Hello Campus Partners!

Welcome to the Office of Academic Personnel (OAP) eDigest. We hope you are safe and healthy. Included in the eDigest is information that we hope you find helpful to your academic personnel administration work. If you have news to share or if there's someone you would like to add to the mailing list, please email us at acadcomm@uw.edu.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has announced new filing fees to go into effect on Friday, October 2. The new structure will require updated filing fees for various forms, most significantly form I-129. There is no change to the premium processing fee of $1,440, but the way that the premium processing period is calculated will change from 15 calendar days to 15 business days. More information on the fee increases is available on the OAP blog.

International Scholar Operations (ISO) checklists and web pages will be updated to reflect these changes. For visa requests already in process, ISO will contact units to request revised fee checks where necessary. Contact ISO at acadvisa@uw.edu with any questions. 

On Thursday, August 20 Interfolio will hold an online webinar covering the basics of position creation in Faculty Search. Scheduled topics include position description setup, applications requirements, and role assignments. This webinar is intended for those with Interfolio access roles of administrator or committee manager who are new users or would like a refresher. Since this is a public training open to all Interfolio Faculty Search users, it will not cover the custom features and functionality unique to UW’s version of Faculty Search. However, most of the content will be useful and applicable to UW users. For UW-specific information, we encourage campus partners to visit the OAP Interfolio user guides. For specific questions, email acadhire@uw.edu.

If you are interested in the Interfolio training, advanced registration is recommended.

The Office of Academic Personnel (OAP) has published a blog post about the new professorial teaching track which includes  key take-aways from the new legislation, appointment details, timelines, and additional information about the implementation. OAP web content is scheduled to be updated throughout August and September to incorporate information about the new track. If you have any questions not answered on the website, contact the Academic HR team.

Preparing for the Conversion

The professorial teaching track will go into effect on September 16. OAP and the ISC are collaborating to ensure a smooth conversion of the 500+ faculty impacted by the new legislation. Due to system limitations associated with the many transactions effective at the start of the academic year, the conversion of faculty data in Workday will be completed by September 17. While the conversion will be centrally-managed, OAP will reach out to individual units if a faculty member’s record does not convert properly and additional data clean-up is necessary.

It is critical that units complete the following academic personnel transactions by Thursday, September 10 for those in conversion-eligible titles (senior lecturer, principal lecturer, lecturer):

• Hire or rehire
• Change job
• Add academic appointment

Academic personnel who have in-progress transactions on Thursday, September 10, might not convert properly which may  result in the unit having to manually enter relevant information.

Academic personnel who will be converting to one of the new professorial teaching ranks will receive two email notifications from OAP. The first message, scheduled to be sent Monday, August 17, is a general notice of eligibility  with additional high-level details about the scheduled conversion. The second message, to be sent out following the conversion, will be an official notification of each individual’s new rank. 

As part of the OAP 2019-2022 strategic plan, a dedicated team has been working for the past 18 months to review, validate, and update titles and ranks content on our website. This goal directly addresses our primary strategic challenge to improve data/information accuracy, reliability, and usability.

Many of our campus partners use the Titles and Ranks pages regularly and we sought stakeholder insight and feedback on content and structure decisions throughout the project. We hope these changes will help to clarify policies and processes as well as facilitate better access to information. Revised pages will be published in stages throughout the autumn quarter with a goal to complete the project by the end of December.

During the project, we identified opportunities to clarify or implement procedural expectations to support compliance, data accuracy, and/or improved workflow. Some of these revisions may represent a change in current practice for some units.

One of the most prominent changes campus partners will see is a list of data points that must be included in offer letters. Additionally, following HR best practice, all offer letters for paid positions will now need to be signed by the hiring authority and countersigned or acknowledged by the appointee. Thank you to those campus partners who provided early feedback that helped shape this decision.  

During the September 24 OAP Quarterly Administrators Forum, we plan to dive deeper into the new titles and ranks web strategy and content including those impacts that may include a change in practice for some units. We are committed to helping units ease into these expectations over the autumn quarter.

Each year OAP creates the AP Census to support a wide range of institutional reporting needs. The AP Census is a snapshot of active academic appointments and positions in Workday on October 31 of a given year. In preparation for this year’s census, we will be sending dean/chancellor’s offices two sets of files that require review and follow-up. The first set of files–with appointment and position data clean-up details –will be sent in mid to late August.The second set –reflecting changes and additions associated with the start of the academic year– will be sent in the beginning of October.

All Workday transactions related to data clean-up need to have unit level approvals by Friday, October 23. Office hours will be held August through October to answer any questions you may have about clean-up efforts. Visit the Upcoming OAP Trainings and Forums page for specific details and to RSVP. Thanks in advance for helping support as accurate a census as possible.

Updated sabbatical application forms are now available on the OAP website. Both the faculty and librarian application forms contain an appended information sheet noting the 2021-22 statutory salary limit as well as other information important to units and applicants. The Vice Provost for Academic Personnel will be notifying deans and chancellors of their official 2021-22 quarter allocation in the coming weeks. The submission deadline for 2021-22 sabbatical applications is still being finalized, but is expected to be in late December/early January consistent with previous years. Academic HR will update unit administrators once the deadline has been set.

Thurs, Aug 20: Workday business processes due in Academic HR queue for inclusion on Board of Regents report (See list of relevant academic titles here)

Wed, Aug 26: Census Preparation office hours begin; sessions will be held regularly through October 20. (See the full list of sessions on the OAP Training and Forum Calendar)

Thurs, Sept 10: Deadline for campus partners to complete hire, rehire, change job, add academic appointment transactions in Workday for academic personnel with new appointments to conversion-eligible titles

Wed, Sept 16: Professorial teaching track legislation goes into effect

Fri, Sept 18: Lists of non-mandatory promotions are due to Academic HR (More information will be sent to dean/chancellor’s office HR administrators on August 24)

Tues, Sept 22: Join the Academic HR team for a promotion and tenure workshop which will include important new information for the 2020-21 review cycle. Note: This workshop and all subsequent forums and workshops will only be offered online this academic year

Thurs, Sept 24:  Join OAP for the first quarterly administrators forum of the 2020-21 academic year

Serving UW academic personnel well means having great campus partnerships! We'd like to use this section to recognize the great work of our campus partners.

Thank you to the many organizations who helped make the new and improved H visa request form a reality. Special thanks goes out to the Office of Research who helped simplify the complex DECA review process, and the College of Arts and Sciences Shared Services and ABC Shared Services teams who tested the new tool and provided valuable feedback. We hope this new and improved tool will facilitate a more efficient, user-friendly H-1B application process moving forward. 

This section is a chance to promote resources, questions and more from our partners around the campus. Email acadcomm@uw.edu if you have anything to add.

New Title IX regulations are scheduled to go into effect on Friday, August 14. Read more about it on the Title IX website. The Title IX notification is also posted on the OAP Safety in the Workplace page.