Minutes of the University Committee
May 8, 2001

The Committee met at 2:30 in 262 CART. Members present were John Buenker, Walter Feldt, Laura Gellott, Fran Kavenik, Greg Mayer, and Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes. Also present were Larry Duetsch and Tom Peischl.

Assistant Vice Chancellor Peischl said he had several reasons to request this meeting with the Committee. The first was that he would like input from the Committee about reconstituting the Technology Advisory Committee, an administrative committee that heretofore has reported to him. The Committee could be more useful, he believes, if it reported to the Chancellor and was composed of representatives from all of the departments (both academic and nonacademic) that are significant IT stakeholders.
The present membership - four faculty, two academic staff, three classified staff, two students, and two people from Information Services - cannot provide the breadth of advice that is needed. He is recommending that the Technology Advisory Ccommittee instead be appointed by the Chancellor and expanded to include - in addition to the four faculty members who serve on the Faculty's Information Resources Committee - students and representatives drawn from Student Services, Facilities
Management, Enrollment Management, University Relations, Business Services, Human Resources, the Center for Community Partnerships, and Information Services. Committee members expressed no objection to this recommendation.

Assistant Vice Chancellor Peischl said that he and Provost Ostheimer have both been concerned about assuring that the work of the Distance Education Planning Group will be carried on after the Provost has retired. Committee members suggested that the Information Resources Committee and the Committee on Teaching and Learning should both be asked to work on matters in this realm. There seemed to be consensus that the University Committee would work to foster that joint effort in the months ahead.

Finally, Assistant Vice Chancellor Peischl said that the UW System has asked each institution to contribute to the development of a strategic plan for information technology that will have six components: web accessibility; network infrastructure; major administrative and academic systems; e-learning; e-business systems; and best practices in teacher preparation. He presented an outline of the overall UW System goals and asked for the Committee's guidance in preparing our institutional response, particularly in regard to teacher preparation. The Committee urged him to work through Dean Cress to involve both the Teacher Education faculty and the teacher education liaisons, at a minimum.

As Assistant Vice Chancellor Peischl thanked the Committee and left, Dean Cress joined the meeting.

Dean Cress raised an issue concerning departmental criteria for personnel actions. He noted that executive committees are expected to reward types of performance that bear on (but perhaps cannot be neatly categorized as) teaching, research and creative activity, and service - he cited (as examples) performance that advances Plan 2008, improves advising, or increases engagement. He said that a few departments have developed specific criteria for carrying out these mandates and wondered whether executive committees are (or should be) expected to develop their own criteria for evaluating such performance. If so, should the criteria they develop should be reviewed outside the department (perhaps by the Personnel Review Committee) to ensure consistency with UWPF 6.01?

Committee members pointed out that UWPF 6.01 was revised two years ago to more clearly incorporate all relevant mandates into the criteria for personnel decisions. Some members said that executive committees are not required (but should be encouraged) to have written criteria that are described in greater detail than UWPF 6.01. In this regard, executive committees can choose to provide whatever degree of detail best serves their purposes, as long as their criteria do not conflict with those
specified in UWPF 6.01.

Dean Cress asked what would prevent an executive committee from establishing performance standards that go beyond UWPF 6.01 to an unreasonable degree, making it impossible for anyone to qualify for promotion/tenure. He is concerned, he said, that a department might use unreasonable standards to deny advancement to people whose performance was entirely satisfactory when judged by reasonable standards. When asked what prompted this concern, he said he had no specific case in mind.

Dean Cress and the Committee agreed that every department should be required to file its criteria with the Secretary of the Faculty for regular review by the Personnel Review Committee to ensure consistency with UWPF 6.01. Dean Cress thanked the Committee and left the meeting.

The Committee briefly discussed the decision of the Provost Search and Screen Committee to suspend its search without recommending any candidate to the Chancellor. It was agreed that there was no need to ask the Chancellor to reconstitute the Search and Screen Committee before the search is reopened.

The Committee agreed to meet as needed over the Summer and then adjourned at 3:30.