46th Faculty Senate
May 3, 2012 – 3:30p.m.
Robert C. Voight Faculty Senate Chambers – 325 Graff Main Hall
Vol. 46, No. 14
I. Roll Call.
Present: M. Abler, C. Angell, J. Baggett, E. Barnes, J. Bryan, B. Butterfield, L. Caya, L. Dickmeyer, A.
Galbraith, K. Hoar, J, Hollenback, K. Hunt, F. Klein, E. Kraemer, D. Lake, M. Leonard, W. Maas, R. Mikat, D.
Riley, K. Rosacker, S. Senger, and M. Tollefson
Excused: T. Blumentritt and M. Rott
II. Minutes of April 19 Approved.
III. Reports:
a. Chair (Steve Senger): No Report.
b. Chancellor (Joe Gow):
 The Chancellor offered his condolences to the CS department for the loss of Steve
Inglett. Steve was a member of the department for 11 years.
 It is clear that UWL will continue to face a difficult budget regardless of the results of the
upcoming state and federal elections.
 We are on target for freshmen enrollment and are working on accommodating
students’ course needs.
 Salary Equity Update: Administration continues to work to identify funds to address
some of the most egregious salary equity cases.
 With GQA funding, we will be adding 14-15 new faculty and 4 staff positions. Prior to
GQA, UWL had a faculty to student ratio of 24 to 1. We are now at 20 to 1 and will go to
19 or 18.5 to 1 with these additional hires.
c. Interim Provost (Betsy Morgan): No Report.
d. CFO (Bob Hetzel): As the Chancellor has stated, GQA has been very successful.
e. Faculty Representative (Jeff Baggett): The Faculty Reps will be meeting tomorrow. The agenda
may include discussion of expanding online degree programs. This is directed more at campuses
that serve a higher number of non-traditional students to provide more online options for adult
learners. This is a project that Governor Walker is very interested in. UWL continues to be a more
traditional style campus.
IV. New Business.
a. Nominations for Director of Murphy Library Search and Screen: SEC learned earlier this week that
Anita Evans will be retiring. The Provost would like to give the S&S committee its charge before
the end of the semester, so the turnaround must be fast. We received 18 nominations – more
than any other search this year.
Motion to approve the following list of faculty members for the Library Director S&S Committee –
Stefan Smith (CLS – Library), Linda Dickmeyer (CLS), Stephen McDougal (CLS), Sumei Liu (SAH)
and Heather Mathison (SAH).
Motion approved.
b. Approval of May 2012 Graduation List:
Motion to approve the May 2012 graduation list contingent upon the successful completion of
requirements for the respective degrees.
Motion approved
c. Modern Languages APR Report (Leslee Poulton & Mary Tolleffson): Modern Languages is a very
complex department and the APR Committee had a number of recommendations – including a
3 year follow-up report.
Recommendations:
Overall, the APR committee commends the department on responding to challenges and suggestions that
have arisen over the previous decade. While the APR will make specific recommendations below, most of
these points are merely re-statements of topics broached by the external reviewer or administration, and
the APR suggests that addressing the serious matters in those documents should be the highest priority for
the department in the future. Nevertheless, here are recommendations from APR:
1. It is absolutely imperative that the department continue attempts to foster a culture of respect and
collegiality. Lack of collegiality is clearly impacting departmental decision making, instruction, and most
disturbingly, students. This cannot continue. Encouraging collegiality is such a difficult thing that APR
has no specific suggestions about how to accomplish it; we only know that academic departments and
programs work immeasurably better when personnel respect and support each other. MLG should take
every resource and opportunity available to work towards this goal, or risk failing to function as an
administrative unit. We hope that the MLG Department will be able to present proof of some considerable
movement toward this end and feel that a more tangible consequence should be considered by the
administration should the faculty fail to demonstrate progress.
2. MLG should continue to respond to recommendations from inside the department, from administration
and from external reviewers to improve the cohesiveness of the department. MLG has already taken steps
to respond to these suggestions, ranging from creation and posting of mission statements, to bulletin
boards with names and faces of faculty and staff, to a well-designed website and shared departmental
events. These actions should be continued in order to work towards the goal of a unified department, and
the APR Committee feels this would be beneficial to document in the next APR report; this could be as
simple as providing dates of meetings where the focus was this topic.
3. While earlier documents suggested the department work to mentor and encourage junior faculty, and
the 08-09 self-study the department indicated that it believed it had been “successfully mentoring
probationary faculty” (36), there is insufficient evidence of organized attempts to mentor junior faculty in
the documents available to APR. Subsequent events also indicate continued concern in this area. The
department should re-assess actions taken in this area to consider relative success and future plans.
4. The department has demonstrated tremendous efforts in assessment for each language area. However,
the self-study document should include a collection of data that represents the results of departmental
assessment. It might be useful, for example, to report Senior Exit Surveys (already a current practice) by
the department rather than only by language area. Secondly, MLG might consider simplifying assessment
tasks so that data collection might be efficiently analyzed as a group (rather than detailed evaluation of
individual responses) and could be more easily generalized across language areas to represent student
learning.
5. The Department appears to have addressed the Spanish coordinator issue, following the suggestion by
the External Reviewer to reconsider this approach. APR supports the department’s choice of maintaining
their strategy and plan of action despite the external reviewer’s recommendation, as the committee
believes that this choice is within the department’s purview.
6. In response to both the direction above and concerns from external reviewer about the cohesion of the
department, MLG should work in the future to produce a single document reflecting cooperation between
different programs of the department. While it is true that TESOL is significantly different, treating it as a
separate department, with its own separate responses (pages 43-52) to all questions, is detrimental to
efficiency. Similarly, it is unclear that there is enough difference between language areas to warrant
presentation as separate components of a report. Therefore, the Department of Modern Languages should
work to present a more compact summary of departmental work as a self-study -- a 432 page document is
too large and disorganized to be useful. The next full self-study document should pay careful attention to
succinctly and clearly summarizing departmental issues.
Some areas to address – department should submit short report on progress to Fac Senate/Provost’s
Office in 3 years
APR recommends that the department report on the results of recent changes in an interim, three-year
report in advance of the department’s next regularly scheduled self- study. Overall, the Department of
Modern Languages has itself made several major changes in the last few years, and has been pressed by
external commentators and forces to make more. For example, the Dean’s Letter indicates plans for AY
10-11 for a major Spanish curriculum re-design. As such, many responses and reforms have only been
implemented recently. In particular, APR agrees that the issues of collegiality documented in the External
Reviewer’s report and Dean’s letter must be addressed in this three-year, interim progress report.
Motion to accept the Modern Languages APR report.
Discussion: If the department prepares a 3-year report, does this change our queue in APR report
cycle? No, it does not – it is just a 3-year follow-up into the new cycle. Does the department
chair have any comments about report? No, the report reflects chair’s comments and the
department does not disagree with anything in report. Has the department attempted to do
anything to foster collegiality since the Dean’s letter came out? This year, the department has
had several counseling sessions with Dr. Scott Dickmeyer in order to develop methods for better
communication. Has the chair noticed any changes since these sessions have started? “I am
ever optimistic.”
Motion approved.
d. Medical Withdrawal Policy (Bob Ragan & Bob Hoar):
 This policy originated with the Behavior Intervention Team and was forwarded to
Graduate Council. GC approved the policy and thought that it should be applicable to
both graduates and undergraduates with CAPS being the mediator of the policy for all
students. GC and CAPS have each drafted a slightly different response and SEC has
combined them into a third. The SEC version combined the GC and CAPS.
 What is CAPS response? CAPS agreed with the GC policy changes to have this under
jurisdiction of CAPS. SEC’s policy language completely reflects the intentions of CAPS.
Motion to approve the Medical Withdrawal Policy.
Discussion: Who officially grants the withdrawal? Student Life. GC is left out of the policy since
CAPS will hear any waivers for both graduates and undergraduates.
Motion approved.
e. Committee on Committees Report (Kerrie Hoar). The CoC would like to commend Steve Senger
for developing an electronic method for assigning membership.
Motion to approve the Committee on Committees Report.
Discussion: The renewal process is ever confusing. Next year, CoC will adopt a two-stage
approach. First, the FS office will verify that everyone who is eligible to continue on a committee,
would like to continue. Second, CoC will continue to assign membership following the FS
guidelines.
Motion approved.
f.
Discussion of UW Personal System. The purpose of today’s discussion is to collect notes on the
concerns of the faculty. SEC will forward these concerns to the UWS Task Force.
 Benefits:
 Bring back colleague coverage;
 Develop a cash option for those who don’t take benefits;
 Concerns that changes to sick leave could affect have a negative affect on
faculty sick leave accrual;
 While some policies should be regularized across Classified and Unclassified
employees, some should remain separated. FS is concerned about unintentional
impacts resulting from ambiguity and the use of “flexibility” in these documents;
 Compensation:
Merit: A lot of this language intends to make things uniform across campuses –
campuses should maintain autonomy. Many things like merit need to have
campus autonomy with regard to their structure;
 Part of the UWS Compensation Objective talks about flexibility across campuses –
reference that this should be kept and that genuine flexibility should remain
autonomous;
 We want flexibility for very specific things – not for sweeping changes like
eliminating tenure;
 Should the cost to maintain certificate/licensure should be paid by university?
Employee Categories:
 This is not simplified;
 IAS should be grouped with faculty – not with Academic Staff.
Employee Environment:
 We are in favor of tuition reimbursement;
 We support spousal hires since we already have a policy for this;
 Much of this applies to classified and should not be extrapolated to other groups;
 Concerns with institution closed days.
Employee Movement:
 Concept of movement is unclear when applied to faculty;
Recruitment and Assessment:
 No concerns
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Motion to forward FS concerns to Chancellor, HR and UWS Task Force.
Motion approved.
V. Old Business.
VI. Adjournment at 4:50 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Kerrie Hoar