Announcement

Do you have questions about academic staff policies, or are you looking for ideas about how to more effectively attain your professional objectives and responsibilities?

CASI's mission is to advise the CoE Dean on policies and procedures affecting academic staff. To better meet that mission, we are hosting dialogues with academic staff. In these dialogues, academic staff are encouraged to:

• Discuss issues and questions affecting CoE academic staff (some topics from other dialogues included retention, personnel policies, governance, working titles, and opportunities to learn more about the CoE and to meet other academic staff, communications)
• Receive information on academic staff policies, and campus/CoE opportunities.

An agenda for these dialogues is attached. Although CASI will report the results of the dialogues, absolutely no attribution will be made to any individual academic staff member who participates.

Our final set of dialogues this year are:

• March 17, 9:00-10:30, 2421 Engineering Hall (snacks and non-Irish coffee served to celebrate St. Patrick's Day!): Facilitated by Simon Anderson
• March 25, 12:00-1:00, 1151 WARF: Facilitated by Colleen Heinkel
• April 1, 11:30-1:00, 414 ERB: Facilitated by Dennis Ray

If you would like to join us, please come! And if you can, let us know that you are coming by sending an email to casi@engr.wisc.edu indicating which Dialogue you will be attending.

We look forward to seeing you!

— Committee on Academic Staff Issues

P.S. If you have questions, email us at casi@engr.wisc.edu or call us (visit http://www.engr.wisc.edu/staff/casi/mm.html for contact information). General information about CASI can be found at http://www.engr.wisc.edu/staff/casi/

Agenda for CASI Dialogues [PDF version, 88 KB]

CASI's Mission: Advise the CoE Dean on Policies and Procedures Affecting Academic Staff

You are Invited to an Academic Staff Dialogue!

1. Overview of the Dialogue Session
   • Introductions of attendees and of CASI
   • Objectives
     • Share academic staff issues and questions
     • Get ideas for CASI activities
     • Provide information on academic staff policies, procedures and campus/CoE opportunities
   • Expectations for the session: What will CASI members do during the session?
     • Share information of interest to academic staff (concise handout provided, too!)
     • Dialogue on academic staff issues and questions
     • Ask for feedback on future CASI activities
   • Expectations for the session: What will CASI do after the session?
     • Summarize results for the CoE Dean and other CASI members
     • Produce CoE-wide, combined summary report about all sessions
     • Respond to issues or questions when possible
   • Expectations for the session: What will you be invited to do?
     • Participate in the dialogue
     • Provide feedback on ideas
   • General principles for the process
     • Confidentiality among attendees and in follow-up documents
     • Everyone will have an opportunity to contribute.
     • Engage in dialogue — not monologue or debate
2. Information resources for academic staff (including handout). Opportunities for involvement in CoE and Campus. CASI web site. Introduction to Academic Staff Assembly.
3. Brainstorming on information needs, issues and questions
• What are the major issues/questions facing academic staff in your area?
• Examples of type of issues:
•  - Workplace issues like civility, facility adequacy, etc.
•  - Personnel issues like promotion
•  - Professional development
4. Discussion and feedback on CASI ideas
   • Brown bag ideas: what CASI is planning?
   • Given what you know about CASI, what would you like CASI to do?
   • Brown bags, such as professional communications (for example, email, resume writing, interviewing letters), civility and climate as an institutional priority, types of academic staff appointments, professional development, awards, governance opportunities, CoE issues--budget, strategies
   • Communications (among staff, to/from CASI, etc.)
   • Issues advocacy (such as professional working titles)
   • etc.

Outcomes of Dialogues

CASI — Response to College of Engineering Academic Staff

TO: CoE (College of Engineering) Academic Staff
FROM: CASI (Committee on Academic Staff Issues)
SUBJECT: Dialog series
DATE: Apr. 29, 2004

Dear Colleagues:

Before we begin to discuss the outcomes of the recent dialog series, we would like to take this opportunity to thank each of you for your active participation. Holding these dialogs was a new endeavor for the Committee for Academic Staff Issues (CASI) and we are pleased that so many of you gave your time and thoughts to helping us learn about what's important to you.

This first note to you is to let you know about the various themes/issues that you raised:

• Appreciation, recognition, and respect
• Policies and procedures for academic staff:
• Knowledge of these by faculty and staff
• Ways to improve implementation
• Value of a mentoring program
• Job security
• Professional development
• Promotion

• Benefits
• Existing
• Changes
• Understanding of
• Options
• Academic staff (AS) retention
• Connectivity with other AS and with College of Engineering as a whole
• Governance
• Opportunities for participation
• Participation barriers
• Professional working titles for research and instruction
• Support for efforts to attain
• Administrative inefficiency

There were also good ideas for brown bag sessions and for CASI in general.

What's next?

Each of the above issues needs to be defined; this may mean collecting additional information about them, so that we can create clear problem statements.

Next, the planning of workable solutions and options can begin. Many of you indicated that you would like to help - here's your chance! We'll need to form teams to address each issue identified, and we'd like to have broad participation from academic staff beyond CASI.

The last step will be to prioritize the options that we want to pursue, and to put action plans and timelines into place.

Our work is just beginning, but it's a good beginning and we could not have done it without you. We're looking forward to working together as we begin to address our common interests and make the CoE an even better place to work.

P.S. For more information about CASI, please visit our Website at http://www.engr.wisc.edu/staff/casi

Copyright 2006 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System Date last modified: 23-Mar-2004 Date created: 30-Oct-2001 Content by: CASI Thank you for visiting http://www.engr.wisc.edu/staff/casi/evSpr2004dialogs.html