% pertaining to L&S; 18% for CALS; 11% for the School of Education; and 8% College of Engineering. This does not match the current composition of committee members.  

Bernard-Donals motioned, and it was seconded and approved, to convene in closed session pursuant to Wis. Stats. 19.85(1)(c) and (f) to discuss committee appointments at 2:03 pm.

Bernard-Donals motioned, and it was seconded and approved, to reconvene in open session at 2:14 pm. 

Li adjourned the meeting at 2:15 pm.