The University Committee met on Tuesday, February 24, 2009 in Molinaro Hall room D135.

Call to Order

The meeting was called to order at 3:35 p.m. by the Chair, Dennis Rome.  Also attending were committee members Herb Colston, Chris Evans, Peggy James, Farida Khan and Greg Mayer. Gary Wood was present as Secretary of the Faculty.

Approval of Minutes

The minutes from the meeting of February 17 were approved as distributed.

Announcements

 

The chancellor will meet with the University Committee on March 24 to discuss merit procedures, faculty hiring policies and procedures and a faculty ombudsman position.

Dennis reported that the budget was the main topic of discussion at the last meeting of the chancellor with the leaders of governance groups. We still do not know what our share of the $174 million cut to the UW-System budget will be, but it will likely result in fewer course offerings.  Some adjunct-staffed sections have already been cut from the fall schedule.  The possibility of a hiring freeze (and 21 PARS have been submitted) was also discussed.  Apparently there is money for faculty recruitment and retention but not for new positions.

The committee discussed at some length administrative policies and procedures regarding merit scores and merit pay.  Specific questions included how and when are scores adjusted by the deans or the provost and is that information transmitted back to departments?  How are the scores translated into merit raises?  The committee agreed to keep seeking information.

The provost wants representatives from the University Committee, the Academic Achievement Assessment Committee, the Committee on Academic Planning, the General Education Committee and the First Year Experience Committee to serve on a reaccreditation team.  This will be on the agenda for the next meeting.

Dennis reported discussing the faculty ombudsman position with the chancellor.  The chancellor indicated that if this position were created it would most likely be filled by someone already here who would be compensated with a combination of release time and stipend.

New University Committee members Rob Barber and Lisa Kornetsky and returning member Stu Hansen will be invited to next week’s meeting for the purpose of electing a chair for 2009-2010. 

A number of faculty asked to serve on the CIO search and screen committee either refused or resigned.  John Ward, chair of the Information Resources Committee is now serving on that search committee.

Old Business

1)  Zahra Kohneh was appointed to the Academic Achievement Assessment committee as the math representative.

2)  Sabbatical policies and procedures.  The committee reviewed the existing guidelines for the evaluation of sabbatical proposals found at the following URL.

http://www.uwp.edu/departments/academic.affairs/sabannouncement.cfm

Whether this document was ever approved by the faculty senate was questioned. Nobody could answer.  (It was later determined that the document was on the agenda of the October 4, 2005 senate meeting, but there are no minutes from that meeting.)

The committee recommended that the composition of the review committee be revised.  The review committee will consist of six members; one representative from the Committee on Research and Creative Activity, one from the Committee on Teaching and Learning, at least two recent sabbatical recipients and two other faculty members.  All six electoral divisions must be represented.

The committee further recommended that, because the Regents guidelines for sabbaticals change from one biennium to another, any specific references to Regents guidelines be eliminated.  This includes the bullet points at the bottom of the first page and point #6 in the list of criteria.  A link to the Regents document will be provided instead.

The committee further recommended that the point system be removed, as well as the parenthetical note about the point system.  In place of the point system, criterion #1, the overall quality of the proposal, will be the most important criterion and criteria #2-7 (with #6 deleted as noted above) will be weighted equally.

The committee further recommended that a step be added to the end of the procedure which would request that the provost communicate with each faculty member who submitted a proposal, approved or not, and offer to discuss the analyses and information provided by the dean, by the review committee and also his/her own analysis of the proposal.  After these meetings, faculty who are awarded sabbaticals should be announced.  The provost should be consulted on this matter.

The years will be removed from the deadlines portion of the document.

It was noted that communication from the administration at the very beginning of the process about how many proposals are likely to be funded would be helpful.

3)  Faculty ombudsman.  Greg noted his concern that creating this position might lead to a parallel system of governance that does not follow UWS or UWPF; for example, having a discussion with the ombudsman might potentially be added to some administrative policies about complaints.  Other members of the committee pointed out that this did not appear to be the case on campuses where there is such an office and likened the function of the ombudsman to a traffic cop whose job it is to explain policies and procedures and point people in the right direction.  It was noted that this already happens on our campus to a certain extent, that is, there are a handful of experienced people who others go to for advice, but it is inconsistent and not all faculty know who those people are.  Greg wondered which current UW-Parkside faculty might be able to do this.  There probably aren’t many who are qualified.  It really needs to be an insider, an experienced faculty member who knows the rules and regulations, or at least where to find out about them.  It should be a tenured faculty member but not necessarily one with the rank of full professor.  Farida wondered what kinds of problems have been occurring that indicate a need for an ombudsman and if the problems are indicative of some structural problems.

The committee finally discussed a possible compensation package.  The work would be sporadic, maybe similar to that of the Faculty Rights and Responsibilities Committee chair.  Compensation similar to that of a department chair was suggested.

New Business

As anticipated, there was no new business.

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 5:15 p.m.

Submitted by,

Gary M. Wood,

Secretary of the Faculty