Chair’s Report for
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.
2. Senators –
please remember to initial the roster when you enter the room and pick up your
name tags.
3. 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.
1.
Two-Year Nominating Committee Terms
1.
Deans Christian and Rhoades outlined a proposal on
University General Education Committee membership in response to the charge
from University Senate last meeting.
o
Working group included four deans and two faculty
senators from each college
o
Proposal will be returned to full body of senate when
completed
Faculty Reps
Meeting – October 29th – next meeting November 19th
1. Office of
Professional and Instructional Development (OPID) Director Lisa Kornetsky gave
an overview of the new Faculty Developer’s Project currently in pilot stage.
OPID is seeking input on the needs of faculty for faculty development. Ideas
regarding faculty development should be shared with the campus OPID Council
members (Linda Carpenter and Rodd Freitag).
2. Assistant Vice
President of Human Resources Al Crist and Associate Vice President Ron Singer provided
a draft of System guidelines relating to Overload Payments and Temporary Base
Adjustments for Faculty, Academic Staff and Limited Appointees. While the draft
is just a reorganization of existing policies for clarity, in sharing the draft
with Chancellors and Provosts, Al and Ron have discovered the policies do not
match practice. Faculty Reps were asked if the $12,000 cap was too low – most
agreed it was too low, but cautioned about attempting to ask for a change at
this time. The need to be careful in terms of the number of people teaching
overloads was stressed. If the
legislature sees that a significant number of faculty are teaching overloads,
it may assume then that faculty must have ‘extra time’ and therefore attempt to
legislate an increase in the full-time teaching load.
3. A brief report
on the Committee on Baccalaureate Expansion (COBE) was given and a Matrix of
proposed strategies distributed. Provosts have already been asked to respond
with which of the 13 strategies would be undertaken by each campus. Since most
of the strategies directly involve faculty in order to succeed, the Faculty
Reps were concerned, as a whole, on how much faculty input was gathered by the
Provosts before making the commitment to engage a campus in specific strategies.
Reps also suggested that language requesting department-level periodic reviews
of transfer courses be included to ensure that currently approved technical
college courses transferring for credit remain equivalent to the university
courses to which they transfer. System is looking for data on how students
transferring into the UW System fare – are there some specific areas where they
are not prepared for university courses even though ‘on the books’ they meet
the prerequisites? Reps agreed that it “can’t be just the UW System’s
responsibility to graduate transfer students, but the tech’s responsibility as
well to prepare them”.
4. System is
looking at enrollment management and proposing not to dictate enrollment
numbers, but allow each campus to determine the numbers. System stressed that
“Integrated Enrollment Planning” is not just for the academics to discuss, but
for all areas of the university to discuss. All areas are involved in some way.
To determine the enrollment number, questions such as how many students can we
support in terms of faculty to teach, faculty to advise, faculty to be involved
in collaborative research projects, size of classrooms, cafeteria space, dorm
rooms, parking areas, health care support, access to technology, library
access, etc. must be asked. Representatives from all areas should be involved
in the discussions – not just upper administration setting the number.
5. Academic
Planner Christine Flynn Saulnier gave a brief report on the National Institute
on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Institute on Drug
Abuse (NIDA) upcoming workshop designed to address the needs of faculty
researchers at all UW System Institutions.
6. A draft of the
UW System International Education Strategic Plan was distributed and Reps
provided comments. The plan’s primary goal is to ensure that all UW System
students attain a level of global and international awareness, knowledge and
proficiency that enables them to meet the global challenges of the 21st
Century.
Board of
Regents Meeting – November 4th & 5th – next meeting December
9th & 10th
Summaries from the
Board of Regents meetings:
Day 1 http://www.wisconsin.edu/news/2004/r041104b.htm
Day 2 http://www.wisconsin.edu/news/2004/r041105c.htm
1. “Role of
Liberal Education in American Higher Education” presentation by Dr. Carol Geary
Schneider, President of the Association of American Colleges and Universities,
provided an overview of what Liberal Education could be.[Chair Harrison will be
sharing some of her ideas at the Open Discussion, November 30th.]
2. The Board
decided on the proposed pay increases for faculty and academic staff. Links to
the text of the actual motions are available on the Day 1 summary. Regents
established the need for a 6.3% increase for each year of the biennium and
recommended an increase of 2% per year of the biennium provided sufficient
funds are placed in the biennial budget to distribute at least 3% each year.
The same pay plan distribution guidelines as used for 2003-2005 were adopted
provided the amount (beyond the budget request of 3%) is greater than 2%.
Otherwise, the funds will be distributed across the board based on solid
performance.
3. The Board
endorsed state group health insurance for domestic partners of all UW System
employees and encouraged the Governor and the Legislature to amend state
statutes to provide that benefit. [The on-line summary has the original
language of "all state employees", but the language was amended on
Thursday to read "all UW System employees". As far as I know, the
language was not reversed anytime on Friday.]
4. Tom Still,
president of the Wisconsin Technology Council, shared research and reasons for
why academic research and development are essential to growing