Minutes for February 10, 2025

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

Others present: Greg Bump, Michelle Felber, Becky Jacobs, Julie Scharm, Dom Zappia 

Chair Li called the meeting to order at 1:01 pm.

The University Committee decided to proceed with hosting a town hall in March. It would have several purposes including building community, sharing information on how faculty governance works at the campus level and hearing what concerns faculty have.

J. Michael Collins and Carol Hulland from the Retirement Issues Committee indicated the committee works on two different types of issues: preparation for retirement and issues people have after retirement. They have concentrated their efforts over the past year on putting together a presentation on retirement and presenting at various campus events about retirement.

Chad Allen Goldberg, Professor in the Department of Sociology, presented concerns from his department about the ARTS proposal, which would create shared services for some administrative functions within the College of Letters and Science. They have concerns about attrition due to low job satisfaction. People often chose to work at the departmental level, because they enjoy the connections and relationships they build with department faculty, staff and students. The department also has concerns about how conflicts between priorities of the department and priorities of the dean’s office will be handled, now that departments will no longer be supervising these staff. The University Committee agreed to raise this issue with the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration.

Provost Charles Isbell said his office would look into whether there is anything that can be done about the stipulations of the Vilas Research Professorships regarding teaching reduction. The amount of salary provided no longer covers the cost of hiring a replacement to teach the courses no longer being taught due to the professorship.

The Provost and the University Committee discussed the College of Letters and Science ART model. There is no talk about mandating shared services campus-wide. Something similar to this was implemented at his previous institution.

The state of Wisconsin has joined a multiple-state lawsuit to stop the NIH indirect cost rate reduction. The AAU, APLU and a variety of other organizations are coming together regarding the possibility of shared responses. The campus has not changed its guidance.

Jones motioned, and it was seconded and approved, to convene in closed session pursuant to Wis. Stats. 19.85(1)(c) and (f) to discuss waivers and committee appointments at 2:30 pm. Two tenure clock extensions and three committee appointments were approved.

Bernard-Donals motioned, and it was seconded and approved, to reconvene in open session at 2:46 pm.

The minutes from the February 3, 2025, meeting was approved by automatic consent.

A number of divisional committee chairs and vice chairs (Ricki Colman, K.D. Thompson, Shaun Marcott, Tonya Roberts, and Susan Eckes) met to discuss RISE hires and the tenure process. Sometimes it is difficult for divisional committees to deal with emerging areas of research. Several suggestions were raised including making sure departments review their tenure guidelines so that the expectations of tenure are applicable to a RISE hire and asking departments to think about the composition of the mentoring committee. These two actions should be taken early in the assistant professor’s tenure in the department. The department chair should use their letter to explain any differences between work being done for the department as opposed to work completed as part of the RISE group. Departments could also use non arm’s length letters to further explain RISE work.

Li adjourned the meeting at 3:37 pm.

Minutes submitted by Heather Daniels, secretary of the faculty.