Call To Order:

The meeting was called to order at 2:10 PM by Prof Gary Wood, Chair. Present in addition were Sylvia Beyer, Doug DeVinny, Chris Evans, James Kinchen and Don Kummings, members; Associate Provost Steve McLaughlin; and Prof Walter Feldt, Secretary of the Faculty.

Business:

Ranger Card and HigherOne
Committee members reported that several faculty members had objected to the apparent need to enter a social security number as part of activating the new Ranger Card. Steve McLaughlin advised the Committee that this was not truly necessary, but that the instructions were confusing. He went on to say that the activation procedure was being revised. Dr. McLaughlin said that the current process geared to student activations and was a bit overbearing in the attempts to have the user agree to activating the debit card feature of the new card.

Dr. McLaughlin went on to give some statistics concerning the new Ranger Card.

As of February 10, 2004:

95% of the Financial Aid recipients either had access to their funds or it is in route to them.

60% of all cards issued have been activated. This is an excellent activation rate since it took UW-Stout 10 months to achieve a 71% activation rate.

OneAccount deposits: 65% (1207)
Check: 27% (471)
ACH Third Party Bank: 8% (130)

306 of the 3384 activated cards belong to faculty/staff

Total number of refund for students: 1,870
Total dollar amount of refunds: $2,921,037

Expansion and Renovation of Student Union
Dr. McLaughlin also reported on the project to renovate and expand the Student Union. The project is expected to cost $24M, including a GPR portion of $1.4M. The student fee to support the project would, under the current plan, be phased in. So far, he said, student government had been supportive, despite the increase in fees and the recent increases in
tuition. The Parkside Student Government Association (PSGA) is scheduled to consider the proposal this coming Sunday evening.

Vacancy on Faculty Rights and Responsibilities Committee
The Committee selected potential appointees to fill a vacant seat on the Faculty Rights and Responsibilities Committee. This procedure was necessitated by a resignation and the lack of available runners-up in the Spring 2003 elections.

Siegfried Cristoph has agreed to fill the vacant seat on the FRRC for the remainder of the year.

B S Management Information Systems : Form for Senate Consideration
The Committee was informed that the Committee on Academic Planning (CAP) had approved the proposal to implement a Bachelor of Arts in Digital Arts. On behalf of CAP, and the provost's office, Prof Feldt asked the Committee to consider which items included in the Digital Arts proposal that it would consider essential to include in the proposal to implement a Bachelor of Science in Management Information Systems (MIS), which was somewhat less developed.

The Digital Arts proposal, as approved by CAP, can be found at http://uwp.edu/staff/gov/faccom/cap/0304/implementart.htm.

After some discussion by the Committee, it was agreed that, ideally, the Senate would see the complete proposal as exemplified by the Digital Arts proposal. Prof Wood suggested a somewhat expanded list of items that the list suggested by CAP and most Committee members appeared to find this acceptable.

University Committee Election
After being informed by Prof Feldt that two nominations had been received as nominations-at-large for seats on the University Committee, the Committee nominated several additional faculty members.

Faculty Service Award - Selection Committee
Prof Feldt asked the Committee to start the process for selecting a recipient for the Faculty Service Award earlier than usual to help distribute the office workload. Professors DeVinny and Evans agreed to serve as the UC representatives on the selection committee and Prof Feldt was asked to contact several former award winners concerning serving.

Grade Appeals Committee - Modification
The Committee discussed a proposal from the Academic Staff Committee (APC) to revise PSF 32/98-99. This issue was originally raised by Dean Cress. The proposal would substitute a teaching academic staff member for a faculty member on the grade review committee when the subject of the appeal was a teaching academic staff member.

The UC suggested, instead, that the review committee be supplemented by adding a teaching academic staff member in this situation.

It was agreed to forward this suggestion to the Academic Policies Committee for its concurrance before sending it forward to the Senate.

Faculty Representatives Meetings - Report
Prof Wood reported on some recent items discussed by the UWS Faculty Representatives.

He said that Pat Brady, UWS General Counsel, advised the representatives that state law required that campuses provide complete student teaching evaluation information upon request, including any comments that are collected. There are exceptions for other personnel records, Prof Wood reported.

Prof Wood went on to say that, upon request, the UWS General Counsel's office would review commentary information and redact things deemed obscene.

Committee members expressed alarm that libelous anonymous information might be released. It was suggested that comments might solicited in response to specific questions, but some suggested that there was little that could be done to suppress commentary from students that wanted to vent strongly held opinions.

Prof Wood also said that the current pay plan, which calls for a 0% raise in the current year and 1% in the next year, would be administered by granting the 1% raise to all staff, unless a person was judged to have "unsatisfactory" performance. Furthermore, the campus would not retain the funds not allocated. Several members wondered whether the
often contentious merit review process was worth doing under these circumstances.

Related to the pay plan, Prof Wood said that other campus constituencies had negotiated a more favorable medical package than was granted to the faculty and academic staff. He said that there was some chance that minor relief would be provided as a result.

After Prof Wood reported that UW-Platteville had brought its plan to expand enrollments to the Board, the Committee questioned UWP's plan to similarly expand. In particular, concern was expressed over the effect on workload if additional funds did not accompany significant additional enrollments. It was agreed to add this item to the planned discussion with Provost Martin on February 24.

Review of Departmental Workload Polcies
Prof Feldt was asked to try to obtain workload policies from the departments that had yet to submit them.

Search and Screen Committee - UWS President
Prof DeVinny, as Senate Chair, said that he had received a letter from Board of Regents President Toby Marcovich asking for nominees for members of a search and screen committee to select a successor to UWS President Katherine Lyall who has announced her retirement. Several nominees were discussed and Prof Feldt was asked to contact them.

Adjournment:

The meeting adjouned at 3:45 PM.

Respectfully Submitted,

Walter T Feldt
SECRETARY OF THE FACULTY