During the first virtual meeting of the Academic Staff Assembly (ASA) this semester Wednesday, Sept. 8, Chair Terry Tumbarello spoke about three goals the governing body looks to achieve this academic year. 

As they spoke about relevant policies and procedures that affect academic staff, they outlined the first goal for the ASA, which was to be equal partners to the rest of campus such as administration and other student governance groups while the other two goals related to the recent program budget cuts. 

“Another goal of mine is to restore tuition benefits to employees,” Tumbarello said. “Lost that benefit as a campus community shortly before covid hit…it wasn’t covid related, it was budget related prior to the covid budget short comings.”

The ASA is making it a priority to be able to create professional development for faculty and staff. 

The last goal for the ASA is to help the university restore the learning community program. This is the first year that the campus has not had this program available to students after it was cut from the 2020 budget last year. 

ASA meets twice a month from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. during the academic year. This year, all meetings will be held via Webex, but there is a plan to have in-person options during the spring of 2022. 

As of right now, the website is a work in progress, and may not have everything up to date. 

“I’m working to update our search function…for example, people couldn’t find the purple book. They can search in the UW-Whitewater’s search bar for purple book, and it will come up now,” Brenda Johansen, communications director, said regarding searching for specific items for the ASA. 

Participants wishing to know more information about meetings, minutes, agendas, or need help finding anything, contact ASA via email at [email protected]. 

To join a meeting, go to https://www.uww.edu/asa and look for “meeting information”. The agendas are under this page and will be next to the dates they will be discussed in the meetings. Included in the agendas are links to the Webex meetings for participants wishing to know more about the topics on the agendas.