For the Record

Wisconsin Week, the newspaper of record for UW–Madison, carries legally required notices for faculty and staff.

Honorary degree nominations

The Committee on Honorary Degrees is accepting nominations of candidates for honorary degrees. The committee especially solicits nominations of meritorious women and minority candidates. The committee’s Standards and Procedures for Honorary Degrees document and a list of past honorary degree recipients is available at http://www.secfac.wisc.edu/committees/honorarydegrees.

Submission of a nomination does not ensure its successful outcome. For this reason, it is important that potential candidates not be informed that a nomination is under consideration.

Academic units wishing to nominate a candidate should submit a preliminary nomination dossier to the committee no later than Friday, April 17. This preliminary dossier should consist of 1 a one- to two-page letter documenting the nominee’s extraordinary contributions to a field or profession, and to society, and the nominee’s CV, or in its absence, information about the nominee ordinarily presented in a CV. Please submit 30 copies of the preliminary dossier to 133 Bascom Hall.

The committee evaluates the preliminary dossiers and, where in the judgment of the committee the documentation reflects significant prospects for success, the nominating academic unit is invited to assemble full documentation. Those units invited to submit second-stage nomination packets have a deadline of Monday, Aug. 24.

The second-stage dossier should document fully the distinguished achievements of the candidate. The committee may ask that the sponsoring unit respond to specific points or questions so the nomination can advance.

Faculty legislation (Faculty Policies and Procedures 6.41.B.) requires that nominations originating from any source other than a department, school or college must be referred by the chair of the Committee on Honorary Degrees to an appropriate department, school or college for recommendation. The same legislation also states that a Wisconsin connection, while not a prerequisite for an honorary degree, is an asset.

As a matter of policy, emeritus faculty members of the university are not eligible for honorary degrees solely on the basis of their performance while at UW–Madison. The university cannot grant honorary degrees to those who have held elected office in the state in the past two years, nor to anyone employed by the University of Wisconsin within the past two years.

Symposium on supporting and retaining diverse faculty

The UW System Institute on Race and Ethnicity will sponsor a two-day symposium April 16–17 at UW–Milwaukee titled “Supporting and Retaining Diverse Faculty: Research, Scholarship, Mentoring and Tenure.” The symposium has a twofold purpose:

• scholarly/research presentations by UW System faculty members who are former or current recipients of IRE’s Faculty Diversity Research Awards. These presentations will be from a wide variety of disciplines, but will primarily be on racial/ethnic topics, with some focusing on STEM and other subjects; and
• forums involving junior and tenured faculty, FDRA mentors and various levels of campus administrators (provosts, deans, chairs, affirmative action officers) regarding the tenure process, mentoring, publications, extramural funding, recruitment and retention, campus climate and the diversification of our faculties.

IRE is working with Luis Pinero, 263-2378 or lapinero@vc.wisc.edu, and Bonnie Sundal, 262-2012 or bsundal@vc.wisc.edu, Office of Equity and Diversity, who have been contacted to assemble a team of attendees from UW–Madison.

For more information on the symposium, visit http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/IRE, or contact Tom Tonnesen at 414–229–4700 or tonnesen@uwm.edu.