>> I am told we have a quorum, so I'm going to call the meeting to order and ask everyone who is here, who is able to rise, to do so for the reading of the Memorial Resolutions. Let me recognize Professor Greg Tripoli to present the Memorial Resolution for Professor Emeritus Frances Bretherton. >> Thank you. Emeritus Professor Francis Bretherton died on June 27th, 2021, at the age of 85. Following his doctorate at Cambridge in 1961, he worked as a research fellow teacher and professor during which time he introduced the iconic Bretherton equation. Bretherton served as director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the president of University Corporation for Atmospheric Research from 1973 to 1980, where he transformed America's Premier Atmospheric and Oceanic Research Institution into its modern interdisciplinary form. During the 1980s, Bretherton established earth system science as the modern approach to climate and weather science. Dr. Bretherton came to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988 becoming the Director of the Space Science and Engineering Center and an Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences professor, where he continued to lead earth system science on the national and international stage until his retirement in 2001. >> Thank you, Greg. Let me recognize Professor Anja Wanner to present the Memorial Resolution for Professor Emeritus Phillip Harth. Anja? >> Phillip Harth, the Merritt Y. Hughes Professor of English Emeritus died peacefully on April 28th, 2020, at the age of 94. He is survived by son and his two daughters. Professor Harth joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1966. His appointment assured Wisconsin enduring importance as a center for the study and teaching of 18th century British literature and culture. Professor Harth's scholarship made plain that an understanding of religion and politics are necessary to the interpretation of literature. His distinguished body of research was recognized with fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. He served the university as chair of the English department and as interim Director of the Institute for research in the humanities. He retired in 1996. The department of English honors his memory and his extended and extensive contributions to 18th century scholarship. >> Can you stay for the next one. >> And now let me also recognize Professor Warner to present the Memorial Resolution for Professor Emeritus Standish Henning >> Standish Henning, Professor Emeritus of English, died on February 20th, 2021 at the age of 88. He is survived by his wife, Jane and two daughters. Professor Henning spent his entire career at the University of Wisconsin, starting as instructor of English in 1960 and retiring as professor in 1999. He was a scholar of Renaissance literature with specialties in Shakespeare and Renaissance drama. He was also well known for his expertise in composition theory and the teaching of writing. He was instrumental in starting the writing across the curriculum program and designing the current general education requirements in communication. Professor Henning was a beloved and renowned teacher. In the 1970s, the Letters and Science Honors Program contacted hundreds of their alumni from many different majors to inquire which faculty members contributed most significantly to their education. All of them mentioned Professor Henning who taught them the honors composition course during their first semester of college. In 1987, the university recognized Professor Henning with a chancellor's distinguished teaching award. The English department honors his memory annually with a student writing award established by his longtime colleague and friend, Professor Emeritus Andrew Weiner. >> Thank you, Anja. Let me recognize Professor Ricardo Bonazza to present the Memorial Resolution for Professor Emeritus Noah Hershkowitz. >> Noah Hershkowitz, Irving Langmuir Professor Emeritus of the Department of Engineering Physics died on November 13th, 2020. He was born in 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. Noah became a UW-Madison professor in 1981. He first led the Phaedrus Fusion Science Program and later the Center for Plasma Aided Manufacturing. He mentored more than 50 PhD students at UW. He received numerous awards, including the James Clerk Maxwell Prize in Plasma Physics in 2004, for his fundamental contributions to the physics of low temperature plasmas, in the IEEE Marie Sklodowska-Curie award for innovative research and inspiring education in basic and applied Plasma Science. >> Thank you, Ricardo. And finally, let me recognize Professor Emeritus Tony Stretton to present the Memorial Resolution for Professor Emeritus James Pawley. >> The Department of Integrated Biology lost a valued colleague in March 2019 when professor Emeritus James Jim Pawley unexpectedly passed away in British Columbia. In 1978, he joined the zoology faculty working closely with Hans Reece [assumed spelling] as a physicist in charge of the high voltage electron microscope, HVEM facility, a national resource. He was a world leader in the microscopy community. He retired in 2012. He is survived by his wife, Christine, his three children, Alice, Emily, and John, and his four grandchildren. This skillful passionate, intense, generous, intelligent, and complicated man will be profoundly missed by his friends and colleagues. >> Thank you to our presenters. And you may all be seated. I just have a few updates not a lot. It has been a busy fall semester, as you know, and we are drawing to a close. Commencement will be in two weeks from yesterday. I hope all of you are taking care of yourself, your students, and are going to find time over the holidays to recharge with family and friends. I know some people are feeling quite a bit of stress yet coming out of the pandemic and with everything else going on, so take a few days off. I do have a few updates here. With regard to COVID, first issue here, I am grateful that we've had a successful semester with low infection rates. We have had a small but expected increase in positive tests in just a couple of days last week, immediately following the Thanksgiving travel, but that's coming down again. Our low case counts have been largely due, as you know, to the very high vaccination rate among students and staff. Students are now at 95% vaccinated, faculty and staff are at 96% vaccinated. I know of no university without a vaccine mandate that comes anywhere close to that. And I truly appreciate all of the responsibility that everyone in our community has shown with that vaccination rate. There is a federal executive order out there mandating as of early January that anyone that has federal contracts must have a vaccine mandate. We have federal contracts, so we are in the stages of informing people that a vaccine mandate will be in effect as of early January. We expect any unvaccinated employees to either become vaccinated or to request an exemption according to their religious or health related issues. So that will be moving forward. We have, as you all know, extended the masking requirements through the middle of February given where we are with unknown still Omicron variation, and just given where the state is. That certainly was, to be honest, an easy choice. We will be looking at the data in early January and making a decision as to whether we think we can soften this mandate or not. But you know we'll just see what happens and how the world evolves. We are, at this point, given the Omicron variation, advising against all non-essential international travel in the coming days and weeks. We are certainly encouraging everyone in the community who is eligible to receive your booster shots and encouraging anyone with children ages five to 12 to help them become vaccinated as well. We are going to, as I say, keep assessing the situation, provide more information about spring protocols as we get closer. Winter commencement is 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, December 19th at the Coal Center. You can all watch it at wisc.edu if you're not there in person. Manu Raju, CNN's Chief Congressional Correspondent, who's covered politics in Washington for nearly 20 years and is very engaging person, is going to be the keynote speaker. He's an alum. Raju received a bachelor's degree in marketing from UW in 2002, and people are excited about having him return. A little bit of good news about our students. It was announced late last month that two of our seniors, Lexi Lou and Hawra Aljawad reached the final stages of competition this year with the Rhode scholarship. Both of them ended up being finalists, but not winners. Lou of Bloomington, Illinois is majoring in biochemistry and statistics, Aljawad is a chemical engineer and a biochemistry major. And as you all know, this is really, really tough competition and being one of the last five finalists, final finalist is a real honor and I'm very proud of these two students. I do want to say a word about a story that I suspect many of you read in the newspaper over the weekend, it's not a new story, about abusive behavior by a former UW faculty member and the steps we have taken to addressing it. This is about abusive and bullying behavior that has been an issue for far too long in higher education. And I hope that I and other leaders have been quite clear that this is not behavior that we want to tolerate on this campus. Given complaints, we will investigate and take action up to and including the dismissal of staff and tenured faculty. In 2016, this body adopted a policy on hostile and intimidating behavior with the support of other shared governance bodies across the university. It was the first such policy among UW system schools. It was ahead of many of our peers. Prior to that time, if you observed bullying behavior of this sort, while one would hope that department chairs and colleagues would take some action, call people out, suggest this wasn't appropriate, there was no disciplinary action. There was no policy unless it involved sexual abuse of one sort or another or violated anti-discrimination policies relating to race or gender or ethnicity. And other than that, just being a jerk and being a bully, there was no policy about that. Since 2016, we have this policy; we have used it in a handful of cases. As far as I'm concerned, people coming forward is a very good thing. It means that we are identifying problems and working to resolve them. So we have worked hard to try to get word out to all of the faculty and staff about the need to -- if you see something, to speak up, to encourage people who are in situations where they're feeling powerless to bring complaints so that we can help them. The university employs about 24,000 staff and faculty, and a lot of those faculty and staff work alongside graduate students to mentor, advise and conduct research. The overwhelming majority of those interactions are positive and valuable, but we hold a commitment to ensure that every student and every staff member receives the support and the guidance they need. So while our work on these issues is by no means complete, we do have in place some of the policies and procedures that we need. We continue to provide information on how to seek help, and I encourage all of you to help distribute that information and make sure that those in your department know about it, know about the policies, and can take action if we are in unfortunate situations where we need to do so. Finally, to close, I want to talk about the status of actually three searches. The first, which you will be hearing about by next week, we will be launching our search for a new vice chancellor for finance and administration. As many of you know, Lauren Heller left last spring, and we have a search committee together and we'll be moving that forward. The search for a new system president is well along. The provost is on that search committee and I'm expecting final candidates to be named sometime in this next month. And finally, closer to home, you probably also the note that the search committee for the next chancellor was announced by the board of regents late last week, it will be chaired by Regent Karen Walsh, and it has a mix of faculty staff, students and alumni on it. And I particularly appreciate all of the faculty who have agreed to serve. So this is our last session of the year 2021, and let me end by wishing you all happy holidays and thanking you for absolutely everything you have done this year to get us through and get us to this point. So thank you. And with that, let me turn things over to Eric. >> Thank you, chancellor Blank, and thanks to all of you here for attending today. Here is a brief update on what the university committee and office of the secretary of the faculty have been working on regarding the academic calendar and religious observances. First, the Faculty Senate will begin approving an additional year of the academic calendar each year. This will provide the university with a five-year calendar on a rolling basis, and also regularize the process of producing the calendar. Second, a committee made up of members of both the university and the community is being assembled to review the religious observances calendar and academic calendar as they are drafted. The review process will begin with the religious observances calendar for the spring semester. Last, there will be a shared outlook calendar available that lists both the academic calendar and religious observances. If you have specific questions about these items, please contact Heather Daniels, secretary of the faculty. Next, December 15th is the deadline for the Hilldale awards and lectures nominations. Also, you've received a legislative update from Profs as you entered the room. Please consider joining. This month I'll finish by talking about the third plank in my UC candidate platform, which is to strengthen shared governance, particularly the faculty part of the process. Shared governance is the radical notion that the best decisions are made collectively by those people who know the most about the problem being solved. If a committee leader is competent, the collective process not only is effective, but also efficient. Furthermore, it creates buy-in ahead of time making implementation much smoother. Compared to most other universities, our process is robust and here is the structure. [ Laughter ] I'm not going to go over this in detail, and you do have this information available to you through the website. We have a series of representative bodies that work together with the administration. Each has an executive council and chairs. For us, it's the senate, the university committee and its chair. Also there's built in a lot of administrative support and a series of committees and associated organizational flowcharts to manage the deliberations, decisions, and follow-through. And the list of committees is included in the meeting link. I believe the faculty does a good job of reviewing issues that are brought before us, largely through the efforts of our committees. Many of these committees provide annual reports to the senate. Despite the positives, after a career on campus and several years of direct shared governance practice, I see three important deficiencies in our current practices. First is communication. Many people don't understand how the process of shared governance really works. The university committee and the office of the secretary of the faculty have taken steps in recent years to improve understanding, but reaching our full potential requires additional team effort by the university committee, senate, and our departmental colleagues and more on this next year. Second, we could be far more proactive in our faculty role. According to faculty policies and procedures, the faculty shall actively participate in university policy development. As such, the faculty as primary responsibility for academic and educational activities, and for personnel matters. I've been proactive by taking steps to address administrative burden in campus climate. We are preparing the charge for an ad hoc committee on administrative burden and will be submitting resolutions regarding campus climate to the Faculty Senate in the spring of 2022. But identifying concerns shouldn't be the job only of the UC or its chair. Ensuring there are policies to fix problems and meet needs is a primary responsibility of committees and you as senators. For example, I always wonder why that clock continues to read one minute before two. Based on this responsibility, more often we should be presenting policy recommendations to the administration and others for them to review. We're good at identifying problems and voicing our complaints, but things aren't likely to change if we don't actively manage the process by addressing those concerns. The third issue is continuity. Many administrative positions are devoted to managing university operations over the long term. However, outside of shared governance, we all have other demanding responsibilities. Faculty involved in governance have excellent support from the staff in the office of the secretary of the faculty, but it is our responsibility to prioritize big picture issues, big picture issues that we think are important that require long term monitoring and periodic action. Without that, ideas and initiatives can fade away. To address this need, the UC has scheduled a retreat for January using an academic staff model to identify overarching faculty priorities that need to be actively followed beyond the reign of a single UC chair. Here again is an area where we need your attention and advice. What are the current problems and needs that are most pressing to you? Send those thoughts to the secretary of the faculty when you get home tonight and ask your department colleagues what they'd like to see on the list. I'm finally out of platform planks, but next semester we'll be developing and refining resolutions and proposals that give voice to the will of the faculty. Thank you for playing a part in this effort. >> Are there questions for myself or for Eric? Seeing none, I'm going to move on to the minutes. Are there any additions or corrections to the minutes of November 1st, 2021? If not, the minutes, I will state, are approved as distributed. There are a set of proposed clerical changes to faculty policies and procedures outlined in faculty document 2987. Literally these are clerical changes, and it has been suggested that we should deal with them the way we deal with the approval of the minutes. If there is no objection, if there is an objection, we will then have a discussion and a vote; I would propose that we simply approve these without a discussion and vote by general consent of the body. And if I don't see anyone moving to a microphone to object to that, I'm going to declare that just like the minutes; those clerical changes have been accepted. Okay. Let me then recognize Professor Emeritus Rick Nordheim who's going to present the Ombuds Annual Report, Rick. >> Hi. So I'll just try to keep this as brief as possible. I remember when I was in the senate, I did not know about the Ombuds office. I'll take a couple of minutes to let you know what we do, and then give a brief update about what's going on with us. Next slide please. So basically the idea of Ombuds is, has a long history, but in particular, in the early 1800s in Sweden, they set up an Ombuds office as a representative to hear what the complaints of citizens were. And since that time, it has evolved and there's now an International Ombuds Association, almost all universities and colleges have Ombuds, most government agencies, many businesses do. And our goal is to provide a resource for, in this case, campus employees to come and speak with us confidentially about any issues or problems that we have. And we do promise total confidentiality. So this is a safe place for people to come with issues. And we will, I mean, we don't have any magic wand to solve problems, but we will listen carefully, try to present options, provide resources, make contact if necessary to find the most appropriate resources. Next slide please. So basically, we're staffed by, at the current time, five emeritus, either faculty, academic staff, university staff. I'm obviously faculty, which is why I'm here. What I did not know until I started as an Ombuds person is that our model here is quite unique. Basically, all of us have had extensive experience at this university collectively over 150 years. Most university Ombuds offices are staffed by what we would call sort of professional ombuds persons. I think there's a huge advantage to our model, and this kind of fits what you were saying with having faculty involved in shared governance, is because we've been there. The issues that people present to us collectively are ones that most of us have encountered many times in our service here at the university. And so we are very proud of this model and we think it's quite effective, but as I indicate, it is different than what most other universe cities have. So again, this is a place for university employees to get confidential advice, provide options, provide resources et cetera, et cetera, in a very non-threatening hopefully comfortable way. We very much hope that people come in early and we can solve problems while they're small, before they become large. And I think in many cases we're successful, but obviously we can't solve all of the problems. And we also do keep an ear out for systematic problems, and we communicate those as appropriate to people all over campus, including the provost and the secretaries of the various offices. Next slide please. So you can see the load has increased gradually. The big jump in 16, up until that time, the med school had their own Ombuds office. We merged and that led to the big jump. But it's continuing to rise. I would guess. I mean, we're only not quite halfway into the year, I would guess we'll probably be up to 300 visitors. I should also say that the complexity, it's hard to identify the number of visits because some of them are quick phone calls, email, exchanges, and so on. But we do track as best we can the amount of time we spend with each visitor and its like, the median is like between three and three and a half, and that's been going up. Next slide, please. So basically, you can see who we serve. Obviously, it goes with the number of employees; the largest group is academic staff. But you can see the faculty totals are you know, not trivial. And many of the other issues involve faculty, clearly almost all of the graduate student and postdoc visitors whom we see are related to you know, issues with faculty members and certainly some of the academic staff. I do, if I can, if I could, briefly address what the chancellor said about HIV, Hostile Intimidating Behavior. Prior to this year, well over a third of our cases, visitors who saw us had some element of hostile intimidating behavior. This last year, it was down somewhat. And we attribute that primarily to the fact that many people were off campus and there was much less direct contact with individuals. But we're seeing that pick up now as there's much more face to face. We think a very good place, when appropriate, for people who have any concerns about this is to see us. Again, we can provide totally confidential advice. We're trained at listening. We try to be as empathetic as we can, but we want to be constructive and provide the best advice. We communicate regularly with the variety of people, including the provost that deal with HIV issues. And we certainly encourage you to look at us as possible first stop. If you want -- next slide please. So if you want more information, we have far more information about ourselves at the webpage. We have a complete annual report of which of these things we were part of them. So feel free to look at those. And if you have any questions, you know, after today, don't hesitate to contact us by phone or email, and we'll be happy to answer your questions. Thank you. >> Are there any questions for Rick before he sits down? >> And leave. [ Laughter ] >> And leave, yes. All right, thank you very much. >> Thank you very much. >> It's a very important work and I appreciate you and all of your colleagues. Please tell them thank you. Let me recognize Professor Beth Larson, who will present the annual report for the committee on Women in the University. Beth. >> Thank you for inviting me here today to present the CW report and to highlight some of the important work the committee for women is doing. My co-chair Kate Warren sends her apologies. She can't be here today. You've got our 2021 report on our committee activities. Of note, I'd like to highlight three things. First, much of this past year we spent meeting with and UW system experts talking about the needs and initiatives for women on our campus and in the system. These include pretty much all the committees you could think about, the Division of Diversity Equity and Educational Achievement, Division of Faculties Planning and Management, University Childcare Committee, Office of Childcare and Family Resources, Office of Human Sources, Provost for Faculty and Staff Affairs, and the UW System Caregiving Taskforce. Second, an ad hoc committee was created this year to develop policies to address the challenges of caregiving during COVID for UW faculty and staff. It was a pretty critical need that we found. We are happy to note that they recommended a number of policy changes that are now being used to support caregivers on campus, and many of you maybe already have made use of those policies. We appreciate Chancellor Blank, Provost Schultz, and Vice Provost Marion's support for these initiatives. Third, this year we fielded a survey to guide our community's future work, much in line with what Eric was saying, and asked what the challenges were facing women on campus. We had 2,676 respondents from all employee groups. We asked them to identify the top challenges and we also asked them to suggest changes that would be helpful. So we had an open-ended question where they could say anything they wanted to. The top challenges identified both in the quantitative and qualitative were first childcare, the availability cost and gap coverage for childcare, and equitable paid maternity leave were critical issues impacting employees. And in fact, these intersected with promotion, they intersected with gender climate, and they intersected with the compensation. So we found that those issues are not separate. In fact, they have to be addressed together, and that was something our qualitative work let us find out. Secondly, compensation was reported by 70% of our respondents as a challenge. Respondents who commented on this challenge noted that they were paid less, their work was less valued and recognized, and that they had to provide more justifications or effort to get pay equity. And in fact, a recent AAUP data suggests that on our campus we have not achieved gender equity yet. In our categories of instructor, assistant professor, associate, and full professor, women are being paid 81% to 89% of men's pay. So we still need to work for that. As far as gender climate, 60% of employees noted that as a challenge. Interestingly enough, about a third of our group reported that they experienced gender bias or discrimination. So that's a pretty high number. And of that group, 72% didn't report it. So it's going unreported unfortunately. As far as promotion advancement, 57% noted that was a concern. And some thought that if we could do better in positions of power, addressing those gender imbalances, that we might have better success with promotion issues. As far as racial climate, 57% reported that racial climate and discrimination were concerns. And this was significantly more frequently reported by a Black, African American, and Asian respondents, which shows we have work there too to do. We plan to review all the respondent suggestions for addressing these challenges. There's a lot of good ideas. People had many good thoughts about ways to move forward that we want to look at and we want to compile and think through. And we hope to work with others across the campus to build on current initiatives and to leverage campus knowledge and resources to develop a short term and longer-term plan for this work. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about this report or the survey. Or if you want access to our survey, we are happy to share that as well. You have the quantitative one, the qualitative one is in draft form, but I'm happy to share it. Does anyone have any questions? >> Eric has a question here behind you. >> So I was really struck by this report and the data that you've been able to acquire on causes of concerns and ways in which they're linked. And it's very clear now, how will we move forward about addressing it? We know it, we can't ignore it anymore. >> Yeah. So we're hoping that we will be working with other people who are -- there are already certain initiatives in place that are starting to address these issues. What we're trying to do is pull together those people working and not work at cross purposes but work collaboratively and use the resources we have. Certainly, I think bringing this information, the qualitative report; we hope to bring also to the academic staff. They're represented about 57% of our respondents so there's a voice there that needs to be heard. But what we intend to do is bring it, distribute it widely and then try and find resources. So if you have resources, if you have ideas, if you have information that can help us move forward, we want to hear it. So we want to hear from you. Yeah. >> Hi, Becky Larson from District 2. I appreciate all the great work you guys are doing. I feel continuously we bring these equity and pay issues between gender, particular in my college year after year. And I don't see any progress in us actually using the data to move forward. Have you seen any attempts to try to correct some of the issues? >> I think -- [ Laughter ] >> So as you know, we've put quite a bit of money on the table over the last several years for additional faculty compensation and moved overall faculty compensation up substantially. I should let the provost speak to this, but I know the provost has worked with deans to say, you've got to look at equity issues by faculty, particularly in departments where, you know, that's not looking just at male female differences, but other types of equity issues as well. You know, I don't know Carl, if you want to respond to this at all. >> So we were preparing for -- there's an audit that is part of the federal government does. And one of the things that we have to look at is pay gaps between men and women, between majority and scholars from historically underrepresented groups. APIR did the work behind that. And I'll be -- in the aftermath of the investments that the chancellor met, there were not significant pay equity gaps across by gender in these studies. And part of the challenge is it's not to say that we don't have issues on gender, because in doing a study like that people will adjust for a time as a faculty member at UW Madison. And we have big gaps between I would call all equitable proportions at the full professor level, for instance, less so but still existing at associate professor. Things look somewhat quite a bit better at the assistant professor level. And so when you look at gender pay gaps, it's important to account for the various time and rank. But it's something that we have to continue to be vigilant about and keep our eyes open for. >> I appreciate that, but I feel like in our own colleges, for example, I've tracked data between those and we're showing that only in the last year were assistant professors in the gender gap and unfortunately, we can't track a lot of the underrepresented groups for those reasons. But we were showing at least a 10% gap up until maybe last year in assistant professors, as well as the gap in full professors is amazingly large, very difficult to track in terms of associate professors, because of the short duration that they're in that position. We continue to put this data forward, and yet I see very little progress. I feel like we're still fighting and we're not seeing any difference. I continually bring evidence of easy ways we could start to implement processes for how we do merit in equity raises. And I see that I'm getting pushback for, you know, 10 years been here now. So I'm hoping that we can continue to look into this and make bigger strides instead of just reporting the inequities year after year. Thank you. >> One of the things that people asked us or want more transparency, more data in response to this and all so ways of making that open beyond the departments, and that sometimes being encapsulated in the department, people were not as able to see what those differences were. And they had some suggestions I thought were brilliant. Like one of them to look at climate was to have kind of a quality review when you have your tenure review, have somebody come in outside like the group we have here and talk to people about climate, and have a climate report included in your tenure report to kind of touch base and see what's going on, and to have people think about it beyond. One of the people commented that keeping it in house is often problematic, but that it was, you know; discipline somebody in the front yard, that kind of thing, when there's issues of climate or issues of hostile intimidating behavior and thought that was pretty wise. So I think there's some things that people brought forward in this collective wisdom of, we had a thousand responses, people -- out of the 2,000 people, a third of them took time to write a paragraph to give us more information. So there's a lot of good information we have. And I think some of it's quite wise, so not all possible, but I certainly think we can bring it forward. But I think once heard it, you can't un-ring the bell. So I'm hoping that you and everyone else here who hears this kind of looks to see, how is this influencing our department? How are we expressing this? How is gender equity happening for us? So -- >> Questions? Thank you for the work of you and your committee. >> Oh, well, it's on the shoulders of previous chairs. >> Yep. Yep. Let me recognize Professor Kristen Malecki who will present the annual report for the Campus Diversity and Climate Committee, [inaudible]. >> Good afternoon. And thank you for this opportunity to present to you the annual report for the Campus Diversity and Climate Committee. The notes and full report are available within your application or within the online [brief laughter]. It's late in the day. So I just wanted to highlight a few words. And I think this is the work of this committee, as we've just heard in the last two presentations, especially important this year as we continue to think about issues of diversity and campus climate. The committee itself advises the administration, faculty, staff, and students on campus, diversity and climate. And as part of the committee, the CDCC is committed to pursuit of excellence in teaching research outreach and diversity. And we work collaboratively with and advise the vice provost for diversity and climate to provide direction and accountability for the implement of university diversity plans. And so we also think both about short term goals for diversity and climate as also long term goals. And this committee has been operating with four standing committees over the last several years. And the CDCC members would greatly appreciate the contributions and insights from last year of interim Deputy Vice Chancellor and Chief Diversity Officer Cheryl Gittens. And in particular, we want to thank Dr. Gittens for her comprehensive strategic updates and for working to expand the breadth of DDEA's annual joint CS meeting, and the other work that she did. She was very faithful in coming to our meetings and help make those connections. And Dr. Levar is also doing the same thing. Charleston, Dr. Charleston is also working with us. Among the different standing committees, the academic success committee is working on a series of conversations aiming to coordinate information, sharing and planning efforts to maximize the effectiveness of the Starfish Program and to really improve standards for supporting students in broadening learning objectives, improving standards for the Canvas courses to make student success more readily available, and then continuing to explore whether student faculty advisory communication and scheduling is appropriate. We have the diversity subcommittee and then for those of you who attended, it's a highlight a year for the diversity programs on campus. And the online format has really led to the growth. There was over 3,000, 5,000 participants in the diversity forum this year and committee members will be working to help plan next year's. The policy recommendation committee really works to look at all of the reports across all campus and make recommendations from all the annual school and college diversity and inclusion reports on promising practices, and their recommendation is really focused on strengthening in the data infrastructure. I think we just heard that in our previous reports, assessments and settings of long-term targets for what it looks like. And then another issue that they see in the policy committee or we've seen is this tremendous growth of DEI initiatives across campus. So there's a lot of tracking of growth of these different initiatives, but the question really becomes, what is the impact of those initiatives over the long term? So the policy committee, as well as the entire committee, are now working on developing a logic model towards implementation of all of these DEI plans, continuing to have conversations across all of the different initiatives, so that we can think about metrics that not only track progress, but really impact of all of these many, many initiatives that are ongoing on campus. And so with that, I really want to thank my co-chair Tatiana Schneider, who is in academic staff, and then Dr. [inaudible] for her previous work in this role, and Lindsey for all of her support of the work that we do. And I think that is it. And I'm happy to take questions. >> Question. I want to just remind people, and I know you know this Kristen, that we are in the midst of doing a climate survey among all of our students this fall, which is then comparable to what we did five years ago. And also we have some comparability to certain periods who ask some similar questions. So at the student level, we're going to have a variety of very helpful data. Five years ago, we really made some changes and made some initiatives on the basis of what we saw. And so at the student level, we will have a bunch of new campus climate work. >> Excellent. Thank you. >> Any other questions? Thank you. >> Great. Thank you. >> Thanks to your committee, yeah. Let me recognize Professor Jordan Rosenblum, who will present the Lectures Committee Annual Report. Jordan. It's Jordan. There we go. >> Thank you. First, some good news from the report you might have seen starting in January, the maximum now allowable for honorary is raised from $600 to $1,000. There are a lot of people asking to raise it and we're in a financial position that we can. And again, something that we have done during the pandemic, and I want to encourage continuing, is the idea that that amount is whether it's virtual or in person, right, or to reward the academic labor behind that for that. A few other things that while I have your attention I'll say that are just things that come up in the committee a lot is there's -- it used to be that you would try and get as many co-sponsorship that were $0 that were just quickly dashed off in a letterhead. Having a lot of those that are $0 doesn't help as much these days as having fewer that put some skin in the game, some money towards it. Our goal in general, when you're making a request, is for you to offer about half of what you're asking for, because that allows our dollars to go further. But we also understand that that isn't always possible. So for example, if you're a small unit and you have $400 as a budget for the entire year, and you're saying, you're going to put $200 towards a lecture and you explain that's half of your year's budget, we understand that. And if you're a huge unit and you say, you're going to give $200, we want to know why. Now, there was one unit recently that was a larger unit and was putting a smaller amount towards it, but explained it was one talk in a series and they were funding all of the others. So just adding that to your report will really help. And the other thing is every year we remind people there's this thing called Fitch Funds. I checked right before coming here, you just go to wisc.edu you click the search thing and write Fitch Funds. You'll discover it is magic, but no one uses it. And it's frustrating because, I did this last year, my predecessors would do this every year. Look at it there. If you apply for Fitch funds, it's not held against you so you can still apply each semester. It has to focus on business or entrepreneurship, but I'm in the humanities. I'm open to you writing a nice narrative to explain how you can fit under this. It is pretty expensive, and there are very different rules for that. So please reach out to us and look into it. It's a pot of money that's not getting spent. And also from the world of donor relations, you don't want donors to give money and then not use it. So I feel weird saying this, but please use money and ask for it. So we're trying to give it away. It's one of the few times that I can say that. So anything else, I'm happy to answer any questions, but please keep applying for awesome lectures. It's really fun reading all of the interesting scholarship going around. Oh, one last pet peeve. If you are asking for more money for an honorarium, don't begin with, "This is a world renowned amazing scholar," because why are you bringing someone to campus who's not world renowned and amazing, right? Explain why in a very specific way. It's a harder to justify, but I want to know, but if they're not amazing, like that's kind of obvious, so. It should be. So any questions, concerns, quibbles, quagmires. No. >> Thank you, Jordan. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. We now have two items that are coming back to us for a second reading and a vote after a first reading last month. Let me recognize Professor Erica Halverson from the UC who will make a motion to approve a proposal to facilitate the administration of evening exams. Erica. >> Exciting stuff. Okay. Earlier this fall, the university committee was made aware that the current policy on midterm exams causes conflicts every semester between courses that meet during the last -- >> I think you have to make the motion before you speak to it. >> Oh. Okay. Great [brief laughter]. I'm reading from the wrong script. This is like the actor's nightmare come true. I'm going to start. I move approval of faculty document 1585 revised. >> There is no second needed since UC is bringing the motion. Erica, would you like to make some -- >> I would love to. >> Excellent. >> But I'm afraid I still might have the wrong script unless it's fine to read this. Delightful. Thank you. This document has been amended since it was presented last month. The word midterm has been removed from the body of the text to indicate that the policy applies to exams other than midterms -- oh, in addition to midterms, I guess that should say, and a clarifying sentence has been added to indicate the policy does not apply to final exams. The word midterm was not removed in the title of the policy to differentiate the policy from one on final exams. As a reminder, these changes are needed to allow adequate passing time between the end of the last course period of the day and the evening exam period. If approved, this policy would take effect in the spring semester of 2022. Thanks. [ Laughter ] >> Are there discussion of the amended policy to facilitate evening exams, give people time to get from one to the other? Seeing none, I'm going to move towards a vote. All those in favor of adopting this amended resolution indicate by saying aye. >> [Unison] Aye. >> Anyone opposed? It passes. All right, let me now recognize Professor Tejedo-Herrero from the UC who will make a motion to approve a proposal to remove the program for honorific research titles. >> Thank you, Chancellor. Good afternoon. I move approval of faculty document 1489i. >> There's no second needed since the UC is making the motion. And Fernando, do you want to make the first remarks? >> Gladly. All right, so this motion removes the program for honorific research titles, which are no longer needed due to approval of the research professor title. For your information, no changes have been made to this document following the first reading last month. >> So this is the same document you saw last month. There seemed to be no dissension from it. Is there anything anyone wants to say? In that case, I will move towards a vote. All those in favor of adopting the proposal indicate by saying aye. >> Aye. >> Anyone opposed? That passes. Let me now recognize Professor Dietram Scheufele from the Honorary Degrees Committee who is going to move that we all move into closed session to discuss honorary degree recipients. Dietram. >> I move that the Faculty Senate go into closed session pursuant to Wisconsin statutes 19.85 (1)(c) and (1)(f) to consider the recommendations of the committee and honorary degrees. >> I need a second for this. >> Second. >> Second. Unless there are any objections, we will move into closed session to consider the confidential report of the committee on honorary degrees. The report will be heard and considered an executive session and therefore I have to ask anyone in the room who does not hold faculty status to leave the meeting. And we will wait till the room is clear before we proceed with the discussion. All right, we'll close the doors, and everyone left in the room should be a faculty member. Assuming we can get doors closed. [ Laughter ] It's progress [brief laughter]. All right, I want to remind everyone that all matters relating to candidates for honorary degrees are confidential until a public announcement is made. That usually happens in March. So I am asking all of you to not share any of the information you are about to hear with anyone outside this room. We would like to announce these with all due prompt and circumstance, and that means the news should not leak. Let me now call on Professor Dietram Scheufele, chair of the committee and honorary degrees who will present the candidates nominated by the committee. >> Thank you. And I'm going to start with the two words, what was it, world renowned and outstanding, that we're not supposed to use. But I think the committee is putting forth three names of people that are truly outstanding and world renowned. As we're putting up the slides or before we're putting up the slides, maybe just one quick plug. One of the things that the committee has really tried to do is to make sure that we encourage departments who have to endorse a nomination. So no nomination can be put forth without the endorsement of or the participation of an academic unit, to get as deep and as broad a pool as possible. So for those of you who may have been on the fence, who are thinking about nominating a candidate, who know of a person who may be deserving of an honorary degree, we would love to either chat with you. I'm sure Jane, Heather and myself would be happy to chat or see a nomination, initial nomination that then would potentially go through to the second round. And as we're putting up -- Heather, if we can have the first slide, please. Thank you so much. The first candidate we're putting forward this time around is Dr. Krishna Ella. He's nominated for an Honorary Doctorate of Science by CALS Global and the Global Health Institute. He's a founder of Bharat Biotech International. His company has supplied one and a half billion affordable vaccine doses worldwide, many to low income or lower income countries, and many of them focusing on what he calls region specific or targeting region specific neglected diseases, hepatitis B, being an example, rabies and so on. And his company has also been heavily involved in developing and distributing Covaxin, the COVID-19 vaccine that was distributed in India. So that brings us to the second nominee, if we could have the next slide, please. Dr. Ernest Jake Grant, also nominated for an Honorary Doctorate of Science by the School of Nursing, put forth by the School of Nursing. He was the first African American male president of the American Nurses Association, a Million Member Association. His work throughout his career has had a tremendous impact on patient care, nursing education, and nursing and patient advocacy. In particular, he started his career treating external, internal burn injuries and volunteered care to victims at 9/11. And the work and the extent and the impact of the work he's done there led then President George W. Bush honor him as nurse of the year in 2002, so just a year following the 9/11 attacks. Good. Go to the next slide, please. Our third and final candidate is Keith Nosbusch, also for an Honorary Doctorate of Science, nominated or put forth by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He's the former CEO at Milwaukee's Rockwell Automation, has become a major advocate of STEM education throughout his career, especially in underserved communities, and has implemented in his company during his tenure what he calls a Culture of Inclusion Journey Program that is focused on not helping groups that may have been underrepresented in the company before, female employees, people of color, adjust to an existing culture, but switching the culture around, so it better serves and is more welcoming to those groups, and has also worked beyond his own company in coaching other CEOs to make similarly or similar DI focused changes in their own companies. So as I said, without being facetious, we really do think that these are outstanding candidates and have been endorsed enthusiastically by the committee. So I would put those forth for your consideration. I think we have one more slide that explains the vote, if I'm not mistaken, if we could go to that. Thank you. I'll let you do that. >> Yeah. Before we vote, are there any comments, questions, issues that anyone wants to raise with regard to our three nominees? It looks like no one has any objections. That's good news. All right, you can vote one of two ways. This is a new process. If you want a paper ballot, you may raise your hand. If you have a computer, you may sign on and you will get the online vote just as we were doing virtually when we were all meeting virtually. So everyone who needs a paper ballot, please raise their hand and they will distribute those. I should note only elected representatives of the senate should be voting, or if your elected representative isn't here, if you are an alternate, you could vote. But you should not be voting if you do not fit in either of those two positions. Keep your hands up there, coming down the aisle here. There's someone behind you, Lindsey, who you missed on the -- >> Oh sorry. >> Yeah. There are some people there. >> I can collect the ballots when you leave. >> Who else needs a paper ballot? Anyone? I should note, if you have a paper ballot, you must put your name on it so that we can confirm that you are a representative or alternate. >> I could take the paper ballot of you're ready, or you can drop it off at the back. >> I am going to assume that most everyone has voted and we're collecting the last of the paper ballots. You will know the results when people get announced in March [brief laughter]. We have to move back into open session before we can adjourn. And so if you want to leave the room, you've got to have one more vote. Do I have a motion to reconvene in open session? >> So moved. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. >> All right. We need to vote on going back into open session. All in favor indicate by saying aye. >> [Unison] Aye. >> Is anyone opposed? In that case, we are back in open session. With that, I am adjourning the meeting and wishing you all a good next month.