This was a discussion heavy meeting with time spent primarily on faculty feedback concerning the UW System President search. I took that feedback, and that of anyone who responded to the quick survey that followed our Faculty Senate meeting, to the UW System Representatives meeting on December 13th. The faculty representatives met with the chair of the committee (Regent Vice President Michael Grebe) and the President of the BOR (Drew Peterson) for an hour.  Both of them listened respectfully to the concerns of faculty across the UW system around the search.  We stressed the fact that the next UW President should come from academia, should not have a partisan political agenda, and must respect academic freedom, shared governance, and the Wisconsin Idea. Following this meeting I also wrote to Regent Vice President Grebe to pass on the comments I received from UWO faculty and reinforce the points made in our System Representatives meeting.

Faculty can show the search committee that we are paying close attention to this search by submitting comments and engaging in the process we have at hand. The search committee has a website that will be gathering feedback throughout the search process: https://www.wisconsin.edu/presidential-search/request-for-comments/ .

At our December 10th Faculty Senate meeting, we also discussed reinvigorating the Admin Evaluation Committee, we added an access campus member to the USP Committee, and discussed having the Personnel Policies Committee take a look at how we will comply with new UW System policy that requires all employees to have an annual performance evaluation. Additionally, we had an update from the SOS Task Force, and outlined a new task force that will help to define a process and structure for the Academic Policies Committee (APC) to engage in its role vis-à-vis the Budget Process Committee (BPC) in monitoring Academic Quality Indicators (AQIs) associated with the new budget model.