L&S Committee Discusses Workload Policy and Appointments

On Friday, April 17, The College of Letters and Science Academic Planning and Governance Committee Meeting (L&S APGC) discussed proposed instructional workload policies, academic staff appointments and the timeline for the interim dean transition during its April 17 meeting.

During the discussion, Scott V Gronert said “every instructional staff reporting to the state needs to meet the 12 credit minimum… the campus created their interim policy and left all the details for the colleges to sort out and that’s what this document is meant to address and were meant to have these in place on the 24th of May.” 

More specifically, the document draft consists of the campus policy and credit equivalency giving flexibility and implementing workload policies and how that can be done without creating a disaster when reporting to the legislature.

Additionally, Gronert informed the staff committee that there will be another meeting next week talking about the interim dean announcement and announced that his final day in the office will be on Friday, June 12, with official retirement set for Friday, June 30.

Next, Craig Guilbault introduced the second topic: Academic Staff Appointments and asked for the spokesperson of that subcommittee. 

Matthew E Knachel summarized the brief meeting that happened on Tuesday, April 14th. He said “the goal was to find future versions of this committee to take some action, year-to-year. Making inquiries with the dean’s office about academic staff, appointments and the idea was to make routine requests that the dean’s office provide data to this committee about the budgetary, capacities and how academic staff appointments fit into future outlooks and expectations.” As a result, the subcommittee decided they were going to write a charter to this effect and the plan was to write a little bit of language to guide future versions of the committee about what to ask for, from the dean’s office. 

Building on Knachel’s comments, Sara Benesh adds “at the Faculty Senate, the Academic Staff Committee gave a report and mentioned they have done the deep analysis, peer institutions and the use of indefinite probationary type appointments.”

Benesh also added she reached out to Janean Dilworth-Bart the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs to see if she can get information about whether Dilworth-Bart is aware about UWM campuses or trends or anything. Dilworth-Bart responded that academic affairs and the colleges do not support new indefinite appointments. She also said in the two years she doesn’t think they approved any new indefinite hires or transfer requests. She then asked the provost office about it and they said basically this is a contentious topic. The state legislature considered doing away with the category in 2015 but didn’t make that decision. The Faculty Staff Accountability Dashboard doesn’t show indefinite status so it’s not easy to get information across campuses and then she said that some divisions like student affairs never do probationary appointments.

Next, Richard Wynn Edwards IV ends the topic talking about the academic staff committee and he said “on the one end of the spectrum, everyone should have indefinite status and the other end nobody should have it and there must be ground in between where somebody could do the analysis and say okay what’s a reasonable expectation and for credit hours and college going forward 40 years, there’s a baseline somewhere out there that somebody could find that would allow the administration to still exercise flexibility that could clearly help their ability to react to budgetary and credit hour change.”

Afterward, Guilbault presents the new business category regarding the Associated Dean Review Procedures and the L&S Parliamentary for the Associated Dean Procedures. At this point, Sara states a discussion should be have regarding whether or not they want to motion and recommend the adaption of this procedure document to the faculty and if any revisions are necessary. 

Guilbault asks if anyone is interested in making a motion. Winson W Chu moves to adapted document and is seconded on it. A vote was taken on Chu’s motion and the motion was passed. Sara Benesh commented on the L&S parliamentarian topic and said the committee advises the dean on the L&S parliamentarian every year and a new position in the committee is available. The position requires the individual to be present at the faculty council meeting to be sure everything is being handled in the right way and to answer questions about procedure. One applicant was recommended by Sara Benesh and the vote regarding the recommendation was had by the committee resulting in the motion being passed.

Finally, Guilbault presents other business and announces there’s one more meeting left and we have to choose a chair for next year’s committee. In addition, the idea of having committee meetings in-person instead of online was discussed and ultimately, it was decided to leave the decision up to next year’s committee bringing it up during their first meeting.