Dear University community,
I want to share a review of activity this busy week and outline the week to two weeks ahead.
On Sunday, Provost Martini and I provided Faculty Senate President Pascale Manning our response to the Faculty Senate’s September 20 Expectations for Collaboration memorandum. We share it with you today in its entirety. We thank the Faculty Senate and shared governance leaders for their continued dialogue, collegiality and stewardship.
This week, we also provided Shared Governance group leaders a current summary encapsulating the scope of the workforce reduction plan. It details layoffs and voluntary retirements across divisions and employee groups, offering position and financial impact totals. As we pledged, the summary contains no employee identities. Yet it was designed in a spirit of transparency with respect to policy. Shared governance leaders are providing feedback. While we continue to gather and review their questions and guidance, I can share that one common suggestion is to also report layoffs and voluntary retirements as percentages of employees in UWO’s classifications and divisions. We will make every effort to do that.
Meanwhile faculty are not subject to layoffs, and IAS renewal decisions for spring 2024 are being made at the college and department levels. You can see the Provost’s and my response to the Faculty Senate’s related concerns about IAS ranks and faculty teaching loads in the linked document.
Next week Monday, we will present the mechanics of the workforce reduction notification process for Leadership Council, which includes Shared Governance leaders. That same information will reach all employees before next week’s end. Layoff notifications are planned for the week of October 16.
Thank you.
Chancellor Andy Leavitt