Chair’s Report for September 10, 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. Senate Chair’s 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. The Chair will add names of those wishing to speak to a speaker's list upon recognition.

Items from the Summer

1. Small Governance Group consisting of Chancellor Mash, Provost Satz, Senate Chair (and Faculty Rep) Harrison, Vice Chair Gapko, and Academic Staff Rep Wilcox met throughout the summer to discuss future needs of the University and potential policies needing attention. As a result of this discussion, numerous “to be considered” items were developed to be given to each Senate committee as a starting point for this year’s work. A Handbook Steering Committee was developed to look at organizing and editing the Handbook and serving as a “clearing house” for suggested Handbook changes.

Faculty Reps Meeting

1. Regent’s theme this year is “Engage Wisconsin”

2. President Lyall addressed the Faculty Reps. No Classified Pay Plan has been settled yet. The new governor will have to come to grips with that. The Faculty and Academic Staff Pay Plan this past year was better than any other state plan. To develop the next one, Lyall will talk with System-wide Compensation Committee (our reps are Wick and Gapko). Lyall has been asked to request 0% increase this year. Her response, “dream on.” Wondering what peers will do this year. Could consider looking at just an internal peer group, a different peer group, or dropping the peer group idea and use AAUP averages. Some have suggested splitting the pay play into plans for each campus. Others have suggested grouping the comprehensives into one plan. May want to delay pay package request until after November elections.

3. Lyall stated that the Board will send additional specific requests (DINs) for $$ for training more nurses, more teachers of Special Education, and for Economic Development as part of the Budget package. Lyall told the Regents “we have hit the wall.” There is nothing more that can be cut. Since 95, faculty positions have dropped by 500 while the number of students has increased by 8600 (during the same time period, prison employees increased by 2000). Either we make up the deficit in $$$ by increasing tuition or make it up by downsizing. During Oct-Nov, will lay out to the Board the hiring calendar showing that the number of admissions we will take for 2003-04 depends on the number of faculty hired.

4. System was required to put forth performance standards. One was to improve retention and graduation rates.

5. United Council very concerned about the rising number of Instructional Academic Staff and the decreasing number of Faculty.

6. Campus Reports – Topics being discussed:

1. Colleges: NCA review; first year experience; enrollment management; students up, IAS up, Administration up, but faculty down 20%, thus shared governance groups find faculty in minority – what does that mean for the role of faculty in curriculum?
2. Extension: scholarship for extension; resource funding given federal cuts; ratio of IAS to faculty
3. Green Bay: new administrative leaders; integrating first-year experiences; GE; campus-wide academic advising; strategic plan
4. LaCrosse: strategic plans; moving more responsibility from the Deans back to faculty; GE; establishing assessment criteria – measuring value added; what does “best and the brightest” really mean; budget; role of Dean vs. departments, role of scholarship vs. service, IAS vs. Faculty, and aptitude of students vs. actions in classroom
5. Madison: lack of participation and understanding of faculty in governance; budget; campus climate; role of Madison faculty in talking with legislatures; considering another division
6. Milwaukee: student experience; capital campaign; new building purchases; enrollments up; community partnerships; expanding Milwaukee initiatives; budget proposals – created academic budget committee to look at effects on budget when programs added or deleted; program assessment
7. Oshkosh: new Handbook committee for looking at grievance, tenure, and non-tenure language; calendar with more standard blocks of weeks; differences between basic and applied research; use of new buildings; advising
8. Parkside: NCA review; enrollments; teaching more with fewer faculty resources; ways to evaluate programs to help guide position allocation; all faculty should be in charge of teacher ed
9. Platteville: Distance Education – how to pay those who teach & develop courses; who will teach DE courses with fast-expanding programs; replaced over 50% of faculty over last few year – most have no prior teaching experience; GE
10. River Falls: GE program; definition of scholarship; retention and campus climate
11. Stevens Point: student evaluations of teaching; continuing education and outreach salaries; security cameras in labs
12. Stout: over 1500 freshmen with new laptops; alternate to NCA – AQIP method – three areas selected for review – assessment, graduate education, and leadership development; transitional employment opportunities
13. Superior: policy on consensual & amorous relations – senate divided on policy too weak or too tough; reducing degree requirements; order for marching in commencement based on years of service
14. Whitewater: personnel rules; problems hiring faculty; need for stabilizing administration; admin request to increase retention while being more rigorous in grading and more cautious granting tenure; advising center

Board of Regents Meeting

1. The Regents unanimously approved a 2003-05 biennial budget proposal. The proposal does not request any new state funding at this time, but authorizes the UW System Administration to continue to develop new program initiatives to be submitted to the Board in November. The Regents budget includes an increase of up to $30 million annually in standard budget adjustments (cost-to-continue) for 2003-05. In addition, the budget proposal requests changes that would allow the UW System to keep the interest earned from tuition revenue and giving the regents full authority to set tuition rates and other management flexibilities. [from Legislative Update]

2. Next meeting: Sept. 12-13