University of Wisconsin’s University Committee met Monday night, Sept. 14, and unanimously approved and shared a policy with UW faculty covering tenure issues.

The meeting was a follow-up to review a document that a university tenure ad hoc committee had been working on to address tenure changes prior to the meeting.

The ad hoc committee was created in response to the changes in tenure by state legislators over the summer.

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The committee made modifications to the document to prepare it to be shared with the Faculty Senate, Steve Smith, faculty secretary said.

The document essentially deals with the state legislators’ changes to tenure and will be presented at the Faculty Senate meeting on Oct. 5, Smith said.

The policy was made sure to be up to the standards of the American Association of University Professors. The association is considered the “standard body” for addressing issues of academic freedom, what tenure is and what they each stand for, UW professor of population health sciences David Vanness said.

Vanness said it is especially important the policy meets these standards, though the UW AAUP chapter has been inactive for several years until it was recently restarted to help deal with tenure issues.

Prior to the committee’s policy being written, many UW faculty members were confused as to what the ad hoc committee planned to do with a policy after it was written or whether there would be much UW faculty input, Vanness said.

Everything was unclear as to what the policy procedure was and how informed faculty would be on the policy, Vanness said.

Additionally, Vanness said he was worried everything was happening too fast. The policy could possibly be passed and voted on through the Faculty Senate before a majority of faculty were able to view it, Vanness said.

“I would like to see a road map of reports and interim reports throughout the process of what are the documents being shared, when are their meetings and when are they are going to occur,” Vanness said.

But now that the policy has been shared with all UW faculty members, the policy will proceed onto the Faculty Senate meeting Oct. 5, before it could possibly be voted on and passed in the next meeting Nov. 2.