Hello Campus Partners!

Welcome to the Office of Academic Personnel (OAP) eDigest. We hope you find the information included here helpful to your academic personnel administration work. If you have news to share and/or someone to add to the list, please email us at acadcomm@uw.edu.

OAP created a new listserv for UW staff whose focus is gathering, reporting, or analyzing  academic personnel data. The listserv is intended to help members stay on top of data-related announcements such as academic units changes, academic rank deprecations, and job profile creations. Data analysts, database administrators, and similarly focused staff are encouraged to sign up through this Mailman link.

A new reason code for postdoctoral scholars receiving non-mandatory anniversary date salary/stipend increases is now available in Workday. When updating a postdoctoral scholar’s pay on their anniversary date, campus partners should use the following:

• For stipend changes: Period Activity > Stipend > Postdoctoral Scholar Anniversary Date
• For salary changes: Request Compensation Change > Base Pay > Academic Personnel - Postdoctoral Scholar Anniversary Date

In early January, HRIS– in partnership with OAP and UWHR– launched a new tool to support medical and religious exemption requests related to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Unlike the previous exemption tool, which was limited to current UW employees, this new tool is designed to also handle requests from final candidates to academic personnel positions. Since hiring managers/recruiters play a critical role in initiating the exemption request process, they should review the content below and follow steps outlined in the COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Exemption Tool User Guide. It is important to note that the exemption review process takes time, so campus partners should work with academic personnel candidates and appointees to initiate the request as soon as practicable.

New Hires
Final candidates seeking a COVID-19 vaccine exemption are expected to notify the unit as soon as possible and no later than two weeks before their start date.

Currently Employed Academic Personnel
COVID-19 exemptions are both person- and job-specific. If a current academic personnel appointee with an existing COVID-19 vaccine exemption moves to a new position that is subject to the COVID-19 vaccine verification mandate, they must provide proof of vaccination or request and be approved for a new exemption.

Unpaid Academics Entering into Paid Status
When an unpaid academic—who did not previously meet the definition of on-site volunteer or on-site contractor—moves into paid status, they become subject to the COVID-19 vaccine verification mandate and must provide proof of vaccination or request and be approved for an exemption.

As the end of the academic quarter approaches, campus partners should prioritize the following audit reports to ensure that academic personnel with expiring appointments and positions are reappointed or terminated (as appropriate) in a timely manner.

• R0630: Invalid Appointment End Dates
• R0663: Invalid Academic Position End Dates
• R0321: Upcoming End Employment Dates
• R0361: Expired & Expiring Academic Appointments

Issues identified through these reports should be resolved by March 15. Please review Sextant and Academic Titles and Ranks pages for more information. Questions can be directed to Academic HR specialists.

Campus partners may have noticed a new reason code “LOA – Leave Without Pay – Vaccine Mandate” when submitting leave requests in Workday. Take care not to select this reason code unless explicitly directly by an Academic HR team member as it has very specific use parameters. For questions, contact apleaves@uw.edu.

To support academic personnel records management, campus partners should follow the guidance below when uploading documents to a Workday business process or in Maintain Worker Documents.

• Do not load additional documents nor corrections emailed to AHR once Academic HR has removed materials from Workday. The additional time AHR team members spend deleting documents from Workday negatively impacts their availability to review and approve other business processes.
• Do not upload AHR-generated letters for processes such as emeritus, joint appointments, and Board of Regents approvals.
• Only upload documents that have been converted to PDF format. Do not upload portfolio PDFs. Visit the Creating/Editing PDF Files page for tips.

Appointment letters should not include commitments that circumvent or are in conflict with UW policies, including those in the Faculty Code, Executive Orders, and Administrative Policy Statements. For example, it would not be appropriate to include a commitment to count tenure-track service elsewhere toward UW sabbatical eligibility or to offer a multiyear appointment beyond what is allowable by policy. Before finalizing the letter, deans should consult with the vice provost for academic personnel if there are exceptional circumstances that warrant consideration.

Thurs, Feb 17: Join the AHR team for a training on retirement, reemployment and emeritus policies
Thurs, Feb 17: Submit Workday business processes to the AHR queue for academic titles requiring Board of Regents approval
Tues, Mar 1: Clinical and affiliate promotions due to AHR
Tues, Mar 15: Run R0353.1: Academics with Approaching Mandatory Review Date to identify faculty who need to prepare for their promotion and tenure review
Thurs, Mar 17: Join the OAP team for the Quarterly Administrators Forum
Fri, Mar 18: Submit Spring reappointment spreadsheets to AHR (Resolve issues identified on R0630 before starting this process)

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 campus partners for all your COVID-19 vaccine verification efforts! Since we began weekly auditing in October, OAP has seen tremendous improvement in verification rates. The most recent audit yielded zero cases of academic personnel still requiring verification. This is wholly attributed to your quick and accurate work to get incoming hires verified. Great job! 

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.

Husky Prevention & Response is a new required online course about preventing and responding to sex- and gender-based violence and harassment. UW employees will be assigned to take the course – which takes 60-90 minutes – on a unit-by-unit schedule throughout 2022.