Documents from the Thursday, March 10 UW System Board of Regents meeting.
Tenure
Post-tenure Review
Layoffs
Amendments
Documents from the Thursday, March 10 UW System Board of Regents meeting.
Tenure
Post-tenure Review
Layoffs
Amendments
UW System Tenure Policy Task Force
PROFS continues to actively follow the work of the UW System Tenure Policy Task Force. The Board of Regents meets Thursday, March 10 and will discuss recommendations of the Regent Education Committee. Board action on UW-Madison’s draft policy is not expected until April.
Wisconsin Legislature
Republican leadership has said the Assembly has adjourned for the session, but the Senate plans to meet again March 15. Both houses could reconvene in special or extraordinary sessions. PROFS is monitoring and lobbying on several items:
PROFS Forum on Self-insurance for State Employees
The Group Insurance Board met last month and voted to issue a request for proposals on self-insurance for state employees. PROFS hosted a forum featuring three insurance experts the following week. Video here.

Alice Dreger
PROFS is pleased to cosponsor a public discussion with Alice Dreger, a former clinical professor at Northwestern University.
Dreger, author of Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science, will talk about academic freedom and how it relates to research. She will also share ways in which researchers can work individually and together to protect themselves.
She will speak at noon, Friday, March 4 in the Wisconsin Idea Room in the Education Building, 1000 Bascom Mall.
This is event is hosted by the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE) and cosponsored by the Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, the Department of History of Science, and the Wisconsin HOPE Lab.
Video from the February 23 PROFS forum on self-insurance for state employees is embedded below.
The forum attracted more than 150 members of the university community. The panelists — UW-Madison School of Business professor Justin Sydnor; Lisa Ellinger, Director of Office of Strategic Health Policy with the Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds; and Mike Bare, Research and Program Coordinator for the Community Advocates Public Policy Institute — offered their thoughts on self-insurance and took questions from the audience.
https://vimeo.com/156610797
Many thanks to the panelists for sharing their expertise and offering their invaluable insight on this important topic.
Governor Scott Walker announced the appointment of three new members to the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents earlier this month. Tracey Klein, a Milwaukee attorney, and Bryan Steil, a Beloit attorney, will serve regular seven-year terms, while Lisa Erickson, a UW-River Falls journalism student, will serve a two-year term as non-traditional student regent.
Klein is a shareholder at the Milwaukee law firm of Reinhart Boerner Van Dueren where she chairs their health care practice. She is a member of the UW-Madison Political Science Department Board of Visitors, the Marquette University Law School Board of Visitors, and the Southeast Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District Board of Directors. She is a graduate of UW-Madison and Marquette University Law School. The Capital Times reported she is a generous contributor to Governor Walker.
Steil is associate general counsel at Regal Beloit. He previously worked as a legislative assistant to Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Janesville). He is a graduate of Georgetown University and the University of Wisconsin Law School. His grandfather, George K. Steil, Sr., was a member of the Board of Regents from 1990 to 1997.
Erickson, of Osceola, is a former catering company owner. In addition to being a student, she writes a weekly food column and is a crisis pregnancy counselor.
The Wisconsin Assembly is scheduled to vote today on a package of bills designed to improve college affordability. The bills were announced by Governor Scott Walker and quickly approved by the Assembly Colleges and Universities Committee last month. The bills have widespread Republican support, but Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) said lower-than-expected tax revenues may pare back funding for the proposals.
While PROFS is pleased the governor and legislative leaders are discussing college affordability we strongly believe renewing the state’s commitment to public higher education is the most effective way to keep college costs down.