Minutes of ASEC/MASA Town Hall Meeting
Held 4/24/01 in Room 4151 Grainger Hall
Town Hall minutes:
Moderator: Jane Bannerman.
Notes for the town meeting were taken by Heather Daniels.
Barry Robinson presentation (ASEC)
Committees on Academic Staff Issues (CASIs)- If you haven’t heard about the CASI for your work unit, please contact your dean or Colleen McCabe
Audience Question
What about Office of Quality Improvement? An: This office will be part of the CASI being organized by Steve Lund.
Barry Robinson presentation (ASEC) cont.
Prohibited Harrassment Language- Academic staff conduct is currently governed by language from Chancellor Shalala’s term. Academic staff may adopt language similar to that used by the faculty
Professor Title Series- Academic Staff Assembly and the Faculty Senate passed proposals for professorial title series for academic staff. The UW System passed a proposal for titles similar to the ones passed by the Assembly. System has forwarded its proposal onto the campuses and asked for a response by mid May.
Bridge Funding- There is a pilot project to provide bridge funding to Academic Staff who have contributed significantly to the University. You can get information about this program through the Academic Personnel Office.
Strategic plan and campus climate are issues that will be coming up this summer in the ASEC.
Audience Question
Someone had looked at the strategic plan website and found it very confusing and not clear about which links someone should go to. Another audience member suggested that they look at the flow charts. Kathy Luker volunteered to bring the comments to the attention of the Office of Quality Improvement.
Esther Olson presentation (ASPRO)
Budget- Testified before the Joint Finance Committee, working with PROFS, WAA, Charlie Hoslet and Paul Barrows.
UW Day- Main focus was to speak to legislators as a unified voice from the UW system. It was a great success. The UW system will continue with this united presentation.
There is a proposal in the legislature to allow the conversion of sick leave benefits into long-term health care insurance (Milwaukee Legislature Senator Grobschmidt).
Join ASPRO!
Greg Iaccarino presentation (ASEC)
Academic Staff Website- A small committee is working on making the academic staff website a clearing house of information. A handout of the front page of the website was distributed. A test site is expected to be up this summer. There will be a way to provide feedback and ask questions on the site. The idea for redesigning the website came from a town meeting.
Audience Suggestion.
Combining the process of finding your district # and finding your rep into a one-step process so that people would not have to go through two steps to find this information.
Open Questions
Mara McDonald suggested that schools/colleges consider doing 360 degree evaluations. Promega, CUNA and UW Hospital all have this type of job performance reviews.
Drew Boileau brought up the anticipated dramatic stipend increase for NIH postdocs in the coming years. There is the possibility in the future that those with scientist titles will earn less than postdocs.
Barry Robinson asked if anyone had heard about L&S instructional staff being terminated after 3 years. ASEC has talked with L&S administration and the L&S CASI about this. The campus policy is that there is a limit of three years during which someone can have a terminal appointment. The appointment in the fourth year must be renewable. L&S wants to keep flexibility of these appointments and move them from department to department as needed. Therefore, L&S tends not to renew instructional staff with terminal appointments for three years so they do not have to make that position renewable.
Rebecca Morgan from the Office of Human Resource Development solicited ideas for professional development workshops. Several suggestions were made including Career Development, How to Handle a Hostile Work Environment, How to Hire Supervisors.
Anyone with ideas on how to improve campus climate was asked to e-mail Chancellor Wiley. One suggestion was to include the climate of the school/college as part of the Dean’s evaluation. Another is to have a better process for dealing with complaints.