ASUW Transition Website

BOD: University Affairs

To Clara: Letter to successor

Letter to successorDear Adrien,

This role is not an easy one, and you will have to learn a lot in a very short time, but you are equipped with a wealth of experience fighting for students, as well as your genuine dedication to what is righ hope you aren’t too hard on yourself. Just do what you can with the resources and time that you have. As long as you do your best, you can be proud of the work that you did regardless of the outcome :). Also, only do what’s important and only go to meetings that are important. Leave things that are good enough alone!

Best,

Lukas

To Clara: Logins/Passwords

Logins/Passwords

Login: asuwbdua@uw.edu

Password: Akeyo1997 (Rene made this)

This login is for google (you probably have a new one if you’re seeing this), Slack, Trello (which I didn’t use), and probably anything else that I’m forgetting.

FYI my Slack notifications are always off. Feel free to change this setting if you’d like (I don’t recommend)

To Clara: People/Contacts

People/Contacts
    • FCSA chair >> Ann Culligan
    • FCAS chair >> Ann Huppert
    • FCTL chair >> Tom Halverson
    • FS chair >> Robin Angotti
    • FS vice chair >> Chris Laws (also former FCSA chair, good dude)
    • Faculty Council Analyst >> Alexandra (forgot last name)
      • She’s basically the secretary for all the Faculty Councils. Please remind her to send you all Faculty Council agendas.
    • Phil Reid >> Vice Provost for Academic and Student Affairs
      • Oversees enrollment management division (admissions office, financial aid office,  registrar’s office — relevant to PACS, FCAS, and FCTL), the Center for Teaching and Learning (relevant to PACS and FCTL), and academic technologies [Zoom, Canvas, Panopto, etc.] (relevant to PACS and FCTL)
    • University registrar >> Helen Garrett
    • Associate registrar >> Tina (forgot last name)
    • Enrollment management Associate Vice Provost >> Vacant. Used to be Dan Ratner (interim, good dude), but he’s now an Associate Dean in COE. You’d perhaps find it useful to meet with him. He used to be chair of FCAS and SCAG. Very knowledgeable in admissions and holistic review.
    • PACS chair >> Idk about this guy. I hear he’s trouble :/
    • Zack (forgot last name) >>  WSA Executive Director. He was the immediate former WSA president (back when he was a student).

To Clara: Appointments/Meetings

Appointments/Meetings

FCSA, SCAP, SCAG (these are non-negotiable)

FCSA, FCTL (you should sit on these)

PACS (you sit on this)

SEC (you’re there)

Leg Steering

International Student Taskforce (this is new your year. You will probably be the president’s designee on this0

WSA (you will probably be the president’s designee on this)

Faculty Senate (you probably don’t have to be there unless something actually important is happening)

Advisory Committee on Student Conduct, College Advisory Councils (make sure you have reliable appointees on these)

To Clara: Pre fall quarter/ first few weeks

  • Fall quarter
    • I’d highly recommend having interns to help you with committees — specifically with the student advisory councils for the colleges. They’re at the same time as PACS, so you won’t be able to attend.
      • I made the intern app due before the start of fall quarter. I’d recommend choosing 2 to start. They are probably going to be people who are already familiar with ASUW/UA affairs. Then, I’d go ahead and open the application again and choose 1 more intern who is new to ASUW.
    • Meet with all of the people listed on the contact list.
    • Check in with OGR and Senate at least weekly. I used to just pop into their offices to chat. Support them with anything they need.
    • Send all Faculty Council appointments to Alexandra and Joey
  • Week -1 >> send emails introducing yourself to ALL the people on the contact list and meet the ones who are especially important.
    • When you meet with them, try to have your agenda for the year set
  • Week 0 >> start drafting legislation for Senate. Basically the “university agenda” for the year
    • Distance learning
      • There are a couple of different initiatives regarding this. I’d perhaps split them up into separate resolutions. The MyPlan portion is perhaps the most likely to be adopted by faculty and admin. The PACS memo regarding this goes into specific details. Christine (SDC) can help
      • See the 2019 and 2016 Panopto surveys. They should be somewhere in your inbox
    • Holistic review for major admissions
      • See the PACS memo regarding this. I would again maybe split the recommendations up into different resolutions if you think that’s best. Ann Huppert would be a good contact along with Phil, Paul (admissions director re: holistic review), chairs of SCAG and SCAP
      • For the “more online classes” suggestion, faculty and admin are instinctively against this. I’d probably do a resolution asking Phil’s office to do a survey of departments/faculty asking which of their classes is deliverable online and if they’d be open to expanding classes that way.
        • Math 12X is a good example of this already happening (capacity issues)
    • Flexible tuition payment options
      • Wendi Z. was working on a resolution surrounding this. She has the contacts (SFS director) as well
    • Legislative priorities
      • Make sure lecture capture and residency question are on there. I think you are familiar with these issues.
    • The majority of classes will probably still be online. This may be controversial, but perhaps a resolution on Proctorio and Proctor U. FCTL (allegedly) has a working group on this that you (or a rep) should be a part of. Alece can help with context. She knows the FCTL folks pretty well.
  • Week 1 >>
    • Start doing Leg Steering and PACS appointments with Camille
    • Bills to bring back the 2 taskforces that were put on hold in spring
      • Transfer student taskforce (see board bill)
        • LyAnne from FYP is a good contact
        • Dan Ratner is a good contact
        • Ann Huppert is a good contact
      • Student participation in School/College governance taskforce (see board bill)
        • The chair for the student advisory councils for the following colleges: engineering, environment, arts and sciences
  • Week 2 >>
    • You’ll probably have to open an application for the Advisory Committee on Student Conduct. I sat on it this year. Andrea from FCSA is the chair and a good person to chat with regarding it. Also Anton, who works in the president’s office.
    • Religious accommodations bill will probably come up in Senate (thanks Wendi). Make sure it passes.
    • Other things to start looking into this week

Funding for WSA

  • Try to make it a mandatory fee like UPASS. Alece can help since shes FB and also Finance director for WSA.

Student health insurance/ student health fee

  • Another intersection with Alece/SAF.
  • I would probably do a taskforce to look into the feasibility of this

Hall health

  • Something that kind of bothers me is that SAF funds subsidies non student visits to Hall Health. This is part of larger discussion with SAF, PACS, and others. I don’t have any answers, but it should be looked into in earnest!

At this point, you should be pretty well set up for the rest of the year. You can play the rest of it by ear. Fall is mostly just a set up quarter. Winter is when everything gets done. If it doesn’t happen in winter, it probably won’t happen at all.

I left Navid’s notes to Angelia below because they’re really good. Angelia didn’t write me anything :).

Letter to successor

Angelia — When you get overwhelmed or stressed or frustrated remind yourself this job is more impactful than you think. Although you will get very little credit, remember you are having a direct hand in shaping the future experience of students and you could be responsible for make or breaking their time here at UW. The job can also be more fun than you think, you just have to let yourself enjoy it. Let your values and beliefs be your guide, and always focus on building relationships with everyone you encounter. You are going to do an incredible job, best of luck!

-Navid

Logins/Passwords

Login: asuwbdua@uw.edu (make sure you’re incognito and logged in on MyUW)

Password: 2017bodrocks! (Rene made this)

Weekly To Do’s

The below schedule is from my predecessor and not entirely true for me, however you can use it as a template. For me every week was different besides a few repeat meetings, so find what works for you. On Saturday or Sunday afternoons I would usually go through most of my emails, fill out office hours, and plan for the week. I usually planned for at least the next 1.5 weeks, or even 2 weeks since coordinating meetings with admin/faculty sometime take a tad longer.

Sundays: Office hours and replying to emails

Mondays: Office hours, University Transportation Committee

Tuesdays: Student Senate (Faculty Council on Student Affairs at times)

Wednesday: Office hours

Thursday: Board Meeting (Faculty Senate at times)

Friday: FCAS/SCAP, PACS

Other meetings to be scheduled: OGR staff meeting, interns meeting, writing board reports, making appointments

Quarterly Goals

Fall Quarter:

• Begin the process for the Leg Steering Committee as soon as possible. Open applications sooner, rather than later and ensure that voices across the ASUW, include JCC and Senate, are heard throughout the process.

• Submit any proposals to the Washington Student Association (WSA) to make certain lobby items a priority for the WSA.

• Appoint interns and/or representatives to faculty councils and committees within the first month. It is a busy time, but the sooner these appointments occur, the easier this job will be later in the quarter/year.

• Plan weekly 1:1s with OGR staff

• Decide early in the quarter with OGR/OComm if you want to do Husky Stories. If so start collecting stories in early November when you have a slight idea of what the Leg Agenda will look like since you want Husky Stories to align with Leg Agenda.

Winter Quarter:

• Lobby Day occurs quickly; make sure to plan in advance and ensure OGR communicates and works with GPSS. The planning process needs to be shared among both GPSS and ASUW to make sure each group gets their desired meetings with legislators.

• Work closely with the Director of Legislative Affairs and President to give clear priorities on which bills ASUW is advocating for. Constantly check in on progress of bills and coordinate student testimonies in Olympia if need be.

• Meet with chairs of faculty councils again to make sure student-centric initiatives are being focused on

• During this quarter you have more time to work on personal projects/initiatives, but start them early in the quarter or you will not have enough time to see them through until the end. This is the quarter when I focused on international student issues more.

Spring Quarter:

• ASUW SPARK. Figure out if you want to do it, ideally you should since Spring 2019 would be its 3rd annual year. Set the dates with LPC early since you most likely will want to invite the Provost and you have to send in a request early so they can book the Provost.

• The last quarter is busy since elections happen early. Wrap up anything you are doing, but be aware faulty/admin meetings go into finals week. Make sure to start training/transitioning your successor as soon as you can.

• At the end of the quarter you have OGR hirings. You already know what to do for this one.

People/Contacts

There are so many people you should know so its nearly impossible to list them all. I already introduced you to many people, but there will always be more. For many of the positions/chairs below individuals have not been selected yet at the time of this writing, but you can easily find out by emailing Joey or one of the other support staff.

Appointments/Meetings

At the beginning of the year add the times of certain meetings you know you will be attending to your calendar for the entire year/quarter. Doing that helps with long term planning. For meetings details/agendas for faculty councils see here: http://www.washington.edu/faculty/councils/

Misc Information

This is a large list of topics, information, issues, and more that you should be aware about. Although I told you all of this in person, these are some of the things you should be aware of.

Tuition

  • Tuition is go up this next year, it has to in order for the school to maintain operations. will go up by at least 2% (maybe 2.2%). This is due to state law and a compromise/result of the tuition freeze from a few years ago. I believe it goes up only as much as the median household income in WA state.
  • Differential tuition
    • Think about the larger fiscal situation of university and what we want the university to look like. How does quality/excellence matter to future students?
    • Think about fair/competitive faculty pay, fund split, and how we can retain and attract high quality faculty
    • Many other UW peers have shifted to some sort of differential tuition model
    • Also need to think about how to differentiate overhead/admin services, not just that of in a department/major.
    • Big topic, hard conversation to have. But budgets are shrinking and expenses of higher education is rising. This might be a solution.
    • Don’t forget about equity and ensuring those who are are low income and marginalized still have equal access
    • Resolution from 2012 outlining student opinion and specific restrictions/limitations” https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PhNpBOx5Lx_s4g9zR3eJQnlGSMc3gR-gJInYjqrysu0/edit
    • Search The Daily for old articles about the issues and situation former student governments faced regarding this differential tuition

Enrollment Management and DTX

  • Enrollment management is shaping the future of the university and students we attract and enroll. We’re aiming to better manage the types of students we bring in so we don’t accept 4 students who apply for every 1 seat we have in engineering. This is why DTC model was adopted.
  • DTX is general term incapsulating all different types/phrasing of DTC. Coined by Philip Ballinger from Enrollment Managment
  • DTC (Direct to College)
    • Currently implemented for College of Engineering starting with freshman class entering Fall 2018
  • DFA (Direct Freshman Admit) or DTM (Direct to Major)
    • Approved for CS starting with freshman class entering Fall 2019. Will accept most of their majors in this process, so students already at the UW will have a nearly impossible time applying and getting into CS. However space within major will be kept for transfer students which have historically been more diverse.
  • DTD (Direct to Division)
    • College of Arts & Science are pursuing this and the proposal will most likely consume a large part of your faculty meetings this upcoming year. The timeline seems to be to implement this for freshman entering Fall 2020. I have spoken about this extensively,  so be prepared to discuss this as it is a huge change and will affect students across campus for years to come.

Student Accommodations

Current discussion about why students need accommodations and why they’re missing class. How can we accommodate students in a better way? Big push from SDC and other student groups on this. This is a wide encompassing category and can include many things, below are a few specific types.

  • Religious Accommodations: think of Senate resolution passed during my term and Ramadan as an example. Work with MESC and others on this. Maybe push to for best practices for syllabi to include something about religious accommodations. This is another big topic that has gained some traction during my term and it will be up to you to continue to push it forward.
  • Medical excuse notes: Hall Health visits where students request medical excuse notes is 5-10%. It’s a waste of resources and at any moment they can decide to deny writing these and that will have equity issues for those without access to another healthcare provider. Chris Laws has been a huge champion of this, so has Helen Garrett. Ideally pass a Senate resolution early in Fall quarter opposing medical excuse notes, work with Chris/Helen to make sure the language in the resolution is succinct and effective.

Random Notes

  • Include better faculty compensation/pay in the Leg Agenda. Faculty will appreciate it and allows UW to remain focused on quality/excellence of academics
  • Consider bi-weekly or bi-monthly meetings with Student Senate Chair to make sure relationship is strong and coordinate follow up. Many on the forwarding clauses are people you frequently interact with so you should be aware of who is getting sent what since admin/faculty will ask you questions about the resolutions/emails they receive from other students.
  • UW Policy Directory: https://www.washington.edu/admin/rules/policies/
    • You will visit this page frequently. Don’t try to read the whole thing since it is massive, but be very familiar with this as students will ask you about this and admin/faculty will mention specific parts. Many students also have ideas and desires to change certain polices so be ready to answer questions about it.
  • International Students: Talk with Denzil about his potential initiative CIRLCE (Center for International Relations and Student Leadership Exchange). His idea is to create a physical student center for international students (smilier to Q Center or Student Veterans office)
  • Academic Student Misconduct Survey: Elizabeth Lewis (Director of Community Standards and Student Conduct) spoke with me about this and plans to release survey to both faculty and students in November 2018. In Winter quarter they plan on assembling some task force/committee to review the results. If you hear about something like this, encourage students to take it and contact Elizabeth if you have questions.
  • ABB (Activity Based Budgeting): Method of how money is allocated at UW. It is complicated and confusing at times, but dictates how the Colleges/Schools at UW get their funding. Read the FAQS on OPB (Office of Planning & Budgeting) website or ask Sarah Hall to explain.

ASUW Links

Conference Room

OVO

Misc.

Notes from Predecessors

Below are notes/docs/tidbits from my predecessors. FYI, not everything they mention is relevant/applicable anymore. Some of my personal experiences in relation to the following:

  • I wrote my notes in a notebook and I found that to be extremely helpful to have them all consolidated in a single place that was not digital.
  • I did not get interns for various reasons. Interns for faculty/university level committees must be officially appointed for the entire year and cannot switch back and forth week to week or quarter to quarter.

Kaitlyn Zhou (UA 2016-2017)

Specific meeting notes throughout the quarter

Autumn: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WR3TICmo_7Bn-5UDWZ_cHy4skLArpWBDmAQD2dTuqJ0/edit

Winter: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UBpKEphtI5i9TCHgXpPoOv07ibsg9lTMC3TzfNqXcKk/edit

Spring: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WLZyr8A5ZqHqxCdBEa5oyPdolqJqJsU2nfHeSzJRRRY/edit

Interns

Structure:

  • Rough start, winter and spring had a fair amount of work
  • First quarter – hard when we didn’t have regular meetings
  • Assigning each intern meetings
  • Having scheduled staff meetings

Meetings:

  • Definitely a learning curve (even though we thought we were plugged in)
  • Acronyms and people we didn’t know
  • First meetings are very rough (not sure if there’s a solution)
  • Letting your interns know that there’s a learning curve
  • Practice speaking up in the meetings – how to best approach that
  • Weird being the sole voice
  • The types of language and tone – types of language

Suggestions:

  • Personal projects – start planning them earlier: first quarter so they have the whole time
  • Time during intern meetings to actually talk about it
  • More scheduled time
  • More shadowing to start

Small Tasks:

  • Accessible for questions
  • Opening up – and didn’t know what was happening

What did you gain?

  • As a freshman, learned a lot about how the school worked
  • Learning about the background and the policies
  • Going to faculty meetings, learning about the process on how to make change
  • Learning about the different programs
  • Learning how complicated and how large these decision processes are
  • Also learned that it is possible to make change – FCAS and engineering: if you really don’t like something you can make it work
  • Leveraging senate – passing resolutions and advocating for them

Benefits of doing it as a freshmen:

  • Not enough experience to jump into a leadership role
  • Freshmen year is a solid time
  • Learn a lot about the school

Benefits of doing it as a senior:

  • Seeing the problems we have had the not
  • Hearing the faculty point of view
  • Seeing the freshmen – very overwhelming
  • Transition to college was a lot
  • Sophomore year – a little bit more adjusted to things
  • More challenging as a freshmen

Going forward:

  • Hard to figure out what to do next? 4-5 hours a week
  • 15 hours: a big jump – too hard to be an employee

For the directors:

  • Being open (to all directors)
  • Being comfortable
  • Flexibility: not being too strict on attendance
  • If you can’t show up: you have to find a proxy

Roy Taylor (UA 2015-2016)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m9ytxtifoSAc9D7AhxYCMIANchg9tvScnhdYilYCYt4/edit#heading=h.6rec5t7sgeo6