>> I'm calling the meeting to order. And welcome to the first official meeting of the Faculty Senate. I know we had a unofficial meeting back in September. Just the usual instructions, if this is your first meeting and you wish to speak, raise your hand by clicking on the button near the bottom of your screen, the little guy with his hand raised. One of the models will then make you a presenter. And then before you speak, you have to unmute your microphone. And please wait until someone calls on you to speak. I'm sure you are all absolutely experts at that today. We will turn first to the memorial resolutions and I won't ask you to stand, but I will ask you all to show appropriate respect as we read the memorial resolutions. Let me recognize Professor Kirsten Wolf, currently chairs the university committee, to present the memorial resolutions for Professor Emeritus James Bailey and Mark Marquess.

>> Thank you, Chancellor. Professor Emeritus James O. Bailey died at the age of 90 on July 20th, 2020. He was born in 1929 in Colorado and grew up in California. After graduating from USC, he served in the Army studying Russian at the army language school. Jim received his PhD in Slavic languages and literature's from Harvard University. At UW-Madison, he taught in the Slavic department from 1967 until 1995. He served at various times as department chair, head of the Russian Area Studies Program and had other folklore program, which he also helped to found in the early 1980s. I will then now turn to Professor Emeritus Harlan Earl, so called Mark or Marquess, as his surname was, died on December the 12th, 19 -- 2019. Mark was born in 1931 in Wyoming. After a period studying accounting, he joined the Air Force and was sent to the Defense Language Institute to study Russian. He served in the Korean War. [Inaudible] his language skills to help in the war effort. After completing his service, he received a PhD in Slavic languages from UC Berkeley. In 1964, he moved to Madison to join the Slavic department where he taught courses in linguistics, Russian and check for many years. He was also active in the Faculty Senate.

>> Thank you, Kirsten. Let me recognize Professor Junko Mori to present the memorial resolution for Professor Emeritus Akira Miura.

>> Yes. So Professor Emeritus Akira Miura died at the age of 92 on October 22nd, 2019 in Madison. With his passing, Japanese language education in the US lost one of its pioneers who contributed enormously to shaping high quality of proficiency based Japanese language teaching. Professor Miura's research involved delineating linguistic and cultural differences as reflected in the meanings and usages of words. He authored and co-authored many books, including an integrated approach to intermediate Japanese, which became the standard text in many Japanese language programs worldwide. He is also remembered for his gentle smile and love of the Badger basketball.

>> Thank you, Junko. Let me recognize Professor Greg Nellis to present the memorial resolution for Professor Emeritus Glen Myers.

>> Glen Everett Myers, Professor Emeritus of mechanical engineering, passed away peacefully on December 2nd, 2019 at the age of 85. Numerical analysis of thermal problems was his specialty, and his graduate heat transfer test was the first ever to present the finite element analysis for conduction problems. Undergraduate Education was his passion. He was an excellent classroom instructor with high expectations and he left a lasting impression on the many students who pass through his classes over several decades. He received many teaching awards from the college and the university. Professor Myers was universally respected by his colleagues and his students for his dedication to undergraduate education.

>> Thank you, Greg. Let me recognize Professor Paul Wilson to present the memorial resolution for Professor Emeritus William Vogelsang.

>> Thank you. William F. Vogelsang, age 90, and a resident of Madison for nearly 60 years, died June 9th, 2019. As one of the first faculty in the original department of nuclear engineering at the UW-Madison, Bill was a major influence in the establishment of the UW nuclear reactor for research and education of nuclear engineering students, as well as organizing and sharing the UW Reactor Safety Committee. In 1962, Bill joined the UW faculty as one of the first professors in the newly formed nuclear engineering program, one of the first programs in the United States. The research focus of the faculty of the nuclear reactor engineering especially vision, based on their scholarly activities, the UW engineering program was immediately ranked in the top five programs in the US and its remainder ever since. In his based courses, Bill taught students not just engineering but how to be engineers. He insisted on professional behavior and taking responsibility for design decisions and project completion. He was critical but fair. Bill was one of the nuclear engineering faculty that saw the promise of plasma physics and nuclear fusion as emerging research areas. In the 1970s, he expanded his research interest into the fusion technology. Bill was universally considered a valued member of his department by his colleagues.

>> Thank you very much, Paul. Let me recognize Professor Jon Woods to present the memorial resolution for William Weidanz.

>> Bill Weidanz died on November 21st, 2017 in California, aged 82. Bill came to UW in 1990, serving as medical microbiology and immunology departmental chair until 2000 and retiring in 2011. He oversaw expansion of the undergraduate major from 25 to over 250 students, inception of the microbiology doctoral training program and initial planning for microbial sciences building. Bill's passion for research on cell mediated immune responses to malaria included 35 years of NIH funding in over 100 publications. Bill's passions for teaching span classroom instruction and laboratory mentoring of undergraduate, graduate and medical students. Bill was dedicated to gardening, fishing, packers, and badgers and family. He is remembered, honored, and missed.

>> Thank you, Jon. And thanks to everyone who helped put the memorial resolutions together. Let me turn things over to Kirsten Wolf, the chair of the UC for a variety of announcements. Kirsten.

>> Thank you, Chancellor. The -- Our shared future statement is on the screen, I hope, I think, all right. Yes, so. There we go.

>> Now it is.

>> During the [inaudible] -- During the last academic year, the Faculty Senate took time at each meeting to reflect on one sentence in the statement. At the main meeting, the Senate passed a resolution in which it pledged to recognize the relationship of the Ho-Chunk people to UW-Madison. Well, we're not [inaudible] but right now, it is the first Faculty Senate meeting of a new academic year and I want to take the next couple of minutes to make a future statement. The University of Wisconsin Madison occupies ancestral Ho-Chunk land, a place their nation has called Teejop since time immemorial. In an 1832 Treaty, the Ho-Chunk were forced to cede this territory. Decades of ethnic cleansing followed when both the federal and state government repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, sought to forcibly remove the Ho-Chunk from Wisconsin. This history of colonization informs our shared future of collaboration innovation. Today, UW-Madison respects the inherent sovereignty of the Ho-Chunk Nation, along with the 11 other First Nations of Wisconsin. Welcome to the new academic year. In particular, welcome to our new senators and thank you to those who are returning. We greatly appreciate all of your efforts and [inaudible]. A brief forward for those of you who are new to the Senate, if you were unable to attend -- a couple of weeks ago, there is a video recording of the session available under secretary of the faculty website. Just go to the Faculty Senate page, and then in the upper right-hand of the screen, there's a link to our senator information, you can find it there. There's also a cover sheet that accompany voting items, these are new here. We hope you'll find them helpful in providing background on these issues coming before you. If you have any suggestions for improved [inaudible] please contact the secretary of the faculty, Heather Daniels. Likewise, if you have any questions about the workings of the standard, the UC or any other shared governance committees, or if you'd like to discuss what the UC or the Senate, please contact Heather, secretary or the faculty. Typically each year, the UC chair provides an overview of what the UC expects to be working on over the course of the coming months. As you well know, this is not a typical year that UC has been balancing moving forward priorities unrelated to the pandemic, as well as attending to the many issues that COVID-19 has brought. The UC hear [inaudible] on COVID and has been asking questions and providing the comments that we're hearing from faculty. As you know from our statement, we've heard a variety of opinions on whether UW-Madison made the right choices in opening in the fall, as well as the recent return to face-to-face instruction. A variety of opinions exist, not just between different constituencies, but also within those groups. One of our priorities for the year is to return for the promotion to full procedures to be added to faculty policies and procedures that was considered by the Faculty Senate last spring. We'll be holding two listening sessions, Monday, October the 19th from 3:30 to 4:30, and Wednesday, October 21st, from 10 to 11. An announcement about these sessions will be sent to all faculty this week. Everyone is welcome to attend. We expect to bring the item back to the Senate in November and then a vote in December. A couple of other issues being discussed by the UC include if there should be campus wide guidelines for faculty who regularly work remotely aside from the pandemic. Continuing to update faculty policies and procedures, including the two changes that are before you today for first reading, and extending how to overall approvals, and these are for academic staff for request exceptions to do both research and teaching, and how they will work within the new tagline system. And we, the UC, generally devote part of each weekly meeting in closed session, that is to review and approve waivers, respond to grievances, and to identify faculty who asked to serve on shared governance committees in higher level search and green committees. And we hope all of you will be open and willing to be on these important committees when asked. The initial informal communication [inaudible] like talking before a meeting or bumping into someone in the hall have become limited to non-existent. Formal lines of communication like emails or phone calls are even more important. Everyone on the UC really appreciate hearing from you, whether you're supporting or opposing an issue. Please continue to contact us and let us know how you feel and we'll continue to advocate for the needs as a faculty. PROFS is the body created by the Faculty Senate that advocates on behalf of UW-Madison faculty in for state government, the Board of Regents, members of Congress, and the public. They're currently on the Faculty Senate webpage to their most recent legislative update. These are available at each Senate meeting and supplement in some fashion you can find on the PROFS Facebook and [inaudible] wisc.edu. If you aren't already, I strongly encourage you to become a member of PROFS, which of course [inaudible] being an informational work that they do. In addition to [inaudible] finding a lobbyist, Jack O'Meara, and Administrator Michelle Felber trust relies on the dedicated work of a steering committee and other volunteers, including their faculty president, Michael Bernard-Donals. And with a couple of reminders, the secretary of the faculty office is currently asking for applications for the Distinguished Teaching Award and the Hilldale Awards. Please consider nominating one or more of your outstanding colleagues. And now, I'll turn the meeting back to the Chancellor.

>> Thank you very much, Kirsten. The October meeting is always when I get to give a State of the University address. And certainly, it is an interesting year to be giving such address. Let me start by welcoming everyone and thank you for your leadership and your partnership in this whether extraordinarily difficult semester. I know that you are balancing your teaching and research responsibilities, not to mention all the added difficulties of homeschooling children, dealing potentially with health issues of elderly parents and other family members. And you know, just a time of high anxiety and a lot of stress and, you know, as take care of yourself, and make sure that you do find a way to balance all of that. Before I talk about COVID, and the budget, and racial inequities, and all the things that are most immediately in front of us, I just want to start with a little good news, which is the right place to start. First of all, as some of you may have read in the Wisconsin State Journal, we have an excellent new freshman class. We've met our goal of 7,300 freshmen and 1,000 transfer students. A little over half of the class is from Wisconsin. I'm sure you've read about the fact that international students are coming in lower numbers, but we have 7.4% of the class from the international side, which is down only a little from last year. And we have 1,000 new freshmen from underrepresented target groups, that is the largest share of our incoming freshman class we've ever had from those groups on it's 13.5% of the class. About 17% of the class are first generation and 27% of our transfers are first gen. To give you some late breaking news that I literally just got the state of two hours ago, this is our graduation game for the last year and it's really good news. We've set records in terms of graduation rates. Our 6-year graduation rate as of this past spring is now at 8.5%, that's up from 87.6, it's the highest ever since we started reporting this data in this form. And our four-year graduation rate broke 70% to 71.2. That's the percent of students who graduate in the spring of the year. It does not include people who graduate at the end of summer, which would bump that number up quite a bit. I might also note, we have the highest ever graduation rates among targeted minority groups and among Pell Grant recipients, so all good news. In August, we welcomed the 171 new faculty, a record breaking number, that includes 85 faculty of color. Enjoy that number because we are not going to be hiring that many people this year, I suspect, but it's great to have had such a banner year this last year. Our research and clinical work on COVID related projects expands. We now have almost 400 COVID related grants or grant proposals and we're among the national leaders in terms of the amount of COVID research that has been funded on our campus. Those of you who are paying attention to buildings know there are two new facilities opening this fall, the Nicholas Recreation Center, which replaces the old surf, has opened just in the last couple of weeks. It's opened by reservation distance masked, all the things we're doing [inaudible] pandemic. But if you can't get in the fall, because the students have taken all the reservations, once they leave after Thanksgiving, be sure to stop by and spend an hour there, you'll really love it as a new recreation facility. And then our meat science building, which is next to the vet med school has a grand opening on November 6th, it's already in use, and it's also just a wonderful research and teaching building. We are engaged in the most expansive effort in art history to have students register and vote really deeply involved in that with a lot of resources that are going into that. And finally, last piece of good news, maybe you noticed this last week when we announced our winter commencement speaker, which is going to be Rose Lavelle, a Badger alum, and a star of the Women's World Cup soccer game from year and a half ago. I think she kicked the winning goal into -- to win the game for the US, and she's going to be a great speaker. I could keep going with good news, but unfortunately, there's some challenges in front of us as well. And let me talk a little bit about the pandemic and COVID. As you know, we worked hard over the summer to prepare for full reopening changing virtually every aspect of the operations here, creating and testing any data surveillance plan and working on all sorts of contingency planning. And our commitment was we were going to track the data and we're going to move when the data change. Well, one weekend of the semester, we had a big spike in cases, much bigger than we expected and larger than most of our peers. We're still trying to deconstruct what happened there, but we responded aggressively with a number of interventions, asking students to restrict movement, quarantining both the celery and woody residence halls and posting face-to-face instruction for two weeks. None of those decisions were made lightly. We had plenty of critics, but it did work. It did what we wanted it to do. And if you can put the slide up there that shows our current dashboard, that two-week pause really brought our case count down. And those of you who aren't looking at our regular dashboard, this is what our cases look like since the first of September. For almost two weeks, we've had very, very low numbers here. Our average over the last seven days is 13 cases a day. Our average positivity rate among our tests is less than 1%. In the last week, it's 0.9%. Both -- That positivity rate is well below the Dane County rate, and of course, well below the Wisconsin rate given recent spikes. Thank you, Heather, you could stop sharing that slide. We have reopened gradually with some important changes. We further expanded our testing capacity. We're testing the dorms more recently. And we have the ability to swoop in and do emergency testing. If we see a spike emerging, we can test everyone in that residence all the next day, come back four days later, test them again, hold infections out as they emerge. And we're also de-densifying some of the residence halls and we've got greater -- faster turnaround as we've moved almost all of our testing to our own lab now over in the Wisconsin vet lab. We've also resumed in-person classes. Some classes have to meet in-person in order for students to complete the work, like some clinical classes or certain classes that required lab equipment. For others, we've asked faculty and department chairs to decide what questions could be taught online and what should be taught face-to-face. We've also reopened a lot of study spaces and computer labs, which was the thing we heard most from students, both undergraduates and graduate students that they needed on campus study space. The provost and I, as we said repeatedly, do believe in the value of in-person learning and some in-person experiences, particularly for our freshmen. I know there are faculty, staff and students who don't want to engage in face-to-face learning, and there are faculty, staff and students and parents who really want those in-person classes. In short, there are firm opinions on all sides. We are doing our best to stay flexible to allow people to teach and learn in the ways that best suit them while recognizing there is simply no solution that is going to make everyone happy. The good news in all of this is that our on campus health protocols are working. There's been no evidence of transmission in any classroom or in any lab space, and no evidence the cases in UW-Madison have fueled an increase elsewhere in Dane County. In fact, Dane County Public Health has explicitly said there is no evidence for recent rise of cases in the county is related to our operations, cases arising among populations that don't interact much with UW. Our research PROFS, we are committed to continuing research without interruption and have no plans to close our research spaces, regardless of what happens in terms of teaching. I should note the Office of the Vice Chancellor for research and graduate education has announced several new funds, you'll want to know about. One, dissertation completion emergency fellowship program for students whose degree progress was threatened by the pandemic, and another research scholarships for students who lost access to jobs over the summer because of COVID. The messaging campaign in all of this about health protocols has been deeply important. Our central message to students is easy. Campus life depends on you to emphasize the importance of individual behavior to stop the spread of this disease. From everything I know, the great majority of our students are doing exactly what we want them to do following health protocols, a small number have not complied. And for those students, we've been very clear there will be consequences to their actions. The university is currently investigating or has investigated 650 individual students for public health violations, and there were 21 students who've been referred for emergency suspension. We've tried to be very transparent about our testing data, I just showed you one of the daily dashboard, one piece of that that is up every day and I have to say the traffic to that has been pretty substantial. It is a time of enormous uncertainty and we're going to continue to be guided by the best information we have as we move forward. As you all know, classes go entirely online after Thanksgiving. We know many students will go home and/or asking if they go home, they stay home where they've been traveling and then coming back. Students -- Some students will remain in the residence halls who can't go home or don't wish to go home. And anyone who does go and return really needs to be tested upon their return and make sure that it's safe for them to be back on campus. Let me turn to the all important topic of football, which has been taking way too much of my time in the last few months. I know many of you have questions and concerns about the resumption of the Big Ten football. The Chancellor's and the presidents of the Big Ten are the decision makers here. We decided in mid-August to pull down the football plans or I should say to postpone them, because we had three major questions. We worried that there were not consistent testing machines across the Big Ten and people were testing in very different ways and very different schedules. We worried we couldn't complete a sec -- a season because games will be pulled down as students became ill. And thirdly, there was emerging evidence about heart issues that were really -- is really disturbing. And for all those reasons, we said, we need to answer these questions before we restarted football season. We had a Medical Advisory Board that was -- went away and worked on these things and came back to us a month later with a variety of protocols and suggestions. And based on what we were then able to do, we decided to restart what will be a delayed start in much shorter season than usual. We are testing every member of our student athletic school starting here with football, which is starting first, all coaches, all officials that are going to be involved with the game every day. That means every morning, they get tested before breakfast, and they can take the field clean, they can take competitions clean. We also have a clear protocol, if someone tests positive, they're up for 21 days, they get a full heart workout before they return. If there are any abnormalities, they do not return to play. Given these new measures, I voted to return to football. Let me be clear, because the rumors on this seem to be swirling and we said this again and again. There are no tickets to be sold. There are no fans at the stadium. The only ones will be players, staff and officials. Families of student athletes and coaches will be there, I think they're each allowed either two or three people. And there's a small number of personnel that will be there as well as the press who have to be watching the game. That's going to be very few people in a stadium of 80,000. All of them will be sitting at distances and masks and we will enforce that. I do worry about the partying that goes on outside the stadium. We're working with our student athletes and with the athletic department to message that people should stay safe. They should not violate any county public health guidelines. There will be no events on campus. There will be no tailgating. There will be no parking lots open. We will ticket people who tried to do that. The Alumni Associations telling everyone, every game is an away game, stay home and watch from home. You know, all of this is I think important and we're working with the city and the county to make sure the bars as well follow public health guidelines of those weekends. Which leads me to city county collaboration, which in many ways has been very good. But as you know, you know, there's been an argument with the county executive, and at a time when we need to be working together more closely than ever between the university, the city and the county, I have to say, I'm baffled by the efforts to tell our students to go home. This is particularly true given our infection rates now for a couple of weeks have been below the rest of the county. And as I've noted, there's no evidence that our operations have caused spread either on campus or off campus. You may have seen an open letter that I sent to county executive precinct, encouraging him to work with us and explaining, and this is really important, no matter what happens to our classes, our students are going to be here. Ignore even the freshmen in the dorms, we will have 35 to 40,000 students in Madison. Students want to be with their friends, want to be near campus, do not want to be back home with their parents. They are Madison Muslims, many of them have jobs here, they vote here, and they support the local economy. Of course, all of this is causing budget havoc, as you know, and many of our revenue sources are down. And, as well as our costs are higher, because of all of the testing and health related things we're doing to protect people from COVID. Auxiliaries, this is the group that's money in, money out that are basically completely self-supporting our conference centers, the unions, the athletic program, all of those have lost more than anyone, many of them are facing very, very serious budget shortages. But there are big losses in state dollars as well. Over the -- between the last fiscal year and this fiscal year, the governor has lapsed a lot of money to the UW system that is translated into about a 40 to $50 million loss of dollars taken away from our plan budget and that is causing us issues. In a nutshell, we're facing two problems. We're facing some short run cash flow problems because, you know, for certain activities that are not happening, but we also are facing some potential long term based budget cuts, because the loss of revenue that we've experienced cannot be handled by simply tweaking short term revenue. So you know, looking at larger budget cuts, and more permanent budget cuts is unfortunately going to be in front of us. All of that said, we have put in a hiring and salary freeze, we pulled back a lot of distributions we were planning to pick this year, so we have some reserves we can put into this. We've implemented, as you know, six months of progressive furloughs and work sharing some groups of staff and we're using our reserves to cover some of those losses. As we said last May, when we announced a lot of this, we will come back in October. We do all of our budget estimates, we now have a much better sense of what the last this year will look like, what our tuition will look like and we will, over this next week, be looking at our budget options and making some decisions and coming back to all of you to talk about that by the end of the month. One of the questions is, and I put this out in front of you, is whether to extend our progressive furlough program, those provide one time savings to offset our one-time cash flow problems. The advantage is they spread this pain across all of our employees with small reductions, smaller reductions for low wage employees, higher reductions for our higher employees. Given that many of our problems are going to disappear when a vaccine is available and life returns to something closer to normal, this lets us achieve short term savings without laying off a whole lot of people who were going to want back again next fall. But unfortunately, the impacts of this pandemic spread evenly. So if we don't use furloughs spread across everyone, we are going to be focusing a lot of cuts on a relatively small number of units. And, you know, that's a discussion of how do we make and choose between those two choices and, of course, the balance is going to be somewhere in the middle. Let me turn from COVID and turn from budgets to talk about the other issue that is really important on our campus. And quite honestly, I think it's going to be a much longer term and more important issue than the immediacy of the COVID crisis and that, of course, is racial equity. We've seen a social revolution in this country not new, but certainly the temperature on it has risen greatly, as millions of people have taken to the streets of Madison and elsewhere in the face of violence that you can see on video against people of color. As one of our faculty members put it, George Floyd's death was a reminder of how far we haven't come. As I said in the blog that I released last week, we're responding as a campus community in a lot of different ways, building on years of effort by many, many people on this campus, but we have a lot more to do. Let me mention just a few things that we're working on. The record number of students from underrepresented groups in our freshman class is a great example. As I noted, we are at an all time high this year, and that's not just by chance, there's a lot of strategic planning that has gone into that, but equally important, we greatly expanded our scholarship aid. Our need based grants in the last 10 years have grown from 36 million to over 100 million. A lot of that is because of the generosity of our alumni, some of it is because of expansions and other revenue that we put into scholarships. That's allowed us to implement programs like Bucky's Tuition Promise and Badger Promise that provide four years of tuition free school to low income residents. So this year, about 2800 Wisconsin resident students are pursuing their degree here without paying tuition or fees under the Bucky's Tuition Promise program. But we have to continue deepening that pool if we're going to deepen our attraction to lower income students. And that's one reason we've launched a $10 million fundraising campaign with Wisconsin Foundation, aim to create more scholarships. And for the first time ever, when I say we're being strategic, this is not just by chance, we have admissions and recruitment staff on the ground in cities outside of Madison, including Milwaukee, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis, particularly focused on diversity recruitment. And the faculty level, I hope all of you are familiar with the targets of opportunity program that started two years ago that applied scholars from central campus to departments to hire people from groups that are not well represented in their fields. In the past two years through the top program, we've hired 32 new faculty, three fourths of them are people of color from underrepresented groups, the other fourth are largely women in science departments with very, very few women. But recruiting, as you all know, is just the start. We have to create a community where diverse people feel at home, part of that is training programs, so we're bringing students together through the our Wisconsin program, which is now mandatory, along with our alcohol training and our sexual assault training. But we also need to carve out spaces allowing our underrepresented students to feel at home, a place that is -- a space that is theirs away from the larger student body. As the director of our Multicultural Student Center put it, I want to send it to be a space where you can look around and see people who may have a similar lived experience to your own and you don't have to explain that. We now have four cultural centers in addition to the Multicultural Student Center for black, Latin x, Native American and students of South Asian heritage. And finally, last comment on this, as we all know, there's a lot of discussion about policing. The call should fund the police have reached our campus. ASM has to vote of no confidence at UWPD last week, and we'll say I just don't find that very constructive action. We are a campus of more than 65,000 people. We need some form of security force here. And UWPD has been on the forefront of a lot of progressive policing policies, but all of the organizations can be better. And indeed, UWPD has launched its own racial equity initiative, which is pledges among other things to fully review departmental policies and practices with a workgroup that includes community members and students, and an accountability tool for long term use that will be transparent and tell people what they're doing and how they're doing it. I think that's probably enough right now. There's more that I could say on this topic. You know, there are many, many ways to build trust, to create a stronger community here, to address some of the issues of racism and culture, and discomfort that so many of our faculty, staff and students of color feel. Every department who need it, needs to be involved in this conversation. My blog indicates what we're doing out of the center, but I hope every one of you are having those conversations in your units, because at the end of the day, we all have to move forward together. This can't be something we do centrally, it has to be do something we do everywhere across campus. Through the summer and fall, through COVID, through budget problems, through racial justice and protests, we have tried to stay focused on permission, teaching, research and outreach, and particular making sure that we make a strong commitment to undergraduate education in a very unusual semester. The results of the latest National Survey of Student Engagement, which was conducted between February and April, this is Novato City, show the impact of that commitment. This is a survey of seniors run across the country in big schools, small schools, private, public schools. 91% of our students rated the academic quality of UW, these are our seniors, as good or excellent. That is significantly higher than our pure average among other big publics at 82%. And I should have reported higher quality interactions with faculty, staff and other students than their peers at other schools. In a very difficult year, this is a reminder that UW does stand apart is a high quality at first rate university, thanks to our excellent faculty and staff. We're all in a world we never wanted to be in, but the crisis has given us opportunities to try new ways of doing some things. And I challenge all of you to be thinking about what we've learned that's useful out of this, what have we learned that will improve what we do here on the teaching front, on the operations front, on the research front. For instance, I hope our teaching might be different and better using a broader range of technological tools since so many more faculty have now become more conversant with a wider range of teaching tools. I hope operations might be better, perhaps more use of telework were that's appropriate. Fewer traveled to meetings, more efficiency on that front, you know, different use of space, given what we've learned out of this pandemic. Think about what could be happening in your department and across campus and I hope we're going to engage in that conversation over this next year. So out of the pandemic, we don't just snap back to what we were doing before, but take the things we've learned to do some things better. So let me close, as I began, by I simply saying thank you. I know none of this is easy. I know there's been an enormous amount of change, there will continue to be change and anxiety and I appreciate everything that you and all your colleagues do for university. And let me stop there. And I'm sure there's going to be questions, comments and dialogue, so let me open it up. Kirsten, I assume -- are you going to moderate and call on people? Maybe Heather's doing that.

>> I can do that.

>> I think that Heather is doing that.

>> OK, fine. Why don't you put people in a second.

>> Yup. Looks like Vickie is our first person. Vickie, if you want to turn your microphone and ask the Chancellor your question.

>> All right, thank you. Yeah, I was muted. I have found that the UW is the only large public that is unable to borrow and, therefore, spread out the losses over future years. Is that correct? And if so, are there any plans in place to change that?

>> I have been working on this since I walked through the door. I was shocked to learn that we have no borrowing authority on this campus. Every other flagship university in every other state, every other system in every other state has a bond rating and borrowing authority, particularly at this moment in time where we're facing a short term cash flow problem. We're a $3 billion organization, any organization will try to spread those problems from the bad news, just one the good news that we all think are going to follow. And, you know, this is just unconscionable that we do not have this ability. I might note, the technical colleges in the state of Wisconsin are able to borrow. We have been working on this unsuccessfully for the last six years really tried to push it and have gotten nowhere. If this year does not persuade people, why they need to bring their state university into the modern age financially, I don't know what will. I promise you, we'll continue to work on this. I promise you the system is working hard on it and I know that our president, Tommy Thompson, has this very high on his agenda.

>> If you do have a question, you can raise your hand. You should see a little icon with the raise hand at the bottom of your screen.

>> I just see a question in the chat box. Do you want me to answer that? It's -- The question is, what's the relationship between the short term shots in the budget worth and the university endowment? Are we able to leverage any of those resources? The answer to that is yes. And both of those organizations we have been working with. So as you probably know, much of the money in the endowment is tied to very specific projects. It's, you know, it's committed with a contract that we're going to spend this on a scholarship in the engineering department, or we're going to spend it on a faculty member who studies the history of something or other. That money is not fungible, but the foundation does have some pool of more fungible money. One of the things they are doing right now, which is wonderful, is as many of you know, the development officers in schools and colleges are paid about two thirds of their salary out of school and college. In the short run, the foundation is picking up all of the salary by development officers, so we don't have to lay off development officers and take that funding, which provides more funding for -- in the short term to all schools, colleges, departments that would otherwise be kicking into pay for development. And that, of course, means our development efforts moving forward, which is highly important in this particular period. So the foundation is involved in that and working with Wolf as well on this faith and very good at making special allocations when needed. And, you know, having effectively to increase their allocation to us for the next year, which is able to prove that finally yet, but we're working with them on that. So not of them are answers to $100 million in shortfall plus, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in shortfall, but they certainly are our partners and helping us with this.

>> Chan, if you want to go ahead and ask your question.

>> Yeah. Thank you, Chancellor Blank, for a really nice overview of where we are. You mentioned a potential choice have to make as a group between standing furloughs and maybe looking around the campus finding programs to cut. I don't think anybody wants to do the ladder. So do you have an idea, approximately, of what the budget tells you would probably be or the requisite size or extension, I should say, of the furlough?

>> You know, I just don't have that yet. We're still in the early stages, putting all that budget estimates together for this year. They say we've just literally learned what we think is going to be the budget last for year. We just went through the last day of, you know, people being able to withdraw and remove tuition. So, you know, we will know more within this next month and we'll be holding that conversation with the governance groups and certainly reporting back to you as well. I mean, I am assuming, let me just make one comment. People seemed very happy with the progressive nature of the furloughs that we implemented. Should we expand furloughs, we will certainly try to do it in the same way, putting slightly more pain on those who have higher salaries.

>> And [inaudible] do you want to ask your question?

>> Yes. Can you hear me?

>> We can.

>> OK. Yeah, hi. Good afternoon, Chancellor Blank. So my question is about startup funds for junior faculty. So I know that you're aware that the campus did do like the COVID-19 extension for all junior faculty.

>> Yes.

>> But it seems that some cash strapped departments are making a situation where they're not going by, you know, the generosity of the campus and also extending the use of the startup funds from the department. Is there any way that the university can intervene and make sure that, you know, junior faculty are protected from, you know, attempts to not extend their startup funds going based on their appointment letters and saying it has to end by a certain date? Thank you.

>> Anybody who has startup funds that they have not yet expended because of all the offsets should absolutely get extensions on that. If you have specific concerns, or anyone has concerns, I would encourage you to talk to the Associate Vice Chancellor in the office of the Vice Chancellor for research and graduate education, there are four of them, one for each division. Talk to the one in your division about your issues, and let them intervene and solve that. That's exactly what they are -- one of the many jobs that they should have and should take on.

>> OK, thank you very much. [Inaudible].

>> Noah, do you want to ask your question?

>> Sure. I remember that -- This is now [inaudible] district 18. I recall that when we considered progressive furlough structures the last time, there were some alternative proposals that were floated to make the furlough structure even more progressive. And I was just wondering if any further consideration has been given to those proposals and if the -- whatever decision makers are involved might consider an even more progressive furlough structure, given the disproportionate burden on basic needs that's been suffered by some people in our city and among our colleagues?

>> Yeah, thank you, Noah. Actually, the result of that feedback last time, we went to a more progressive structure than we started with when we actually announced them. We have not made any decisions at this point about furloughs, but I appreciate your comments and we'll certainly make sure it's on the table.

>> I did just get a message in chat a question. It was just to me, so I'll read it. How do we know that students plan to be here in Madison? Have any campus wide surveys been conducted or will be conducted to determine the number of students that plan or want to be in Madison, if all in most classes are offered online in the spring? This may vary depending on the status, hometown -- example, area, et cetera. For examples, seniors may be less interested in being in town. And that's from Lydia Ashton.

>> So, a substantial share of our students currently have no in-person classes. And as far as we can see, the best majority of those, like 95% of them still are here on campus. So it's clear that going, and it's what I said is county executive, going to online classes is not going to get people off Madison. And indeed, you don't want them out of Madison, they are residents of this community. Like I say, if I sent them home right now, voting would be entirely disrupted, businesses would be disrupted. You know, I see -- I have no reason to believe that everyone who is here this fall is not going to come back in the spring. Indeed, as we have tried to de-densify the dorms and we've, you know, try to encourage people who don't have in-person classes to think about leaving the dorms and going back home, as dorms indeed have gone down and density a little bit. What we found instead is that a substantial number of those people are leaving the dorms, but they're not going home, they're going out into rental units here in Madison. And, you know, I just say that there are very few students who are not in Madison this semester. From what we can tell, many of them that aren't here are international students who couldn't get here, or there are people who have some serious health issues and that's a small number of students. You know, there's no reason to believe that spring is going to be any different. It's what economists call revealed preferences. You know, anybody could have stayed home if they didn't have in-person classes. There are many people that have chosen more online class schedules that may have and almost no one made that choice in a way that let them stay home.

>> Ana, if you want to go ahead and ask your question? You'll need to turn your microphone on.

>> Zoom -- I'm coming from Zoom culture interface. Chancellor Blank. I wanted to follow up on your conversation discussion around the ASM new confidence vote on UWPD, and was curious if you had a position, especially in a moment where budget is tight of UWPD policing off campus.

>> So UWPD with a number -- as is true of all police units in the area, has sort of shared commitments with the other police forces around the area. You know, we sit in a way where we bought off against Madison and we bought up against the state police forces well in a number of our facility. So for instance, that library mall, all three police forces have jurisdiction over different sides of library mall. When there were major protests downtown that required some police presence, our police did fulfill their shared contract with the city. And part of the reason for them to do that is that, you know, a lot of our students live right in that immediate area. A lot of our buildings are right in that immediate area. And, you know, rightfully, they felt that it was better for them to be present there than not be present and to understand what was happening and see how they could be helpful. Heather, I'm not seeing other questions. And I know we're getting short on time here, because we do have some other business. I will say that if people do have other questions, they should send them to Heather or send them directly to me and we'll try to respond to them one on one for anyone else. Does that sound OK?

>> Sounds great.

>> All right. It that case, I'll turn to the minutes of May 4th and September 14th. Are there any additions or corrections to those minutes, which you should all have in your packet? I'm not seeing any hands raised, so I'm going to approve the minutes as distributed. Let me now introduce Professor Grant Nelsestuen, who's going to present the annual report for the University Curriculum Committee. Grant.

>> Thank you. So, OK. I'm the chair of the University Curriculum Committee. For those of you who don't know, the UCC has three functions to approve the creation of new courses and modifications to existing ones, to recommend alteration discontinuation of existing courses, and to advise on educational policy and planning. We meet every other week, and last year we approved something like 750 courses over the year, nearly half of which were new course proposals. Educational policy and planning recommendations, that kind of slowed down once COVID-19 hit, but the UCC did manage before then to formalize procedures on the use of third party tests for credits. They also approve the creation of the sustainability course attribute, which can be used by departments and students to identify courses related to sustainability. Timely issue, of course. And we also consider legal and ethical issues related to students receiving pay for internships at the same time that they receive course credit. Turns out, there are no legal issues, but OK. Looking forward, we'll be continuing our work regarding course proposals. And we've also -- we're finalizing a working group, which will consider the role of cross listing courses and universities curriculum. And another working group has been formed to determine whether or not the UCC might consider providing more guidance and attendance policies to departments and instructors than it already does. Thanks.

>> Are there questions for Grant for the University Curriculum Committee? All right, thank you. I am going to ask everyone if they sneak, if they don't crush your internet, is you would turn your camera on, because it just makes it for a much more interesting meeting to be able to see people as they're speaking. And fortunately, the provost [inaudible] camera on, so let me introduce Provost Charles Schulz. He's going to present the annual report for the University Academic Planning Council.

>> Terrific, Chancellor Blank and thank everyone for the work that they're doing. And thank you for being here. If I get to make the report from the university Academic Planning Council, like the University Curriculum Committee, it was a busy committee. Last year, we took 135 actions, so those would be new programs, new departments, new 131 or revenue generating programs. A charge that is sometimes levied against universities is that we're great at starting things, but we're not so great at discontinuing things. Of those 135 actions, 32 of them were distinct discontinuations of instructional programs or majors or certificates and the like. The work of the University Academic Planning Council shapes the academic trajectory of our university. It's a great deal of reading and it was an absolutely wonderful committee last year. They navigated changes to academic programs and restructuring, academic restructures, defining what a, for example, a department like body is and how it can operate in the context of our sure governance system. It provided oversight on program review. It thought about general education requirements, transcripting, assessment and responded to higher education the issues imposed by the UW system by higher education accreditors, by the national government, say through the Department of Education. And so it was a very active year, really fun committee to be a part of, and I thank all of them for their service. I'm happy to take any questions.

>> Questions about the APC? I don't see anyone raising their hand. I want to thank members of both the APC and the Curriculum Committee, these are really major and important committees for us and I know they've done great work this past year. Thank you, Carl. Let me turn back to Professor Kirsten Wolf who will present the annual report for the university committee and the Faculty Senate.

>> Thank you, Chancellor. I believe my video is on, like staring in a mirror for [inaudible]. So you should have Faculty Document 2904, which summarizes the business of the university -- last year. And notable items that were approved in the Senate include a change to when final grade charge you, adding specific support for appointments in FPP and approving the professor of practice title for academic staff. The university committee worked on all the issues brought before the Senate, approved a new type of tenure clock extension for the COVID pandemic, and issued a statement in response to a UW System restructuring proposal that was issued after the last Faculty Senate meeting. I'm happy to take questions. I'm not sure that I can answer them all, but I'll do my best.

>> Are there any questions, all of you who all lived the Faculty Senate? Most of you did from last year, but.

>> Yeah.

>> I'm not seeing any questions, so let me turn back to Kirsten Wolf who's going to present a resolution to support UW-Madison's efforts to become a Fairtrade University.

>> Thank you, Chancellor. So on behalf of the interested committee, I move adoption of Faculty Document 2905.

>> Since this is coming from the UC, it does not require a second. Kirsten, would you like to say anything more about this before I open up the floor to discussion?

>> No.

>> All right, discussion on the resolution about Fairtrade. I should say this resolution is passed on the academic staff Senate. And I might note, it's something that we are actively working on. In fact, some of the steps required that we have already taken at the university. I am not seeing any questions or comments. So unless somebody raises their hand under the move to voting on this, we will use the polling function that is in Blackboard to vote that will appear for everyone and it will be a simple yes or no that you have to click, similar to a voice vote. As in a regular Senate meeting, do not vote if you are not a senator. To vote, you simply click whatever your selection is. Yes, here would pass the resolution. No, would vote against it. Heather, do you want to pull up the polling function and let the Senators vote?

>> It should be this little note.

>> All right. We'll give you a few minutes. And Heather, I'll let you -- let me know when you think it's time for me to announce the vote.

>> All right, I think we're there?

>> All right, five more seconds. I will have to give you all five more seconds to say we're going to close the vote in five seconds. And that is it. The resolution passes. Is everyone seeing the poll results that I'm seeing front of me? It's 138 in favor, 2 against, and 72 not responding. So thank you, that motion passes. Let me now recognize Professor Wolf who's going to present for discussion a change to Chapter 3, a faculty policies and procedures. And let me note here that both this item and the next item are first meetings of this change, so we will open for discussion, but there will be no vote until next month. So Kirsten, do you want to talk about the Chapter 3 changes?

>> For sure. Thank you, Chancellor. So you have in your materials, a Faculty Document 2906, which is a proposed change to Chapter 3 of FPNP. The change would create a mechanism by which academic steps would retain graduate faculty data following their retirement or resignation. This would allow them to continue to serve as the role advisor to our graduate students, allowing for continuity and successful degree completion by a student. The purpose is more rigorous than for faculty who automatically retain graduate faculty status for a year following retirement or resignation.

>> All right, I suspect there will be some questions or comments on this. We are open for those if you raise your hand. John Cox, unmute yourself.

>> Hi. Yeah, thank you. We all know that one reason, unfortunately, that faculty resign is that there's some sort of sanction on them for some kind of misconduct. Is there any -- I don't see in this draft that there's any -- anything that would stop such a faculty member from automatically retaining their ability to serve it, even if they resigned for that purpose.

>> Kirsten, do you want to respond? I should note, this is about academic staff faculty, but the same point applies.

>> It is, and I cannot really answer that one, because this was about staff, but I do believe -- in purpose, if attending, so I don't know the purpose, would you be able to respond to this? This one -- This question truly took me aback.

>> Did you ask Heather to respond to someone else? Yeah, Heather, do you know the answer? So this one, we're going to take back [inaudible].

>> Yup, I asked if [inaudible] could respond.

>> I'm here. Can you hear me?

>> It looks like he is here. [Inaudible].

>> Yes. So the way this was drafted, as you remember -- as you might recall that, academic staff were allowed to be the sole major advisor of PhD students by action from this committee. And what this is request -- what this request is dealing with is the extension of that. So upon resignation, the implication there is that the person has left and gone to a different position. But maybe that should be made more clear in amended draft language, because John Hawkes brings up an important point of view. The idea of allowing academic staff members to retain graduate faculty status relies on the fact that they're well connected to the departmental graduate education apparatus. So we would ask that those people have departmental approval, executive committee approval to be academic -- to be graduate faculty in the first place, and that they retains a great deal of connectedness to the graduate education enterprise in the particular department.

>> So this one clearly, this is a question that we'll refer back to the UC to look at whether there's language here that needs to be added or changed.

>> I would agree.

>> Yeah. Bill Tracy, would you have your hand up because you want to speak?

>> Yes, I do, Chancellor. I believe the warning at the end of that document says that this is contingent on the recommendation of the executive faculty in the department.

>> So a department could essentially choose to not allow this to happen, depending on the nature of why someone left.

>> Yes.

>> Thank you. Are there any other comments or questions on this? I'm not seeing any, and if anyone does have concerns that takes us back to your faculty and they have concerns or issues they want to raise, they should be in touch with Kirsten and Heather, prior to next week's meeting, when -- next month's meeting when this will come back for a vote, all right. Let me now recognize Professor Bill Tracy who's going to present for discussion, a change to Chapter 6 of faculty policy and procedures.

>> Yup. Yup. I'm trying to get my video up.

>> You do have a nice picture up, though.

>> Well, maybe you'll be stuck with that. Is that up now or --

>> Yup, yup, we see.

>> OK. Thank you, Chancellor. Colleagues, you have in your materials Faculty Document 2907, which would change faculty policies and procedures, Chapter 6, by removing the commission on faculty compensation economic benefits. I served on the UC previously a little more than a decade ago and this particular committee was problematic then. Prior to serving on the UC, I served on this committee and I couldn't figure out what its function was before that. So, the UC has repeatedly, over the years, tried to fix this committee, or fix -- make it functional and a number of times they're -- the committee has been given specific charges. The committee members diligently tried to fulfill those charges, but then really nothing happens with the results. This past year, the committee on committees was unable to fill a committee membership. And given the value of faculty time and the need, we have a faculty serving on more important committees, the UC recommends that we discontinue this committee. And the idea would then be that when specific issues come forward, the UC can create an ad hoc committee and solicit membership, specifically for the ad hoc. And this will allow faculty to pick and choose which issues they choose to engage in, and also allow from shorter commitment than a three year term. And as the Chancellor said, this is the first year reading, but I would be happy to take any questions.

>> Questions or comments on this proposed change? Chad, do you have your hand up?

>> Yes. Thank you, Chancellor. So I have an enormous amount of respect for Bill and his judgment, so maybe he and others can change my mind about this. But my first impression about this was to be concerned about this. I think, and I know Bill would agree with me, that we should try to expand the faculty's role and institutional governance, not diminish it. I'm a little concerned that eliminating the commission on faculty compensation and economic benefits would move us in the direction of diminishing [inaudible] role on institutional governance. I understand that the idea here is to replace it with ad hoc committees, but I just don't see that as being -- as robust of an alternative. I also understand the concern that a lot of the work that the committee used to take on, like comparing faculty salaries to groups has already been compiled elsewhere in campus, but it seems to me that FPNP appoints a variety of other functions that the committee can still or the commission can still perform. So I'm not sure that that -- I find that argument entirely persuasive. And then, finally, I think it's especially important to have -- from faculty input on compensation and economic benefits in the current economic context with a pandemic, and continuing massive employments and budget cuts to the UW system have important consequences for compensation and benefits. Just going back to my colleague, you know, we Feinstein's question during the question period earlier at the Senate meeting, that's the kind of thing, it seems to me, that the commission could be actively involved in and thinking about how graduated we want to make the system of unpaid really for this, for example. So for all these reasons, I'm not sure I'm sold on this yet. Although again, I'm, of course, open to persuasion from Bill and others. Thank you.

>> Thanks, Chad. Yeah, I agree, definitely, that the -- this is not something meaning compensation and benefit is something that we should let out of our purview. I do think that the system has evolved. By system, I mean, the campus and the -- and various committees and other functions have evolved since the 1970s when this was put together. I would point out that one of the recommendations of this committee -- or one of the charges of this committee in FPNP is to represent the faculty in discussions and with other -- without the bodies, including legislative bodies, and that has been designated by the Senate to PROFS, which the UC is the board of directors of process, so that's an important aspect there. The other thing, though, I think, is exactly what you're saying is that right now, we should probably have an ad hoc committee. We probably should be paying very close attention to these issues, given the current economic threats to the university and this would be a perfect example to have an ad hoc committee. But for many, many years, those subjects just have not been of -- this committee has -- this committee, in particular this commission, has actually not had any ability to influence those -- these issues, so that would be my recommendation. And I think you're right, is that the UC is paying a lot of attention to these issues right now and maybe it would be time to form an ad hoc committee, but I don't think a permanent committee has been working for 10 or 15 years at least.

>> I see that no Feinstein has to stand up, Noah.

>> Hi, everyone. So Bill, as someone who previously sat on the committee on committees, I'm very sympathetic to the desire to take a committee recruitment process off the table, because it is hard to get faculty to serve on these committees, as we all know. I think that my concern, which is parallel to Chad, has to do with the use of ad hoc committees to deal with issues, which when they arise are extremely important. And it's mostly because my time on the committee of committees made me aware of how idiosyncratic the process of coming up with names to serve on a committee can be, and how that process can follow. The people that a committee is aware of, in ways that can unfolds problematically in terms of under representation of particular groups of people on important committees. And I know the committee on the committee has thought about this, the committee of committees has thought about this continuing to work on processes for trying to avoid that problem. And I worry that if we shifted to an ad hoc committee process, that those sort of who do you know that might be good processes that can reinforce inequities might reemerge to the ad hoc committee appointment process.

>> Yeah, no, I served a number of terms on the committee on committees. And I know, all too well, about what you're saying. And I agree, but I think that we need to talk about the committee on committees in terms of the issues that you're talking about. And as we improve, because the people on that committee work very, very hard, so I don't mean to criticize anyone on that, as we improve their processes, then we could look to the committee on committee to appoint the ad hoc committee. So I don't think that anywhere in here, we're suggesting that the UC would appoint this ad hoc committee without consulting others.

>> Yeah. I see Eric Sandgren has his hand up.

>> Hello. I am a member now at the university committee and before I was on the committee, I was on that committee we're talking about. And we were asked to do an assessment of a number of possible steps that we could take in response to some of the changes that the Board of Regents in the state legislature had posed on us, some of the funding problems that we were facing. We spent a lot of time working on recommendations and prepared a long report, and that was then submitted both to the university committee and to the administration. But there really was no follow up, nothing was done with it, and that was a very discouraging situation. So if we are not going to eliminate it, I think we need to do something else to strengthen it quite significantly so that the efforts do potentially bear some fruit. Thank you.

>> Thank you. I see the -- Steph Tai has her hand up. All right, do we have her?

>> Hey, Stephanie, you're unable to -- are you able to unmute? It should be at the bottom there.

>> Oh, there.

>> There you go. Now you got it.

>> I didn't see that option before. Yeah. So as the person on committee on committees last year who tried to recruit someone for this committee, I have many mixed feelings about it. I actually do believe strongly in faculty governance. I think there should be something, but I think that it would be easier to recruit if there was a more influential charge. And if there was some acknowledgement, I guess, of it as having some kind of influence. And I don't know what that means. I worry about disbanding it and putting it in favor of an ad hoc committee just because of the concerns that Noah and Chad brought up. But I do think that if there was a way to sort of have maybe a regular reporting structure, some kind of thing that makes it have some formal shape, it might be easier to recruit for that committee. Because, you know, yes, I know that -- just to bring out, I talked like 15 people to try to recruit people for the company, and they were like, yeah, I don't know if it does anything, not worth the time. But I think that if there is some kind of acknowledgement, maybe a formal reporting structure, maybe something that shows that the faculty Senate and you see takes it into weight, that might be something that could be done to reform that committee.

>> Thank you.

>> Thanks [inaudible].

>> I see that Rebecca Larson has her hand up.

>> Oh, yes. Thank you. I just wanted to add that it concerns me that this group, I would imagine and so I don't know the role, particularly, so maybe I need to be educated a little bit here, but would handle things like pay equity amongst faculty. And that is still a big concern to a lot of us and we're trying to work out some things, I would say, in our own colleges and departments about pay equity, particularly for underrepresented groups. So it would concern me that if this group was charged with activities such like that, where else would this go? And I don't think that that kind of activity should be put on an ad hoc committee, it should probably be something that is addressed on a annual basis.

>> Do you want to respond to that, Bill?

>> I believe that this committee has been charged with -- the commission has been charged with those kind of, I'm not sure about equity, but other issues that are deeply concerning to campus, and -- or faculty. And they just -- Maybe what were -- what the problem is, is we don't have a mechanism to have this commission has any way to actually have influence. I think, as I said earlier, that over time, the way the campus is administered, this committee doesn't actually report to anyone who can actually make the changes that are needed. And as I said, we worked really hard on it, but -- and this has been over more or less 10 years, so at least my knowledge of -- back when we started working on it.

>> Eric Sandgren, did you want to speak again?

>> Sure. Given what I'm hearing, I'm thinking that it might be a good idea for us to think about ways of changing the charge and perhaps somewhat the influence of the committee, if an issues of equity were part of what we did consider. But if we wanted to have a committee, perhaps smaller than exists now, that would be a committee required to report each year to the Faculty Senate on issues that are important to the Faculty Senate, such as equity. I think that would give a change in status. So a smaller group, the ability to bring on additional members is necessary, perhaps if they're talking about an area where committee members don't have an expertise. And then annual reporting, I believe those of us on the committee would have been much more comfortable under those circumstances. So, that might be an option if that's the way everyone's leaning.

>> So I don't see any more hands and there's clearly been a lively discussion. Steph Tai's hand just went off, I will call on her, but it's clear, we want to send this back to DC for their consideration. So I'll let Steph speak and then I think we'll probably -- nope, and I'm seeing one more hand. OK. Steph, go ahead.

>> OK. So as someone who's studying informational regulation, which is like disclosure requirements, reporting requirements, and stuff like that, I actually think that even if there's no responsibility placed on the committee in the way that anyone in the UC hasn't listened to them actually having a reporting structure, especially at Faculty Senate where there many reporters who often attend can actually have some kind of persuasive effect. And I do think that that might be something sort of annual report on the state of -- sort of faculty compensation actually might have something that leads people to want to be on the committee because they actually have some kind of sway. So that's, I'm just going to sort of support Eric's suggestion and sort of read for that in terms of sort of future deliberations in the UC.

>> I see Blaine Faniken [assumed spelling] has her name up.

>> Yes, hi. So I'm not -- If I'm hearing correctly, you're saying that there's going to be a committee that would discuss or, you know, look at issues of equity. And so far, my experience here at UW has been that when minority faculty have issues related to equity or discrimination, sometimes the chair is not comfortable dealing with those kind of issues. And the default has been to refer the faculty outside the department. So I think if there is a university committee that deals with these sort of issues, it would be helpful to faculty of color to at least have that be the starting point, instead of having to go to the Office of Compliance, you know, basically going from zero to 100, you know, something that would be in between where these kind of issues can be dealt with. And so doing, I think it would be important to have people who have lived experiences, like you suggested earlier in these kind of areas, not that other people cannot be valuable in such committees, but I think it would at least be important to include such people on the committee so they can at least bring a different perspective to these kind of issues.

>> Thank you. Yeah. So I'm seeing no other hands, so I'm going to refer -- this obviously is going to go back to the UC for further discussion for they to change and start to come back for evil next time. And we will let Phil and his colleagues from UC think about what all of this means if that sounds right.

>> Sounds right to me.

>> All right. Thank you, Bill. Thank you for --

>> Sounds good.

>> -- working for this one. Did someone trying to speak? I have no other items on the agenda. So I'm giving this after 5 o'clock, right at 5 o'clock, I am going to declare the meeting adjourned and we'll see all of you at our meeting on the first Monday in November. Thank you.