J. Doll, Acting Dean, College of Health Sciences requested augmentation for BMS Department EC; W. Heddleston has agreed to do this for spring 2022.

Provost Britz reported that the UW System Provosts’ retreat focused on enrollment management in particular the System-wide lag (apart from Madison) in enrollments for fall. The Chancellor’s Plenary is coming up and 2030 implementation is continuing to move forward following meetings with schools and colleges. GER course reform is also moving forward. Enrollments are down 5%, a slight improvement over a few weeks ago, and the incoming freshman class appears to be comparable in number to 2019. An extensive set of FAQs related to COVID protocols will be circulated this week; this will deal with issues including what to do if students attend class without masks, what to do if a student tests positive for COVID etc. Two sets of messages will go out later today, one from Vice Provost D. Clark for students and one from Provost Britz for faculty and staff about FAQs.

Outgoing and Incoming ASC Chairs Kyla Esguerra and Nicole Oswald, respectively, reported briefly on the recent ASC meeting, where the main topic of discussion continues to be the Title and Total Compensation project, which had stalled for a while but now has a firm implementation deadline of November 7. There is considerable concern about some of the title changes, especially the elimination of the senior prefix even though campus has agreed to maintain this as a business title. Meetings between supervisors and employees have been difficult in some cases because of the perception that some title changes imply a semantic demotion. The elimination of the Assistant Dean title, which has been replaced by a position description that doesn’t accurately reflect the responsibilities involved in some cases, was also discussed. The other major issue under discussion was voting rights procedures, which the ASC will respond to before the proposed changes come to the UC later this fall. Pay progression for academic staff was also on the agenda and additional campus guidelines were requested re: policies and procedures for considering academic staff for merit pay increases. Vice Chancellor R. Van Harpen and Vice Chancellor T. Danielsen will be joining the ASC later in the fall semester to continue to discuss this.

UC Chair K. Dolan reported on the Governance Representatives meeting at which the various COVID protocols were discussed that have since been officially implemented at eight of the UW System campuses. The Scenario Planning group has met several times since the end of July to focus on plans for fall semester. Currently about 70% of courses are scheduled f2f (this includes hybrid classes). One question that was raised was whether or not it makes sense to move classes to give people as much space as possible in the classroom. The Registrar’s Office will be sending lists of available large classrooms to units so that faculty who would prefer to move to larger rooms can request them. Seating plans in classrooms will be encouraged when feasible for contact tracing purposes. If a student tests positive at an on-campus testing faculty whose classes that student is attending will be notified. If students contact faculty with COVID diagnosis they should be asked to self-report. The forthcoming FAQs will provide guidelines for such situations. UC Chair K. Dolan also reported on a meeting with one of the new Board of Regents members (Ashok Rai, president and CEO of Prevea Health), which was very positive and involved a discussion of how to ensure the search for the new UW System President goes smoothly and that campuses have sufficient input in the process. Campus will post a position description for a permanent director for DEI soon; the division of what is now Global Inclusion and Engagement will be renamed and search committee members are being sought.

There were no Members’ Reports.

In New Business UC Chair K. Dolan reported that Vice Chancellor T. Danielsen is putting a working group together to focus on employee career development issues and would like representatives from academic staff and faculty to be included. The UC was requested to come up with a list of names of people who might be willing and qualified to serve.

Outgoing UC members K. Dolan and B. Arnold were thanked for their service; incoming UC members E. Bornstein, G. Anderson and M. Schwartz were welcomed. J. Reisel is the new Secretary of the University following T. Turner’s retirement and will attend UC meetings in that capacity going forward.

The next UC meeting will be held on August 24.