Expectations:
1. The Chancellor will prioritize cuts to administrative positions and salaries over instructional/student support positions and salaries. The primary mission of the university is education. The size of the Administration has increased significantly in the last ten years at the same time that teaching positions have declined. There is also more salary savings to be accrued from administrative positions, in that they are paid much more than instructional staff and University staff. In many cases, the savings from the salary of a single administrator could save the jobs of two or three instructors and student support personnel.

2. The Chancellor and Provost will recognize that Instructional Academic Staff are indispensably necessary to realize a research-enhanced University.  Long and valuable IAS service should be recognized, and every effort made to renew the contracts of those who have made a career out of teaching here.  The Chancellor will commit to the best practices outlined in the Provost’s IAS Contract Task Force, including timely issuance of annual or two-year contracts. Teaching Assistant Professor status will be offered to the majority of long-term IAS.

3. The Chancellor will commit to more meaningful and more widely-recognized shared governance norms.  This includes, but is not limited to the Faculty Senate, the Senate of Academic Staff, the University Staff Senate and Oshkosh Student Association each having a representative position in the Chancellor’s Cabinet.  The President of the Faculty Senate will be invited to present the faculty’s view of the state of the institution at Convocation.  No faculty or staff should now or ever face or fear retaliation for taking a position on what UWO should look like and be committed to.

4. Increasing teaching loads should be recognized by the Chancellor and Provost as a harm to academic quality, and contrary to UW Oshkosh policy. The Faculty Workload Policy, signed by the Chancellor in 2022, requires that “each academic unit…shall have policies and procedures in place to reassign up to six (6) of the standard 24 SCH load each academic year to support such scholarly activities.” Increased teaching loads should be used as a temporary expedient only, not as a new norm, and only in departments where doing so will save money. Creative scheduling, compensation, and workload practices (such as banking classes, schedule adjustments, and overload payments) can be employed to balance workloads. No faculty member should be required to teach in an area outside of their expertise.

5. Clarity will be provided by the Chancellor and Provost about workload and working conditions for faculty who remain, to build trust and to inform people about their careers.  Will 6 credits of reassigned time for scholarly and creative activity be the norm or be the exception for faculty after 2024-25?  Work with the faculty to clearly define what it means to be a “research-enhanced university” and the implications for workload and research release that this entails.

6. A viable part-time option should be available for faculty who wish to go to lower than full-time status to continue voluntary reductions of payroll.  

7. Probationary and furloughed faculty will have the opportunity to request adjustments to tenure and renewal review periods. Increased workloads will limit opportunities to meet existing expectations for scholarship and creative activity.

8. The Administration will pledge to provide full and clear budgetary information to faculty and staff leaders from now on, so that warnings can be sounded and steps taken well before we face another fiscal disaster.