Postdoctoral positions are inherently short-term and filled with researchers who will only be at UW-Madison for the duration of their appointment. As such, we usually lack the visibility, institutional knowledge, and data necessary to properly address and raise the issues faced by these researchers. The mission of the UW-Madison Postdoctoral Association (UWPA) Advocacy Committee is thus to empower ALL postdocs to advocate for themselves within the institution of this university through the following three goals:
Dialogue: Create and maintain a dialogue with the administration of the university to ensure appropriate representation and consideration of post-docs in the decisions.
Educate: Organize events, maintain informational content, and advertise to postdocs about some of the reasons why the post-doc position is structured the way it is at UW-Madison, and how to advocate for themselves within the structure of the university.
Data Gathering: Identify needs of the postdoctoral community and gather, analyze, and distribute data relevant to current issues raised by the postdoctoral community to support individual and associative advocacy efforts by postdoctoral researchers.
The philosophy of this committee will also be to maintain an extensive and detail knowledge base on all projects going on within this committee. Advocacy efforts are year-long process that will undoubtedly outlast most of the post-doc’s appointments at UW-Madison, and it is likely that the initiator of a project will not see this project to fruition, It crucial to us to set up tools and processes so that all projects can effectively be worked on by multiple people through time.