By SHANNON O. WELLS
Senate Council President Robin Kear kicked off her Faculty Assembly report on Oct. 4, with a welcome to Chancellor Joan Gabel, who made an unusual visit to the Posvar Hall meeting to share a report on reimagining the Plan for Pitt (see related story) and other matters.
“Thank you to Chancellor Gabel for joining us so early in your tenure here at Pitt,” Kear said.
Kear went on to discuss the provost search committee process, thanking the nominating committee from Senate Council. The latest self-nominations were announced on Sept. 13, followed by a call for petition candidates, which yielded no nominations. On Sept. 27, faculty who are eligible to vote received a link in their email alerting them to the election and their eligibility to participate.
“Please vote,” Kear said, reminding faculty to vote only in the faculty member’s respective academic area and to click “approved” or “not approved” to submit a ballot. Voting closes on at 11:59 p.m. Oct. 6.
Kear said she’s been busy attending as many Senate committee meetings as she can at the start of the academic year, “as I try to do each year,” noting that committees “drive the work of the Senate. Thank you all for your service commitment.”
Artificial intelligence everywhere
Kear then shared her thoughts regarding the ubiquity of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI tools and software, noting the volume of related discussions “happening all over campus in various ways. It's everywhere,” she said. “I don't know if I'm just confirming my bias that it's everywhere, but really, I've seen it in so many different places.
“There are informal discussions. There are informal research groups. There are quickly changing research agendas,” she added. “There is deep individual learning going on. There are class discussions. There are guidelines on our syllabi now. There are department-level discussions, and of course there's the formal (Generative AI) Ad Hoc Committee from the Provost and Research offices.”
While there are “so many unknowns,” Kear said, “there are so many ways for us to influence the development of AI implementation here at Pitt.”
Noting that procurement of AI software is a growing subtopic of AI discussion, she explained that it’s about “how to purchase, integrate and use AI — whether generative or not — responsibly and ethically in our everyday operations, and how to choose vendors responsibly with privacy and ethical considerations addressed,” she said.
The Senate Council continues to be involved in discussions in various ways “as the informal and formal mechanisms take shape,” she added. “If you have any comment or feedback on that, please feel free to share it with me or with Assembly member Lisa Parker,” co-chair of the generative AI ad hoc committee, Kear said.
Religious observances and student well-being
The annual memo on religious observances from the provost’s office was delivered on Sept. 7. In response to shared governance concerns from last year, the memo was limited to guidance on consideration for religious observances in the classroom and other academic activities such as faculty meetings, Kear noted, but did not touch on student well-being, as it has in the past few years.
“As stated in the memo, in an effort to retain clarity and to expand that focus to encompass the well-being of all University community members, a separate memo discussing the well being will be forthcoming from the provost’s office,” Kear said
Interim Provost Joe McCarthy has asked for the Senate Educational Policies Committee co-chair to participate in discussions around the well-being memo, and Kear asked that Senate Council Vice President Kris Kanthak be included. “And as far as I know, this group has not yet convened, but there will be more information forthcoming soon,” she said.
Grad student health care update
Work regarding a graduate student health-care structure is proceeding with shared governance on the Short-term Student Health Insurance Task Force. The group is chaired by Carla Panzella, associate vice provost and dean of students, and Melissa Kluchurosky, director of benefits in Human Resources, in addition to student representatives, who Kear said “should be the driving force in that task force.”
The task force also includes representatives from Staff Council and the Senate Benefits and Welfare Committee. “This task force is discussing the needs of students benchmarking with peer institutions, providing recommendations to the University and ultimately receiving approval by the state of Pennsylvania, because (that) is a requirement for student health insurance,” Kear said.
“Benefits and Welfare will also be examining this issue at their first meeting next week,” she added. The Pitt Student Health Insurance Medical Hardship Assistance Fund is in place to assist students with costs, she said.
In other items:
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The Bylaws Committee has revised and passed a resolution on part-time faculty participation in the Senate that will come back to Faculty Assembly at its Nov. 1 meeting.
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The Access to and Use of University Computing Resources draft policy is available for public comment through Oct. 10. The policy was endorsed by the Senate Computing and Information Technology Committee on Sept. 28, and will go before Faculty Assembly at its Nov. 1 meeting.
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An interim Policy on Research Data and Management that will be presented at the next Senate Council meeting on Oct. 12, by Bill Yates, vice chancellor for research protection. The Research Committee heard the impetus for the interim policy at its September meeting, which they found “to be reasonable,” Kear said. “While the interim policy is substantial, it does not substantially deviate from current practice and more closely aligns with federal requirements” she said, adding a permanent policy committee will convene soon.
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Potential government shutdown: “If you are like me, you're trying your best to ignore the clear dysfunction in our national House of Representatives,” Kear said. “A federal government shutdown will have an impact on the work we do here at Pitt. If this directly affects your work, please (look) for more emails from the Research Office and others as needed when the stopgap funding agreement ends next month. I appreciated the communication updating from the Research Office and from the administration late last week when the shutdown seemed imminent,” she added.
Capital campaign update
Following Kear’s report, Chancellor Gabel reiterated many of the items she had shared with the Board of Trustees the previous week (see related story) and took questions from Faculty Assembly member.
When asked about a student focused fundraising effort vs. a possible upcoming Pitt capital campaign, Gabel said it's been “more than 10 years since we've had an organized capital campaign at the University of Pittsburgh.”
She said a capital campaign would be an all-hands-on-deck effort involving the whole University, “usually with a nice, branded tagline and all the ribbon cuttings and galas and all that,” she noted. “We're right now doing an assessment of our readiness to do something like that.”
“In the interim, the more focused you are around fundraising, … the better we do. It's easier to engage donors,” she said. As a bridge, Pitt’s Division of Philanthropic & Alumni Engagement suggested doing focus work around student support “for a whole host of obvious reasons,” Gabel said. “And I think they started that last year.
“So it's not the capital campaign, but it is a platform of focus between now and when we might launch the next (major fundraising) effort.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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