CALS Committee on Academic Staff Issues
Minutes for March 4, 2003

Meeting was called to order by Frank Kooistra at 8:35 p.m.

1. Opening Remarks.

   F. Kooistra went directly to item 2, Budget Report, on the agenda.

2. College Update

   • Budget Report - The campus is planning for a 5% and 8% budget reduction. CALS has delivered their strategy for a 5% reduction to the Vice Chancellor’s Office. The 5% scenario means a $1.9M reduction to CALS and the 8% scenario means a $3.2M reduction. The campus can address the current situation with a 4% cut but has decided to go with a 5% reduction so they can replenish their war chest. The Dean’s Office is completing their budget meetings with departments this week and the College is in fairly good shape. The reductions will be met mostly by cutting vacant positions and from supplies and expense. There will be very few layoffs. Six to eight faculty positions will not be filled. The tuition increase of $350/semester has not been approved by the Legislature. The cap on tuition was removed by the Governor but may be reinstituted by the Legislature. The departments have used soft money to minimize the cuts. If the cuts go higher than 5%, whole programs will be eliminated in CALS and layoffs will be targeted to those programs. CALS will have to turn back .67% in lapse money which means $320,000 in 101 funds will have to remain unspent. CALS has a self-imposed moratorium on out-of-state travel from 101 funds.

     Another issue that will impact the budget is the network upgrade for telephones and internet access. The Campus has received a $7M Cisco grant that the University needs to match two dollars for every dollar. The Chancellor feels the University cannot turn the grant down because email traffic has increased substantially and the University needs to be state-of-the-art to be competitive. The annual fee for current access will likely increase by $243,000 from 2002 to 2004. The charges on the upgrade will go from a line charge to FTE charge of $650/person. Some departments may actually save money. Administration will get a college-wide bill and will have to decide how to distribute it.

   • Facilities - Integrated Dairy and the Soil and Plant Analysis Lab have been released. Microbial Sciences and the Walnut Street Greenhouse are still under review. The Meats Lab has been cancelled. CALS hopes to hear about Microbial Sciences and the Greenhouse by next week. The power plant is a 150-megawatt project and MG&E expects to break ground this spring. F. Kooistra thinks this is very optimistic. There are environmental issues to address because of the impact on Lake Mendota. Fred Hall will be completely vacated by July 1. If approved, it is scheduled to be demolished next year with construction starting in spring, 2004.

   • Governance Survey - The survey should be out by the next meeting pending Dean Aberle’s approval.

   • Vice Chancellor for Administration - Darrell Bazzell is the new Vice Chancellor for Administration. He has met with Dean Aberle and ASEC and has been invited to the Assembly. He is trying to get out and meet people.

3. Approval of Minutes

   One correction to the minutes - add B. Hudelson to the list of attendees. T. Wright made a motion to approve the minutes as amended. B. Hudelson seconded the motion.

4. Questions from the committee

   C. Dillhunt will add this year’s minutes to the CASI website.

5. Academic Planning Council Report

   No report - Dick Wolkowski was not present.

6. Committee Reports

   Academic Staff Awards and PD - The committee met to fine tune the criteria and distributed a copy of the criteria and eligibility requirements they would like to include with the call for nominations next year. The award recipients this year are: Leadership - Cheryl Skjolaas, Department of Biological Systems Engineering; Research - Wilma Ross, Department of Bacteriology; and Service - Patrick Hoffman, Department of Dairy Science. They had nine nominations this year.

   Communications, Website & Districting - C. Dillhunt will get the website up to date.

   Nominations and Mentoring - The committee is meeting on Wednesday.
   
   Personnel Procedures and Compensations - Two more emails went out on position descriptions and layoffs and non-renewals. B. Jensen suggested the committee talk about the direction of the subcommittees at a future meeting. F. Kooistra said that CALS CASI Annual Report is about average when compared to other schools/colleges. C. Dillhunt will add links from our CASI website to other CASI websites.

   Governance - R. Russell was not present.

Folders for new academic staff members were distributed.

Meeting adjourned at 10:05 a.m.

Submitted 3/6/03
J. Simons