The “President’s Blog” is intended to be an avenue of communication between faculty and Faculty Senate leadership.  The Faculty Senate President and Executive Committee members regularly interact with the Chancellor and Provost and the leadership of the other governance bodies seeking additional information from administrators as needed to better understand an issue or policy proposal. The Faculty Senate President brings a faculty voice to meetings of Leadership Council, Provost’s Administrative Staff, and UW-System Representatives and attends Board of Regents meetings. These interactions are part of the work of shared governance on campus. Updates are reported to the full Faculty Senate and included in the Senate’s meeting minutes. Meeting minutes are not a great way to stay informed (and do not attract too many regular readers!).

The purpose of the blog, which was started by past President Loewenstein, is to capitalize on the interaction shared governance leaders have with campus experts and administrators to help inform the faculty.

Here are just a few examples of the things Faculty Senate leadership is engaged with this academic year that we hope to highlight:

• University-wide processes such as the new budget model, the completion of the University Resource Alignment (URA) report, and the Provost’s Advisory Committee on University-wide Academic Structure;
• Efforts to revise procedures, like our student opinion survey, to work across three campuses and diverse types of instruction; and
• Implementation of UW System practices, for example, the UW Systems’ Total Title and Compensation Project.