The Teaching Assistant Association became the latest part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison community Thursday to speak out in opposition to the proposed Human Resources redesign.
According to Lenora Hanson, co-chair of a TAA body that works to share information with campus departments, many members are concerned the document focuses too much on words like ‘market’ and ‘performance,’ with little emphasis on teaching or quality of education.
“We’re just concerned there is a pretty big gap between values that we think are important at UW Madison and the language that’s being used in the document overall,” Hanson said.
Academic Personnel Office Director Steve Lund said the TAA’s claim is not accurate.
“The vision for the project talks about supporting the mission of the university which is all about teaching and learning,” Lund said.
However, Hanson said her organization’s concerns don’t stop there. The TAA is also concerned with the suggested switch to performance based pay.
“On the level of faculty and students we’re concerned that if performance isn’t clearly articulated along the lines of excellent teaching, excellent mentoring, working with your students, whether they be graduate or undergraduate, we’re really concerned that that could affect the dynamic of faculty and student relationships,” Hanson said.
Lund said the HR redesign team did not clearly define performance in the document because they felt it was not their place.
“It’s not up to Human Resources people to decide how to evaluate teaching, that’s up to faculty to do that,” he said. “We think the performance aspect is value neutral and it will be faculty and staff determining what should be valued for performance.”
Additionally, the TAA is concerned about the equity of performance pay. For example, Hanson said many employees may begin to overwork in an attempt to receive better pay. This could exclude some employees who have families obligations outside of the workplace, according to Hanson.
Hanson said the TAA plans to continue making recommendations to the project team about how the plan could be made better. A public forum will take place Oct. 23 at 5 p.m. in Memorial Union to continue sharing feedback with the project team.
Editor's note: Quotes from Steve Lund were originally attributed to Bob Lavigna. We regret the error.
