Unfinished Business —

Second Review of request for Discontinuance of Graduate Certificate in Equity & Social Diversity:

• This request for discontinuance was previously reviewed at the hearing on September 23, 2025.
  • It wasn’t voted on by the committee as there was the possibility of 2 students remaining in the program, and it was previously unclear of what the teach-out plan was.
  • Joe received feedback from the program.
  • There are no longer 2 students in the program as they both have moved to the Master of Arts program, so there are no longer any students in this program.
• Joe asks for any feedback or thoughts.
• Motion to discontinue: Jordan motions. Avantha seconds. 4 votes in favor. None opposed. Motion passes for discontinuation.
• All the discontinuances will be reviewed at the next University Senate meeting on Thursday, Oct 23rd and then will be sent to Provost. 

New Business —

FacEx Petition Form: 

University Governance asks for feedback regarding FacEx petition forms and challenges that units may face with the current process and form: 

• Comments arose about the desire for the FacEx petition form to go fully online. The school level and CLAS are receiving many incomplete forms.
• With the current form, it can be sent onto the school for approval without the necessary information at the department level as to why the request is being submitted. 

A hope would be that an online form could stop at the department endorsement side until an explanation for the reason behind the petition (for an exception to academic policy) is included.

University Governance asks for feedback from the committee as to why governance may have hesitated with the form going online previously.

University Registrar shares that an online FacEx petition form was previously worked on and established but the process was stalled about four years ago. 

• Registrar’s Office is ready to move forward again with Governance as they’ve worked with the Perceptive Content team and have done a lot of work with the scope and foundation already.
• There may be different things to add now and it’s going to be a project that may take 6 to 8 months but should be quite feasible.
• The medical and compassionate withdrawal forms are online, and we have many of the same contacts that worked on that form. 

• There are a lot of moving parts and it’s a large form, but it shouldn’t be a large learning curve at the university level as many are used to using similar online forms. 

   

Academic honesty, artificial intelligence, and academic integrity: 

• Joe has invited the Center for Teaching Excellence to come talk to the committee at the November meeting. They have some ideas they’re working on with the generative AI task force.
• Currently the University doesn’t have a policy on AI and CTE has suggested some comments for Syllabi to include.
• Currently, it’s up to the individual faculty regarding what they do with AI.
• Joe thinks it would be helpful to explore peer institutions and their AI policies.
• Joe looked at several university policies from across the country this morning and started putting them in an AI folder on the Teams site.
• If everyone can take a look at these policies and how they incorporate AI to discuss at the November meeting, in which CTE plans to come talk. This is becoming a growing issue.
• Feedback for University Senate to make an AI policy would be very helpful.
• What ways can AI be used positively and productively in classrooms?
  • AI can be a helpful starting point to find resources, to refine goals, and to review papers for professionalism.
  • Some schools flat out say can’t use AI. Some schools allow four or five different AI platforms, but students must cite that in a paper or assignment and can’t take credit for AI answers.
  • What about faculty that uses AI? The K-12 school system is having issues with faculty using AI but telling their students they can’t. This is something that may need to be considered at the university policy level and the use of AI.

 Evaluate the impact of excused absence policies on constituent workload:

• This keeps popping up over the years.
• Joe believes it may be helpful to talk about setting up another round of surveys to get feedback on this topic as many colleagues are sharing this is a significant concern.
• Poppy and Joe may need to discuss further.
• Some concerns are those teaching small classes of 10-14 students, and the College tends to hear concerns from faculty with larger classes because many of the instructors of large classes will have a set number of absences for students but aren’t sure how to navigate the specific cases.
• It would be helpful to see what another round of surveys may say.
• One solution that came from the previous survey on this topic was to move the testing center out of Strong Hall and over to Price Computing. Joe isn’t sure if this has resolved anything, and that may be a question to add to the survey.
• Perhaps a different section of the survey for different sizes of classes.
• Joe will reach out to Poppy to talk about getting a survey out.

Shayla will send poll for next meeting in November. 

Next meeting is scheduled for  November 4, 2025, at 10:00am 

Meeting adjourned.