Reaccreditation Committee - Team 5 Meeting - Monday, Feb 18th

The Reaccreditation meeting for "Building a Welcoming, Respectful, and Empowered UW-Madison Community" met this Monday the 18th. This was our last official "retreat" meeting.
First, we broke up into groups and discussed what the "Wisconsin Experience" is for everyone on campus. We looked at the document that relates to students and talked about how we could change it to include faculty and staff.
Then we discussed first-year experiences and how we could potentially create a program for new faculty and staff on campus. My group brought up the idea of creating small groups of facstaff what will work together in the first year to learn and experience the UW and Madison. Other ideas were shared at the end which included a "Passport," which would be a document that all new facstaff would have to fill out in their first year with outside events.
Since this was out last formal meeting, we decided to meet every Wednesday at 3:30 in the Microcosm Cafe to talk about the next steps. I will try to make it to these coffee sessions, and will keep Shared Gov updated.

UW Admissions receives record number of applications

According to this WSJ article, UW-Madison has received a record number of applications (24,747) for admission in the freshman class. In addition, the Office of Admissions is cutting back the number of admitted students by 2,000. Could this steady surge in UW's competitiveness be a factor in whether or not UW moves from rolling admissions to a hard deadline? Kayla Stone reported on this possibility a couple weeks ago (see here). 

University General Education Committee, February 7, 2008 meeting

At this gen. ed. meeting we discussed in most detail the LEAP initiative. This program is all about working on defining and utilizing learning outcomes for a liberal education. Wisconsin is a pilot state, because it using this program at the system-wide level. There will be a learning session about essential learning outcomes for a select number of faculty (focused on those who teach large numbers of freshmen and transfer students). We also discussed long-range assessment planning, which again works in the idea of learning outcomes. Look for more information to come on the gen. ed. website about assessment done last summer on the library competency of incoming freshmen. Judging will begin soon for the Liberal Arts Essay competition; three essays will be submitted at the campus level (authors will receive $500 scholarships) and one for the system level (author will receive a $1000 scholarship).

Lectures Committee

The Lectures Committee meets once every semester to discuss policies; however, during the 2006-2007 academic year, the committee financially supported 87 lectures for a total expenditure of $80, 475. These lectures were sponsored by 73 different campus units.

The committee encourages student organizations (those formally registered with the SOO) to apply for lecture support with co-sponsorship from an academic department or program.

Lectures Committee Support Request Forms and more information are available at: http://www.secfac.wisc.edu/lectures/lectcomm/

Minutes for Febuary 14th

Associated Students of Madison

Shared Governance Committee

February 14, 2008

On Wisconsin A (Red Gym)

5:00-6:00 PM

Agenda

I. Introductions

Introduction consisted of name and what you want to see in the new Student Union

II. Announcements

a. ASM kickoff – February 20^th at 7:00 pm – 3650 Humanities

-There will be a meeting next Tuesday (we want to help with the recruitment drive)

-We need volunteers to help set up at 5:30 on Tuesday (talk to Adam) There was a sign up and there will be an email sent out from Adam to those that volunteer

b. Social – Friday, March 7 at 9:30 pm, La Ciel Apartments

-Huge ASM Social (You should come)

III. Standing Committee Updates

Gen ED Committee

PHD and Library sciences might want to help freshmen through the LEAP program (The group focuses on the liberal arts education and also on freshmen and transfer student)

Next meeting they are looking to asses Com B requirement.

There is a student essay contest (this time they will change to 3 students winner instead of 1) (Prize is $500)

Lectures Committee

(meet once per semester)

-Talked about award money (Placed a limit on award value to less than $1,000)

-They want student Organizations to use the money and every org can apply once semester ---huge lack of student org participation) (Funding is based on time year)

-If you are interested send your form you Jodie Brown

-It will be on the blog if you want more information

Rec Sports Meeting

-Looked over budget for the next academic year

-Nelson tennis center (rates go up by $1)

-They plan on spending $75,000 on track replacement

-They are going to replace the locker room in the SERF (estimated cost ~ $175,000)

-If you want a summer pass it will cost $15 (unless you are taking summer classes)

-Dance classes are going up $5

-All intramural sports are at full capacity right now (The most active group is basketball, which has 275 teams) Next year they want to increase to capacity to 315 team

-We will look into using the basketball for soccer. (response in later meetings)

BID Board (sp?)

-Frances street improvements are under way.

-They want someone to help chose the art that will be on the wall

-40 local artists submitted art work in hopes of being implemented.

-If you are interested in choosing what art work is used, send an email to Jeff

UHS Executive

(1^st meeting)

-Brought up the question what are the most important traits for the nominee to have?

-They want student input (educated input).

- It is up to us on how we go about the search for candidates

-March 5^th is the deadline for questions

IV. Grocery Store Campaign

a. Concept presentation on Monday, February 25

b. We will be presenting to the campus communities (union directorate is hosting)

c. Students/Staff will weigh in what they want in the union

d. We have the finalized version of the plans for the meeting but we need a presenting teem

e. This is the kick off project (it will be focused on information and motivation for the project)

f. This is a very important step and we only have 15 minutes to present (we need 3 people to present)

g. Presentation will feature how it got started, how the student feel, market studies, and more

h. May 5 is the dead line for the Design so we need to have people share their ideas if they want them implemented

i. If you want to get involved in the presentation email Jeff (rough draft will be presented for Tuesday’s meeting)

V. Current recruitment campaign: “An accessible, quality education”

a. Campaign is centered around tuition and legislative affairs

b. SO what role does Shared Gov have to play in this campaign?

c. BRAINSTORM: Our focus is getting students on committees, It will be hard to get higher spending BUT we have a deficit in the state, the state is cutting spending, Tuition has to go up to make up for the spending cuts, This is a conversation (tuition cost vs. facilitates) that we are constantly having,

d. we have a huge problem with getting more people from Milwaukee because of the socioeconomic status, Maybe we could focus on freezing tuition, We don’t want to “Freeze tuition” because the administration will cut the Quality of UW Madison, We need to make scholarships more available (the university give VERY little scholarship for incoming freshmen),

e. we need to make ASM more visible to the state, We need to target certain committees by getting more student representation,

f. ((we will have a future meeting specifically what committees will be targeted to act as our campaign))

VI. Discussion

a. Capitol Neighborhoods, Inc.

i. Alcohol Tax

-Elie Judge (sp?) talked about research on the alcohol in the area

-The city do not believe in the Capitol Neighbor’s demands (thus there is no huge worry at this point)

-One police officer even spoke in favor in UW Students saying that: 20%-30% arrests are made down town are UW students (the rest being Edgewood, out of state, etc)

-UW Madison has a huge alcohol culture and we can’t change that. The alcohol problem has drop DRASTICLY since the 1980’s.

b. Shared Governance Blog

-Can we improve it?

-How can promote it to the new nominees when appointed?

c. Chancellor SnS

-Talk about this next week

VII. Speaker on active student representation (Bill Cronon)

-Do students want to have an information session on how to be an effect student Rep.? (General consensus was it would be helpful)

Next couple weeks we will try to have Bill Cronon speak during one of our Tuesday meetings

VIII. Adjournment

Information Technology Committee February Meeting

The ITC started our meeting off with receiving an update on the Learn@UW outage. The start of the semester is one of the busiest times for Learn@UW, as everyone checks out their course webpage. Unfortunately, on the first day of classes this semester, the extra load exposed a problem with Learn@UW, and in order to fix the system it had to be shut down. Service was restored that day, but Learn@UW serves the entire UW system, not just the Madison campus, so any outage affects a lot of students and faculty. The committee had to resist the urge to try and design a “fix” for the system during the meeting, and let the staff that supports Learn@UW work on a solution. It is well-known that the other busy time of the semester is the end of the semester. I think this outage affected the faculty more than the students. Personally, it didn’t bother me at all that I couldn’t look at the course webpage on the first day of classes. I’m far more concerned about it being available at the end of the semester, when there is a final coming up and last bits of homework to turn in.

The UW is finalizing a contract for a mass text messaging system. This was already in the works before yesterday’s senselessness at NIU. This will add one more tool that the UW can use to get the word out to the UW community. A campaign to get people signed up for the service is being developed, and it’s something that ASM could get involved with. Other campuses that have text messaging systems don’t have a very high percentage of their students signed up – no campus is over 50%, and even Virginia Tech is only at about 35%. There is also an effort to look at the cellular infrastructure on campus, and how much load could it handle. At the Obama rally, some people could get through, and others couldn’t. Yesterday, cell call volume at NIU was 12 times greater than normal, which made a lot of cell phones useless. This summer the phone lines for the Twin Cities were jammed the night of the bridge collapse. I think part of any campaign should be getting people to think about how to shift the notification load to outside the immediate area. Instead of calling everyone in your family all across the country, can you get a hold of one person and ask them to call around for you?

The committee talked about information safeguarding. Recently, some UW IDs were exposed on the web, and some of those IDs were still based on social security numbers. Several years ago, all students were forced to switch to a non-SSN based ID number, but faculty and staff were not required to switch. The UW has done an inventory, and there are about 8,000 SSN-based ID numbers still active. (A few students still have SSN-based ID numbers, if they were previously a student and subsequently returned.) The UW is moving to finally force the elimination of SSN-based ID numbers once and for all.

In other ID card news, the current UW ID card is about to get an upgrade. The “One Card” will consolidate a number of existing UW ID cards into one. For example, many people carry a card for building access in addition to their UW ID. The “One Card” will be able to do both. The goal is to start issuing them by June 1st, so all incoming SOAR students will have the new card. Housing wants to start using the One Card for access to their buildings, instead of the current key frobs. This is going to present a challenge. I’m hoping that the new cards will be available this semester, so upperclassmen that live in the dorms won’t all have to get new cards on their first day back on campus next fall, but it doesn’t sound likely they’ll be ready before finals.

The agenda and supporting documents, along with past meeting minutes, are on the ITC website: itc.wisc.edu

Morgridge Center for Public Service Advisory Board Meeting February 13, 2008

The Morgridge Center for Public Service Advisory Board is a committee that meets each semester to discuss issues that deal with student volunteering and community outreach programs. Yesterday we talked about how the Morgridge Center received a gift of money and they now want to increase the number of staff they have. This presents a problem though becuase of the limited amount of space at the Red Gym. They are looking to make a new administrative home and have a satellite location in the new Union South, the plans have not been finalized yet. The committee was also concerned with service learning courses appearing on the time table. Currently the only way to know if a class offers a service learning component is to check the notes, the board aims to get a box in the advanced search option where students can check off if the are looking for a service learning class. This is important because of the new Civic Engagement Certificate UW-Madison will soon be offering. Another point of the meeting was that the 10,000 hours show (a concert put on for students who volunteer for more than 10 hours a year) will be on April 2nd. The board wanted more students to know about the show and thought ASM could help. They were also excited becuase now Sororities have to volunteer 10 hours a year and they can add to the total to reach 10,000 volunteer hours. If you are interested in logging your volunteer hours to get a FREE concert the web site is... http://10000hoursmadison.rso.wisc.edu/