Commission on the Status of Women
Minutes
Friday, November 9; 2:00 – 3:00pm
Facilities Management, MCS Building
The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is charged with making recommendations to the Chancellor
regarding issues, policies, and initiatives affecting women, as well as seeking input from and providing
information to those individuals, departments, units, and organizations interested in the status of women.
ATTENDANCE: Chris Jorgenson, Mary Canales, Mitra Sadeghpour, Anne Wagner, Teresa
O’Halloran, Vicki Reed, Robin Leary, Lucy (Women’s Studies), Theresa Kemp, Kate Hinnant,
Pat Karlen, Deserie Evans, Mitra Sadghpour
PAST MINUTES: Accepted
October 23, 2012
FUTURE MEETINGS:


Tuesday, November 20, 1:00 – 2:00; Ho Chunk Room, DSC
Friday, December 7, 2:00 – 3:00; Ho Chunk Room, DSC- FINAL MEETING!
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
 If there are any suggestions for women of color honoree, please send it to Pat or
Teresa O’Halloran. These nominations could be staff, faculty, students or community
members.
 December 1 is World Aids Day. Scooters is hosting “are you positive you are not
positive” from 9pm – 12am. There will be banners in DSC on December 1 as well.
 On November, 29th at 7pm in the Woodland theatre, a presentation will be given
called ‘what’s your gay point average?’ It will include information from the campus
pride index.
 Theresa Kemp brought up the topic of a Women’s Studies consortium; a resource that
we could use to coordinate information from different UW women’s studies programs
to see how their commissions run.
 Workshops
 We could start an eBulletin that links to our website.
 Organize an admin meeting if this comes into fruition.
NEW BUSINESS:
 Teresa (Jesse Dixon: Director of Office of Multicultural Affairs) is working on re-scheduling our meeting
with the Chancellor (via phone) on December 7.
o It was agreed to discuss the following at the meeting with the Chancellor
-
Develop a uniform family leave plan
How can we change the culture => different chairs/directors level of family leave
support
- City of E.C. Chamber of Commerce Wellness Program:
 What can we do to adopt it at UWEC?
 Can there be health insurance premium benefits attached to it?
How can UWEC show it values its human resources:
-
 Free tickets to performance
 Free access to wellness-related activities & facilities
 More professional development opportunities
 Tuition benefits
 Pay equity (memo CSW sent to UPC)
 Question: What is Madison doing in this area?
We will provide the Chancellor with a copy of Melissa’s analysis
CONTINUING BUSINESS:

Work/Life Balance – Employee Satisfaction:
o Further discussion of Melissa’s analysis of UW System’s work life/climate survey that was
conducted in 2009. [Melissa did not attend the meeting so there wasn’t a thorough clarity of
analysis. When she has cleaned data further to share with us, we will discuss the data more.]
o Our goal is to share this data with the chancellor in format that is easily decipherable.
 Melissa handed out another analysis (attached). Discussion included:
 There is a concern about work/life balance.
 No widespread satisfaction among positions.
 Within overall satisfaction of career progress, there aren’t any known gender
effects but there is a noticeable positional effect.
 There are disparities between men and women in the acquisition of equitable
teaching support.
 The climate survey shows that faculty is least likely than academic or classified
staff to feel like they have the equipment and supplies needed to adequately
perform their work.
 Less than 50% of classified staff feels that they are lacking support from decision
makers who support their career advancement.
o Do we want the climate survey analysis to be linked to the CSW website?
o Wellness Committee Update from Vicki
 City of E.C. Chamber of Commerce Wellness Program:
 What can we do to adopt it at UWEC?
 Can there be health insurance premium benefits attached to it?
 Vicki announced that she will be presenting a work life program at the
Student Affairs meeting on December 6.
o The question remains whether CSW wants to make a recommendation to the Chancellor

EDI: CSW recommended this discussion continue. Mary Canales is EDI Fellow
o Teresa: report on the Committees’ progress this past summer: how to tie the Inclusive
Excellence plan with the Strategic Plan and will develop the action plan/priorities.
-
CETL meet with the EDI fellows to try to implement IE plan with this group. (Diversity
climate assessment.)
- Work/Life student affairs conference: December 6th, in the Dakota room which was
implemented by Dr. Beth Hellwig but will be presented by Tom Kid a motivational
speaker.
- Imperative to highlight data and infuse with this session.
o Teresa shared that the Chancellor’s Diversity Advisory Committee has drafted an Inclusive
Excellence plan for the campus. It will be reviewed by the Dismantling Racism group Friday
March 9 and shared w/the Faculty Senate Tuesday, March 13. CSW will be able to review it in
the near future. Teresa provided an update. The reports have been adopted are
are on-line. (http://www.uwec.edu/Diversity/initiatives/index.htm). Pat will
ask Deb Klossner to link this site up to CSW’s Initiatives/Reports site.
o History/Background: UW System uses to require a 10 year diversity plan from every campus;
although these 10 year plans are no longer required, System did request an ongoing plan. For
UWEC, this includes the Equity Scorecard system, which provides guidance for the plan’s
measures; an introduction and 4 pages outlining 4 goals and examples for how to reach each
goal. This plan mimics the framework of the University’s Strategic Plan. In addition there will be
annual action steps to be accomplished.

Members were given a tour of and able to reclaim furniture out of the Surplus Store
for their departments.

Encourage Faculty across Disciplines to Consider and Highlight the Role of Women in the Discipline:
o Look into CETL/ORSP workshops
o Start with a capstone class
o Piggyback issues of gender with collection of resources document
 Robin suggested CSW start working on doing something special for the Centennial in 2016. CSW
members were asked to bring their ideas to meetings for consideration. So far the following ideas
have been suggested:
o Sarah Harder & Sue Lemke were instrumental in bringing women’s issues to the forefront. Look
into telling their story in some type of way. Judy will talk to Sarah.
o A quilt telling a story of where we have been and where we are going
o Melissa will send CSW a time log she did when Gloria Steinem was last on campus. We
discussed adding to the timeline.
o Discuss adding a special link to the CSW website with historical-related data, documents,
pictures, stories and time logs.
 It was recommended that CSW work with Foundation regarding donors designating contributions
directly to CSW. Robin provided the following guidance:
-If donor has a particular interest they can direct their donation to CSW
- CSW should come up with specific projects we need money for then contact Foundation for
a possible contribution
-this organization has to be proactive with its ideas to attain monetary contributions
-CSW can add a “please donate to CSW” box on its website (see Foundation for guidance)