Janitors, electricians and other members of the university’s classified staff are moving forward in their second year of shared governance representation with the appointment of John Lease as secretary.
The Classified Staff Executive Committee was established in November 2013 as an effort to lend a voice to University of Wisconsin-Madison’s classified staff in educational and procedural decisions.
Prior to the creation of the executive committee, classified staff members did not have any body designated to them for participation in shared governance conversations and employee representation was limited to faculty and academic staff.
Lease served as interim secretary for the nine-person committee from 2013 to 2014 while it developed and worked to establish itself as a decision-making entity.
CSEC member and chair of the search committee for the secretarial position, Patricia Droes, said the committee was looking for someone with strong management and interpersonal skills.
“John will do an excellent job, he’s already shown us as the interim,” Droes said. “He’s very knowledgeable of government rules and procedures and he’ll continue to serve the classified staff very well.”
Droes said the search committee, which consisted of members of CSEC, Academic Staff, Faculty Senate and the Associated Students of Madison, interviewed several applicants before turning the decision over to Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration Darrell Bazzell.
“John has done an outstanding job helping establish shared governance for the nearly 5,000 classified employees we have on campus,” Bazzell said in a statement from the university. “He has shown his commitment to making sure classified employees understand these new opportunities and are encouraged to participate.”
Bazzell also noted Lease was an integral player in helping create the Classified Staff Congress, which held its first meeting Aug. 19.
The congress is the primary representative body for classified staff and will contain 106 elected seats for each of the campus districts.
“It has been a pleasure to engage with the entire campus community on building classified staff shared governance,” Lease said in a university statement. “The most gratifying part of this assignment has been getting the opportunity to work directly with the classified staff themselves. As a workforce, they are diverse, creative and committed to a successful workplace for everyone.”
