Faculty leader focuses on rights

Pat Wolleat became involved in campus governance almost as soon as she was hired at the university.

Being new on campus and one of only a small number of tenure-track female faculty members in 1971, she often felt pressed into university service. She immediately found herself on countless committees handling equality and diversity, faculty rights and responsibilities, and job searches.

“In the ’60s and ’70s, new faculty were often called upon for committee service. Today they are asked more judiciously and senior faculty are expected to carry the heaviest service load,” she says.

This year, Wolleat has taken on yet another heavy service load by replacing professor Tom Sharkey as chair of the University Committee, which sets the agenda for the Faculty Senate.

Wolleat says the UC’s main focus is to protect faculty interests as UW–Madison changes its hiring and disciplinary practices.

Wolleat supports cluster hiring, which deals with complex educational and research issues by building faculty teams across many disciplines. However, she wants to ensure those new faculty members get the support they need.

“One thing that may happen is that the whole way the mentoring system is set up may not be as natural as it would be if a faculty member belonged to one department,” she says. She wants to make sure the university has a good system for carrying out guidance and evaluations for faculty hired as part of a cluster.

Even though faculty rights during disciplinary cases were strengthened under a series of Chapter 9 changes a year ago at UW–Madison, Wolleat intends to keep a close eye on how disciplinary cases are handled here.

“We should take a look at Chapter 9 and see if it provides the kind of protection that we really want and expect under system rules,” she says.

In the meantime, Wolleat hopes more faculty members will get involved in university governance issues, as she first did three decades ago. “Faculty members are always involved in the departments, but some disciplines don’t see the relevance of campuswide issues. We would like to change that,” she says.