August 24, 2021

UC Chair N. Rothfels reported that the Chancellor and Provost will resume their regular scheduled visits to UC meetings in September.  New UC members E. Bornstein, V. Moerchen, and M. D. Schwartz were welcomed to the committee and briefed on procedures.  The next several UC meetings will be devoted to planning and organization for the coming semester.  Rothfels met with recently appointed UW-System Regent Ashok Rai.  The meeting was positive, and an encouraging sign of genuine interest in engagement with faculty governance.  The Council of UW-Wisconsin Libraries has put forward a proposal to limit borrowing between campus libraries to 2-years and is seeking to discuss with faculty governance leaders.  The UC did not see this proposal as productive or necessary, given anyone who needs a book is able to put in a recall request.  The UC may look to set up a meeting with UWM Libraries Director M. Doylen soon to discuss this proposal and current UWM policy in this regard.

The remainder of the meeting was devoted to discussion of UC rep. appointments to various governance committees as well as continued exploration of the possible elimination of governance committees deemed to be no longer useful.

The UC read and was very favorably impressed by an opinion piece posted today on the UW-System web site by President Thompson:

https://www.wisconsin.edu/news/archive/running-the-uw-system-is-our-responsibility/