Provost Britz did not attend the meeting because he presented a detailed report at the previous week’s Faculty Senate at which all UC members were present.
UC Chair K. Dolan reported that M. Schwartz will represent the Faculty Senate on the Office of Sustainability’s Climate Action Plan Working Group. Governance leads met with recently appointed Board of Regents “buddies” Weatherly and Leskow on Tuesday February 2, 2021 to bring them up to speed and provide them with some background on serving in this capacity. The 2030 Implementation Team’s final report has been submitted to the Chancellor and Provost and M. Harris and K. Dolan will meet with them to discuss next steps on February 22.
In Members’ Reports J. Snethen reported on last week’s APBC meeting at which the new General Business major was presented by representatives of the Lubar School of Business. D. Misra reported that the University Relations Committee met for a presentation by the Care, Respect and Expectation Task Force.
In Old Business the UC engaged in further discussion of the function and responsibilities of faculty governance committees. The UC will review committee charters and additional documentation to initiate a larger discussion about the organization and function of faculty governance at UWM. Campus should engage in a conversation about what governance is and how it can be most efficiently implemented within the committee structure. The language of each committee’s charter will be reviewed to assess its potential for actively participating in, rather than mainly serving as a rubber stamp for, initiatives that have already reached a stage where input is pro forma. Committees whose function is currently be passive but that could play an effective and valuable role in faculty governance could be encouraged to revise the language of their charters. Soliciting input from working committees at a stage when suggestions could actually still be implemented would be a more effective use of both faculty and administrators’ time. Identifying and rectifying duplication of effort where existing administrative and faculty committees have overlapping responsibilities would be beneficial given the decreasing number of faculty on campus and the concomitant increase in workload. This would also make administrators’ workload less onerous, cutting down on the number of largely informational presentations to faculty committees.
Chancellor Mone will attend the meeting on February 9, 2021.