Approval of Previous Minutes —

Meeting minutes from Oct. 2, 2023, were distributed before the meeting. Hearing no corrections, the minutes were approved.

New Business —

Kevin will attend the FacEx meeting at the end of the month and can take any questions to that meeting. Kevin has not heard if there is anything on the tenure dismissal ad hoc committee. Kevin reached out to Amy Mendenhall about non-tenure track charge (#2). It seems to be up in the air right now.  Kevin followed up with the provost office (#3). It is something considered in assessment in HLC. It does have relevance to HLC. It is important for online courses. Committee comments on this:

Question, what is the role?

Kevin. They will send something back to FacEx. Should something be done about this assessment tool? Should there be another ad hoc committee looking into this? Kevin can check with Jen Roberts.

Having something in place that gives students an incentive to complete surveys.

Comments.

• We have been discussing this for the past year. When the university changed the student evaluations, it became challenging and confusing to students. This could be why they are not filling it out.
• Kevin informally surveyed his students. Their response was that it does not matter. There is no incentive.
• Kevin suggested taking this to FacEx, to explore genuine incentives for students. Also address any confusion that can come from the survey. There should be student involvement in the process.
• Concerns about incentives is that it is a huge administrative burden on someone. Who could take this on?
• Expressed reservations on mandatory or penalized actions.
• What does HLC want? Will they accept informal polls or are they looking for a standardized process?
• The unintended consequences would be institutionalizing biases.
• What is our recommendation to FacEx? Accept it as it is.
• Find out what HLC wants to know. The “Why” could also be important.
• For online, there is something about “meaningful engagement” criteria. The student survey could gain importance for this.

Intellectual property. Kevin looked at the policy. It is unclear what is intellectual property. Is it the shell of the course? Is it the syllabi? For online courses, it is not clear.

The Committee discussed whether the existing policy for academic misconduct is adequate. Does there seem like there should be more clarity on AI use? There is reference to academic misconduct. Comments:

• The time to bring this up is at the beginning of the course. This seems like the time faculty could bring up expectations for AI.
• For example, engineering has a process with timelines that begin when the faculty are aware of academic misconduct. Kevin checked, and various schools have their own policies.
• Kevin agreed that we should not make it any more complicated than it already is, we do not need a separate bullet point for AI in the policy.
• Kevin said he had a student and a situation, and the policy was not clear. Thus, it is only a question, and if we are good with
• Scott shared in the chat an AI policy from Duke.
• Maybe the University needs to establish a university-wide policy on AI.  Duke and Harvard have both done this. These can be guidelines for faculty on AI. What do the committee members think about this?
• How effective is plagiarism software for AI? This was discussed in Sociology. In summary, it was recommended to have a conversation with students. The checkers are something to give us pause and have a conversation with the student.
• The tools show the percentage that can be shared with students. It is a learning tool for students to learn where they are not citing their sources.

The committee meeting that was scheduled for December 4 was cancelled. We will set up another one in February. By this time, Kevin will have talked with FacEx, Jen Roberts and Amy Mendehall and will have all the relevant pieces of information.