DRC

 Districting and Representation Committee

If I have any Academic Staff governance issues and I know my district, I can find other people who are in my district and discuss these issues. I can also determine the district representative. Furthermore, being in the appropriate district makes it more likely that others in my district share my concerns and issues, thus providing a unified voice.

Academic staff are those unclassified employees who are not faculty. Faculty are defined in Wisconsin statutes as those university employees with a title of professor, associate professor, assistant professor, or instructor. So if you are an unclassified employee, and don't have a one of those four titles, you are academic staff. Academic staff include a wide range of titles such as researcher, dean, scientist, clinical professor, lecturer as well as other non faculty titles. For futher information, see the Unclassified Title Guidelines. Both faculty and academic staff have a voice in shared governance of the University as defined by Wisconsin statutes, Section 36.09 (4m).

The DRC is a standing committee of the Academic Staff Assembly (ASA). The DRC consists of 6 members and these members are elected by the ASA . The DRC’s responsibilities include districting all Academic staff on a monthly basis and reviewing election and districting processes and rules to ensure that the academic staff members may exercise their institutional governance rights in the most effective, equitable, and efficient manner. The complete DRC charge can be found in the Academic Staff Policies and Procedures. Chapter 13, http://acstaff.wisc.edu/ASPP/aspp13.pdf. The link to the DRC general information on the AS web site is http://acstaff.wisc.edu/comopp/drc.html  

Yes, but please link only to the main page. Links to sections within the site are not guaranteed to stay constant, and may break at any time.

 See the document at drc.academic-staff.wisc.edu/districtinglogic

Some districts are unified by title, and some are unified by location. Note, however, we get the location information from University records. It is to your advantage to make sure that your address is correct, as without accurate information, we can't correctly assign you to your district. Check in the Staff directory or look yourself up within your email program to make sure your information is correct.

First of all, the limit is not hard and fast. The Academic Staff Policies and Procedures specify a range of of 35 to 75 members. However, we try to keep the districts at about 50, as this allows the group to have a stronger voice in the Academic Staff Assembly. Each representative has only one vote, regardless of how many people are within that district. So if a group of 100 people were to be placed in one district, they'd have just one vote. But if they were placed in two districts, they'd have two.

The district number reflects the general nature of the district. The hundreds digit represents the general area of your job title, the tens digit represents the group of displines in which you work, and the ones digit tells you whether your representative is elected in odd or even years. The following table explains what the digits in your district number mean.

District numbers as related to job title and academic discipline

Meaning of Hundreds Digit (Job Title)	Meaning of Tens Digit (Academic Discipline )
100's Scientists & Instrument Innovators	00's Basic Life Sciences
200's Category B Instructional Staff	10's Agricultural and Life Scences
300's Researchers	20's Medical & Health, CSC based
400's Category A Instructional Staff, Professionals & Managers	30's Medical & Health, MSC based
500's Category A Instructional Staff, Professionals & Managers	40's Medical & Health, Other
600's Future Expansion	50's Physical Sciences & Engineering
700's Future Expansion	60's Arts, Education, Social Science
800's Future Expansion	70's Business, Law, Library
900's Unrepresented Disticts	80's Administration
	90's Miscellaneous

Example: A researcher in physical sciences would be in a 300 district because she is a researcher, and the second digit of her district number would be 5, as she works in the physical sciences. The final digit indicates whether her rep is elected in an even or an odd year. 

Most reps contact their constituents via email. You may not have your email address listed in the staff directory. The Districting and Representation Committee provides the secretary of the academic staff lists of members for each district. She, in turn, forwards the appropriate list to each representative. However, we get the information from the campus directory, so if you don't list your email address, your representative won't be able to contact you. Remember that you can always contact your representative yourself. You can find your representative by getting a list of members of your district. That list is available on the Districting and Representation Committee web page.

The data must go through several steps before it shows up the web page. Let's suppose you change jobs towards the end of August. Payroll has to change your job title in the computer system, which takes a little time. We get our data at the beginning of the month. It's possible your job change won't show up in the September data, so we won't know about your job change until we next grab the data, which would be the start of October. Then we'd spend October looking at all the job changes, and assigning districts. The changes would be added to our web site at the beginning of November. In other words, a job change at the end of August doesn't show up on our web site until the beginning of November - maybe even longer if payroll needs more time to make the change.

 The districting data, which include changes in districts for individuals, is updated at the beginning of every month. At that time, the data available on the web is updated, and lists of members of each district (including email addresses) are sent to the Secretary of the Academic Staff.

 In a word, no. The lists are generated automatically from data received from the payroll office. You'll need to have your address changed in the University's records to have it changed in the data we send out. If we were to make the change, that change would be overwritten by email address provided by the payroll office once a month.

 Contact the chair of the Districting and Representation Committee, Anne Gunther. Her email address is gunther@ls.admin.wisc.edu.

 Our policy is to provide email lists to the Secretary of the Academic Staff only. You can make a request for such lists from the secretary, or you can send your message to the individual representatives and ask them to forward it on to the members of their respective districts.