UW GREEN BAY FACULTY SENATE DOCUMENTS

UW – Green Bay Learning Experience Proposal

We seek to create “smart, articulate, and engaged citizens and professional practitioners.”

Introduction

In the spring of 1999, the faculty, staff and students of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay declared their intentions to enhance the learning experience by reinvigorating the interdisciplinary, problem-focused mission of the institution. That summer an all-university task force identified five major initiatives that would guide the campus’s efforts: high-impact first contact; personalized learning structure; competency-based general education; active and integrated learning (“teaching as learning”); and putting learning to work (professional practice and citizenship). And in the following fall, faculty, staff and students resolved to commence a planning process to better articulate our shared ideas and aspirations, and the Chancellor committed his offices to pursuing the resources we would need to create “smart, articulate and engaged citizens and professional practitioners.”

Our labors – with the support and encouragement of the Green Bay community and the UW Board of Regents – have brought us a long way. Exciting possibilities now present themselves. The Regents have adopted our Learning Experience project as a major feature in the proposed 2001-2003 UW System Budget. And a Learning Experience Planning Committee, commissioned by the University Committee to convene this past summer, has transformed our “artist’s rendering” of the project into a set of formal planning guidelines. We still have much to accomplish – indeed, if the resources are forthcoming, our labors have just begun. Nevertheless, granted such resources we will have the chance for the first time in many years to work together in truly creative and imaginative ways.

Encouraged by developments on campus and at the System level, the University Committee now offers for campus-wide deliberation the present Learning Experience Proposal. We base our proposal and specific recommendations on the Planning Committee’s report.

We propose that the new Learning Experience initiative involve three core elements – High Impact Student Contact, Knowledge and Skills Based General Education, Professional Practice and Citizenship – and three essential supporting structures – Advising, Assessment, Faculty and Staff Development and Support. We offer the following recommendations for your consideration and, we hope, your approval.

We believe we can achieve great things. This Proposal presumes that we will secure significant new resources, and it depends on our doing so. Equipped with those resources, and pursuing the initiatives enumerated here, we are confident that faculty and staff will be able to better address student needs and development. We will enhance the learning experience. We will witness increased retention and graduation rates. We will empower our graduates. And we will contribute to Wisconsin’s continuing development by cultivating smart, articulate and engaged citizens and professional practitioners.

1. We will assure that academic programs, student support services, auxiliary operations and university-sponsored activities further enhance the student learning experience. We will make university programs and services more responsive to the learning needs of all students, including non-traditional and transfer students.

2. Faculty and Staff will develop ways to encourage students to assume responsibility for their learning and development. Assessment and advising will support this process.

3. We will integrate the ideals and practices of citizenship throughout the campus community.

4. We will develop, support and promote opportunities to increase the quality of student’s active involvement in learning through the integration of “teaching as learning” and other pedagogical innovations, student research opportunities, and increased co-curricular experiences.

5. We will provide “high impact” experiences for new students. The Student Orientation and Registration Program (SOAR) and the Introduction to College program will be mandatory.

6. We will institute a New Student Seminar program. These seminars will be variable in content but will share curricular objectives and might well involve selected themes.

7. We will develop a new knowledge- and skills-based general education program. Knowledge will be addressed through courses in Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Social Sciences and Public Affairs, and Humanities and the Arts. As much as possible, skills – critical and interdisciplinary thinking, information literacy and effective reading, writing, speaking and numeracy - will be cultivated in these courses. Students’ mastery of these skills will be assessed by their professors and recorded for advising and developmental purposes. The development of these skills and their assessment will continue throughout students’ undergraduate careers.

8. We will reduce General Education class sizes in favor of more effective knowledge acquisition and skills development. In recruiting new faculty, we will give foremost priority to the needs of general education and the strengthening of existing academic programs.

9. We will reduce faculty teaching workload by addressing group instruction responsibilities or by reassignments away from classroom instruction to ensure that faculty are better able to provide high quality instruction, assessment and advising.

10. We will provide resources for 13 staff positions that will be specifically identified as we move from this early planning phase to more specific implementation discussions. Likely areas to be addressed include Academic Advising, Assessment, Career Services, Registrar's Office and other Student Services areas.

11. We will require all students to have a professional practice and/or citizenship experience as a part of their academic program.

12. We will provide faculty advisors for all students throughout their entire collegiate experience.

13. We shall require that all students maintain a Learning Experience File (Portfolio) as a form of documentation of their learning experience and as an active tool for individual reflection and assessment.

14. We will provide professional development opportunities for faculty and staff that will be widely available and supported. We will value efforts related to the learning experience initiative and those efforts will be recognized during the tenure, promotion and merit review processes.

1. The Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics consists of ~~eight~~ nine appointed members: four faculty members (with no more than two from a domain voting district), two non‑instructional professional staff members, one student, ~~and~~ one community representative, and one ex-officio (voting) Faculty Athletics Representative.

2. Appointment to the committee shall be for a term of three years with the terms of members staggered so as to ensure continuity of membership. A member shall be eligible for reappointment for consecutive terms. Student and community representatives are appointed annually and when possible, continuity is encouraged.

Codification revision to clarify the role of members of the Personnel Council and the Committee of Six when candidates from their home units are being reviewed.

1. The appropriate Dean(s) shall seek the advice of the Personnel Council whenever a candidate for appointment or promotion is to receive tenure.

2. The Council shall develop written criteria to be used in providing its advice.

3. A member of the Personnel Council shall not take part in the deliberations or voting of the Council in the review of a candidate if the Council member is also a member of any other unit, program, or committee which is responsible for reviewing the candidate. When the operation of this rule reduces the active membership of the Council below four, the University Committee will designate alternative members to fill all vacancies caused by recusal.

4. On its own initiative, or upon request of the University Committee, the Personnel Council may advise the Faculty Senate about issues of personnel policy and implementation that fall within the jurisdiction of the Faculty.

1. The Committee consists of six tenured full professors elected by the Faculty, no more than two of whom shall be from a single domain voting district: i.e., one from each voting district and two at-large. Members serve three years and two new members are elected annually. A faculty member shall not serve on the Committee of Six and the Personnel Council or Committee on Rights and Responsibilities at the same time.

2. A member of the Committee of Six shall not take part in the deliberations or voting of the Committee in the review of a candidate if the Committee member is also a member of any other unit, program, or committee which is responsible for reviewing the candidate. When the operation of this rule reduces the active membership of the Committee below five, the University Committee will designate alternative members to fill all vacancies caused by recusal.

3. The Committee will review and advise the appropriate Dean(s) for promotion to the rank of full professor [Chapter 3.08 (4)(c)(d)].

[The effect of adopting this new provision of the code will be to change current practice. Members of all-university personnel review bodies will not in the future serve as members of those bodies when they are also members of the home interdisciplinary unit Executive Committee of a candidate or of any disciplinary Executive Committees or their functional equivalent in other units or programs that are advisory to the interdisciplinary unit Executive Committee in making personnel recommendations concerning the candidate. Members of the all-university review bodies may attend as guests the meetings from which they are excluded as members by virtue of this new provision. As guests they may speak or answer questions only at the invitation of the all-university review body.]

"The Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay requests that the legislature of the state of Wisconsin pass legislation granting faculty and academic staff of the University of Wisconsin System the right to engage in collective bargaining."

In re: Colleague Information Regarding Collective Bargaining Resolution and Possible Statute

I have copied below a message from a UW-Milwaukee colleague Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Lex Renda, Department of History, UW-Milwaukee and President, TAUWP UWM Chapter. I felt that we should at least have the opportunity to discuss this issue in the Senate and given this our last meeting of the academic year I felt it important enough to consider amending the agenda which had been distributed just prior to receipt of this message.

"Please excuse the intrusion of a colleague from another UW campus into your affairs.

I am writing because the faculty and academic staff of the UW-System need your help. The faculty senates of UW-Milwaukee, UW-Oshkosh, UW-Eau Claire, UW-Platteville, and UW-Stevens Point have passed resolutions requesting the legislature to pass a statute giving us collective bargaining rights. I humbly ask that at your May 9 meeting you consider passing such a resolution.

I am not asking you to vote for unionization, or for illegal strikes; nor am I asking you to do anything that would diminish your status as professionals. I am simply asking that you vote for the principle of self-determination. I am asking you to endorse a resolution that requests the legislature of this state to respect our right to make our own decisions.

The right to engage in collective bargaining is enjoyed by the faculties of of 4-year public colleges and universities in 29 states. The faculties in the public universities,including the flagships, of our neighboring states of Michigan, Illinois, and Minnesota, all enjoy this right. It is also enjoyed by all other professional employees of the state of Wisconsin, including medical doctors, lawyers, and psychiatrists.

Having the right to engage in collective bargaining does not mean an end to governance. It bolsters governance by giving the faculty a potential weapon they do not otherwise have. Let us recall what happened in Minnesota a few years ago. There, the Regents of the University of Minnesota system tried to end tenure. The faculty at the Twin Cities campus threatened to exercise their right, under statute, to engage in collective bargaining. Once that threat became credible, the Regents reversed course. They dropped their demands and instead endorsed hefty pay raises to the faculty. The right to engage in collective bargaining was, for the faculty at UMN, a form of leverage, one that we in the UW System do not have.

Nor would the right to engage in collective bargaining make unionization, whatever you may think of it, inevitable. Again, the faculty at most campuses around the country who have the right to engage in collective bargaining do not do so. It would take a majority vote of all members of the UW-Green Bay faculty, not just those who cast ballots, to create a union; and it would take a 2/3rds vote of, again the entire faculty, not just those who voted, before dues would be mandatory upon all members of the faculty. And the amount of those dues would be determined democratically.

The text of the proposed legislation, Senate Bill 145, can be seen by pointing your browser to:

The legislature may not grant us our wish in any case, but it surely will not grant it if we do not demand it. And so I ask you to cast a ballot for democracy and for basic human rights; to put your trust in the faculty more than in system administrators.