Minutes for December 09, 2024

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

Others present: Ashley Hagen, Eric Sandgren, Julie Scharm, Dom Zappia

Chair Li called the meeting to order at 12:45 pm.

Jack O’Meara and Michelle Felber reported they are working on the bill that would allow Universities of Wisconsin to begin classes on September 1. PROFS has been discussing how to make membership more valuable including membership only email updates. They are also watching legislation at the federal level.

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 12:58 pm.

Bernard-Donals motioned, and it was seconded and approved, to reconvene in open session at 1:08 pm.

The minutes from December 2, 2024, meeting were approved by automatic consent.

Lori Reesor, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, discussed the increase in accommodation requests to the McBurney Center, which is proving overwhelming for instructors in large courses. The number of requests has grown from 2600 in 2018 to 5400 in 2023. The staff at McBurney have been putting things in place to make it easier for faculty. Questions arose about how to let faculty know about resources that are available as well as how to support departments more locally.

The University Committee discussed the proposed copyright policy changes from University of Wisconsin System. They received 39 responses from the survey shared with Faculty Senators. There were concerns about AI use, universities replicating course content, and the gray line about what was considered scholarly vs institutional work in addition to comments about the new policy discouraging them from creating new work that would be considered institutional. There were concerns about publishing their work and how they would be able to tell whether they owned the copyright to a particular work. Eric Sandgren provided his perspective about what the UW System Faculty Representatives had been discussing. A couple University Committee members agreed to work on a statement to send to UW System by the Friday deadline.

Li adjourned the meeting at 2:34 pm.

Minutes submitted by Heather Daniels, secretary of the faculty