Chair’s Report for March 12, 2002
Senate update
1. Important links to
agendas, minutes, Chair's Reports and other sites of interest are available on the Senate
web site: http://www.uwec.edu/Usenate.
Report will be available on this site by noon on the day of the Senate meeting.
2. During debates, Senators
may speak only twice to any motion or amendment. Each speaking term is limited to 10
minutes.
Faculty Reps Meeting
– March 1st
1. Budget Process for
2003-05 - Biennium discussions different than before. System personnel will hold private
briefings with Regents concerning possible initiatives. Scheduled to go before Board in
June and ask for their priorities. Hopefully, part of 03-05 will restore some of what has
been lost in 01-03.
2. Bill to take back
Regent’s authority to set executive salaries did not make it out of committee.
3. Program Planning Update
– Associate Vice President Ron Singer. Any new program proposal that requires dollars
or reallocation will be held at System at least until the budget situation has settled.
4. Brief report on
System-wide Retention Conference attended by teams from each institution. Each institution
sets own targets for retention and graduation rates. “What we are doing for minority
student retention should be the same thing we do for all students”. “If you want
to increase retention, involve faculty!” Concern that as we push to increase
retention, there may be a push to lower academic standards. Poor quality doesn’t
serve anyone well. Need to advise students into the right program. Need to ensure
accessibility of faculty.
5. The goals of a potential
Shared Governance meeting among Chancellors, Provost, and Faculty Reps were discussed.
Meeting would occur some time in the fall.
6. Institutional Senate
Reports: PARKSIDE – appointed committee on workload, elected not to be
involved in writing values statement for institution, considering evaluation of
administrators including dialog with classified and academic staff; EXTENSION
– looking at the question “How do we better understand each other since we are
so diverse?”; PLATTEVILLE – campus police supported by faculty in the
right to carry firearms, looking at workload, deans assign workload by SCH to each college
and then each college figures out how to produce the SCH as a college; GREEN BAY
– looking at new admissions policy that abolishes use of Class Rank, establishes
early admission on higher ACT, currently students select whether want a B.S. or B.A. in a
given program, now faculty will determine which programs will be offered as B.S. or B.A.,
changes in new GE program, working on Faculty Status language and language for granting
tenure, will soon look at language relating to due process; OSHKOSH – entire
campus is working on budget exercise to see how to meet the budget shortfall, focusing on
more student engagement, looking at GE requirements and Service-Learning, looking at
academic restructuring, investigating partnership between Oshkosh and Stout; COLLEGES
– looking at ways to make sure institutionally-related policies go to the full senate
of the Colleges, taking issues that deal with IAS from AS council to Faculty council, NCA
self-study; STOUT – about 5 years ago created a Strategic Planning committee
chaired by Provost but made up of primarily faculty to set up mission, strategic plan, and
to look ahead and set up guiding principles for when Give Backs were required – now
using those principles; WHITEWATER – free speech discussion, massive changes
in Personnel rules coming forward; STEVENS POINT – coming up with form and
frequency of student evaluations; RIVER FALLS – voted down the motion to unite
faculty and academic staff into one University Senate, was very carefully discussed, no
one came forward and spoke against the merger, but motion was defeated; MADISON
– parking & transit committee has heard from emeriti who have almost no
campus-wide privileges… now saying emeriti must be part of the department’s
parking queue for permits… soon due to construction about 1000 spaces will be lost,
the University Committee will make motion at upcoming meeting to substitute current motion
on floor discussion Right to Bargain; SUPERIOR – 15 new searches were dropped
dead in tracks due to budget and email with 12 criteria to defend for each new search
request was distributed, will have to fight it out in Senate as to which positions to keep
or cut, did have restrictions that no noon classes were to be scheduled to allow more
student interactions… now looking at MWF noon but not TTh; LA CROSSE –
using a very democratic process to look at budget cuts including people from the
community, schools, faculty and staff to work together… the committee includes
faculty, academic staff and students… each department/unit submits suggestions for
what might be cut and this group reviews the suggestions, finding very low interest in
service… not enough to fill need.
Legislative Update
1. Status of the budget
changes almost daily. To keep pace, check out the links to NEWS and LEGISLATIVE UPDATES
at: http://www.uwsa.edu/univ_rel/govrel/index.htm