Leaders of the university’s consultative committees presented systemwide reports to the Board of Regents on June 13, 2025, summarizing shared-governance work over the academic year and highlighting workforce reinvestment, general-education curriculum issues, student safety initiatives and operational impacts from administrative systems.

Jennifer Goodnow, chair of the Senate Consultative Committee and Faculty Consultative Committee, urged continued engagement on term-faculty and academic professional promotion pathways and recommended a consistent approach to job codes and promotion pathways for contract faculty. Goodnow called attention to a gap created by the board’s institutional-speech resolution: because the university senate’s policy for how units would craft unit statements was not implemented, units lack a consistent process for producing statements the board’s guidelines allow when the president determines mission impacts.

Goodnow also reported that the council on liberal education will begin recertifying existing courses in the current liberal-education curriculum and that work to update general education remains underway. She welcomed the administration’s inclusion of a 3% merit pool and 1% market adjustment in budget plans and urged the board to prioritize investments in employees.

Stacy Mauer, chair of the Civil Service Consultative Committee, emphasized civil service staff’s operational role across campuses and urged the board to remember civil service employees when making budget decisions. She flagged implementation concerns with the PEAK administrative project, noting that staff work has shifted toward transactional reporting and that ongoing attention to long-term costs of implementation is needed.

Kit Brashears, chair of the Professional and Administrative (P&A) Senate, described the P&A workforce (about 7,700 employees systemwide) and said their roles span 20 job families across the system. Brashears outlined PAC accomplishments this year, including reclassification work and professional development offerings that reached thousands of employees. He urged regents to continue visiting system campuses and to engage directly with extension staff and other system employees.

Taiwo Aremu, chair of the Student Senate, reported that the student senate improved orientation for senators, restored monthly meetings with the president, and advocated for public-safety measures including permanent suicide-prevention barriers on the Washington Avenue Bridge. He said the student senate held meetings on Rochester and Duluth campuses to emphasize systemwide inclusion and highlighted continued work on basic-needs advocacy and mental-health services.

Ending

President Rebecca Cunningham and regents publicly thanked consultative committee chairs for their service. The board recognized committee chairs with certificates of appreciation and encouraged continued collaboration between governance bodies and administration on workforce, curriculum and safety priorities.