00:49:38             David Field:         David Field, Psychology

00:49:45             Erik Born:            Erik Born, German Studies

00:49:53             Sofia Kalantzi:    Sofia Kalantzi, SCJCB Johnson – RTE

00:49:55             Andrew Campana:           Andrew Campana, Asian Studies

00:50:09             Simone Pinet (she/her): Simone Pinet, Romance Studiees (alternate)

00:50:20             Kathryn Caggiano:            Kathryn Caggiano, Engineering RTE

00:50:30             Allison Chatrchyan, Cornell:         Allison Chatrchyan, At-Large RTE Faculty Senator

00:50:40             Steve Jesch:        Stephen Jesch, CALS RTE

00:50:46             Walter De Jong: Walter De Jong, Plant Breeding

00:50:52             Devin Sanera:     Devin Sanera, Business Librarian (RTE) at Nestle Library

00:51:11             Elizabeth Lamb (she, her):             Elizabeth Lamb, CALS RTE

00:51:18             Angelika Kraemer:            Angelika Kraemer, CAS RTE

00:51:23             Peter McMahon (Cornell University):       Peter McMahon, AEP

00:51:27             Araceli Lucio-F (she|her):              Araceli Lucio-Forster (RTE) Microbio and Immunol.

00:51:37             Rowena Lohman (she/her):          Rowena Lohman, EAS

00:51:39             Christine Holmes (she/her):         Christine Holmes, Postdoctoral Studies

00:51:45             Ashleigh Newman:          Ashleigh Newman, at large, (Pop Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences)

00:51:50             Kelly Hume:        Kelly Hume, Clinical Sciences

00:51:55             Itziar Rodriguez de Rivera:            Itziar Rodriguez, Romance Studies

00:51:56             Karla Hanson (she/her): Karla Hanson, Dept. of Public & Ecosystem Health (CVM)

00:52:00             Hadas Ritz:          Hadas Ritz, MAE, ENG RTE at-large

00:52:04             Julia Gardner:     Julia Gardner, CUL

00:52:08             Sunny Power:     Alison Power, S&TS

00:52:09             EA – Kristie Mahoney:     Kristie Mahoney, EA/CHE

00:52:12             Robin Dando:     Robin Dando, Food Science

00:52:17             William Lai:         William Lai, Computational Biology

00:54:01             Betsy Bihn (she/her), PSA Director:           Betsy Bihn, Department of Food Science

00:54:17             Nancy Pollak:      Nancy Pollak, Comparative Literature

00:54:22             Debbie Cherney:               Debbie Cherney, CALS Animal Science

00:54:36             Annetta Alexandridis:     Annetta Alexandridis, History of Art

00:54:57             Paul Ginsparg:   Paul Ginsparg, InfoSci

00:55:03             Carrie Adler (she/hers): Carrie Adler, senator at large

00:55:03             Dan Buckley:      Dan Buckley, CALS, Microbiology

00:55:30             Teresa Pawlowska:           Teresa Pawlowska, Plant Pathology & Plant-Microbe Biology

00:55:30             David Lee:            David Lee, Dyson School, JCB, Faculty Trustee

00:56:31             Denise Ramzy:   Denise Ramzy, Dyson/JCB RTE at large

00:57:17             JR Keller (Cornell):            JR Keller, ILR

00:57:41             Tamer Uyar:        Tamer Uyar, Human Centered Design

00:58:08             Abby Cohn:         Abby Cohn, faculty elected trustee

00:58:35             Kevin Ernste:      Kevin Ernste, Music

01:00:11             Donna Haeger:  Donna Haeger Dyson/JCB

01:00:32             Courtney Roby: Courtney Roby, Classics

01:01:04             Richard Bensel:  Hi, Courtney…Richard Bensel, Government

01:01:05             Maria Gonzalez Pendas: Maria Gonzalez pendas, architecture

01:01:21             Taryn Bauerle:    Taryn Bauerle, Horticulture

01:02:05             Bill Miller:            Is it too late to ask a tenure clock question?  Briefly, what are differences in expectations for 6 vs 8 year clocks?

01:04:03             Jill Short:              Sorry, the agenda moved on.  We will get an answer and send it to you via email.

01:07:09             Elizabeth Lamb (she, her):             Jill, can you send it along to everyone?  Thanks,

01:07:47             Jill Short:              Yes, we will strive to include it in the summary send from the Dean of Faculty on Friday.

01:08:15             Elizabeth Lamb (she, her):             Thank you!

01:17:23             Richard Bensel:  Given the general shortage of faculty in many colleges, will the number of faculty be increased?  If so, will these be tenure track faculty or will be a further increase in non-tenure track faculty?  If not, will this be an overload on current faculty?

01:19:07             Jill Short:              If this is a question for the current presentation, please ask your question in the Senate discussion period after Mary L. has completed her presentation

01:22:47             Mary Jo Dudley:                Mary Jo Dudley, Global Developmeny

01:23:04             Keith Obadike:   Keith Obadike, Art

01:23:10             Jonathon Schuldt:            Jonathon Schuldt, Communication

01:23:34             Liz Brundige:      Elizabeth Brundige, Law RTE Rep

01:25:48             Adam Anderson:              Adam Anderson, Psychology

01:27:55             Araceli Lucio-F (she|her):              I’m not sure if this has already come up, but in case it has not. Do the estimates of cost and effort take into account the ADA compliance that is necessary for any material that is digitally available. E.g, captioning on all and any video lecture material.

01:28:12             Saida Hodzic:      Saida Hodzic, Anthropology

01:28:54             Richard Bensel:  That was very nicely said and done, David.

01:33:15             Hadas Ritz:          I agree with Courtney’s point: just because maintaining academic integrity in the residential, in-person programs at Cornell is difficult, doesn’t mean we can say it’s hard everywhere, and ignore the glaring trouble we’ll have with academic integrity in an asynchronous, non-residential model.

01:33:59             Saida Hodzic:      The amount of faculty time required to interact with students in an asynchronous course is quite large: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1124530

01:34:18             Betsy Bihn (she/her), PSA Director:           Is there only one major in this degree?

01:34:26             Simone Pinet (she/her): Agree. That it is a serious problem elsewhere does not mean it doesn’t need to be addressed in its particular complexity in this “program.”

01:34:56             Donna Haeger:  Also, there is quite a bit of research that debunks the notion that online learning is not as effective as in person study.

01:36:27             Paul Ginsparg:   It seems that questions are to be cut off. I am thoroughly opposed to this, as are all the faculty and undergrads I’ve consulted. We regard the proposal as fundamentally misguided, and can’t believe it is progressed as far as it has. I could have addressed these issues in detail, but whoever set the agenda chose not to leave enough time for an essential discussion.

01:36:44             Simone Pinet (she/her): I am worried that the response to the faculty engagement question was to mention an effort to secure half a senior-lecturer in the College of Engineering.

01:37:42             Marina Caillaud:                You can bypass the “cheating” feared by the use of Chat GPT by designing astute assignments, including MCQ questions and short essay questions. The average online Exam grade of my online students in Summer 2023 was lower than the average in-person exam grade in Fall 2023.

01:44:45             Paul Ginsparg:   In particular, the notion of a “Bachelor of Science” degree is abhorrent to faculty in more technical areas, where we see enormous deficits currently in basic prob/stats in our students. To see subjects such as data analytics, statistics, etc, in the mix is ludicrous. It would be a money grab, selling a credential without imbuing the substantive knowledge it purports to certify (as was suggested by H.Hodes, it dilutes the value of our degrees — which is why current ugrads and alumni oppose it), and the reputational damage will never be worth the small amount of money it might bring in (even in the event that it can be made financially self-sustaining).

01:46:13             Allison Chatrchyan, Cornell:         It would have been helpful to have seen the existing policy to see what changes were made

01:46:29             David Lee:            50 courses among 1600+ faculty = only 3% (+/-) of Ithaca-based faculty. I can’t believe that teaching in the proposed degree program wouldn’t attract the interest of at least that # of faculty! Faculty do many things in addition to residential instruction and research: extension, eCornell teaching, community outreach, even consulting. The proposed program would give faculty one more option to attract their interests–an option that accords with Cornell’s longstanding public interest mission — and would compensate them for it!

01:46:30             Jill Short:              https://theuniversityfaculty.cornell.edu/faculty-senate/archives-and-actions/ongoing-senate-business/resolution-concerning-the-faculty-senates-governance-responsibility-to-consider-and-vote-on-the-cornell-interim-expressive-activity-policy/

01:47:11             Marina Caillaud:                Also, online education CAN be effective if it is WELL DESIGNED, which is unfortunately not always the case. It can for example easily include interactive elements such as Perusall-based collaborative annotation of a video or book chapter, quizzes embedded into a Panopto/Kaltura video, discussion posts based on prompts written by the instructor or even peer-review work on problem sets or essay drafts.

01:49:04             Donna Haeger:  Here is an example of an excellently developed online degree at Cornell. https://online.cornell.edu/master-of-science-in-business-analytics/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=MSBA+eC+Form&utm_term=cornell%20business%20analytics&utm_content=g_546916441885_e&creative=546916441885&keyword=cornell%20business%20analytics&matchtype=e&network=g&device=c&url=https%3A%2F%2Fonline.cornell.edu%2Fmaster-of-science-in-business-analytics%2F&target=&position=&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA5rGuBhCnARIsAN11vgSdRHgSQxs8Xou00jN3p70WPV20ufTw3o49wO5xAhSiHBIgOqjpsjcaApL6EALw_wcB

01:50:11             Allison Chatrchyan, Cornell:         Jill, I mean that the Dean of Faculty just referred to the existing policy for student demonstrations. Where is this policy – if the interim policy is modifying that policy

01:50:47             Adam Anderson:              Great question

01:51:08             Elizabeth Lamb (she, her):             This might be it, Allison.

01:51:18             Elizabeth Lamb (she, her):             https://policy.cornell.edu/policy-library/interim-expressive-activity-policy

01:51:32             Marina Caillaud:                This being said, based on what was shared by the dean of SCE, I really do not understand why this program dedicated to non-traditional students would deliver bachelors of SCIENCE. Isn’t there another type of Bachelors that would fit better what those future students would do?

01:52:36             Allison Chatrchyan, Cornell:         Replying to “https://policy.corne…”

This is the interim policy just released, not existing policy Eve mentioned

01:52:38             Marina Caillaud:                Reacted to “Here is an example o…” with 😀

01:53:01             Richard Bensel:  We should remember that this is the Freedom of Expression Theme Year at Cornell.  During this theme year, we have seen the central administration threaten a faculty colleague with punishment for statements made off campus as a private individual.  And now we have this egregious assault on spontaneous and public protest.

01:53:37             Jill Short:              I will bring it to the attention of Eve, Dean of Faculty, that you wish to see the existing policy.

01:54:12             Saida Hodzic:      I also wish to see the existing policy, with highlighted portions that show side by side what is new and what is existing. Thank you.

01:54:44             Simone Pinet (she/her): Yes, Saida, I think it would be very helpful to actually be able to see the exact changes and additions on the same document.

01:58:18             Simone Pinet (she/her): Reacted to “We should remember t…” with 👈🏼

02:00:49             Bill Miller:            I concur, re: the above point on side-by-side highlighting

02:05:18             Allison Chatrchyan, Cornell:         I totally concur with this speaker. Thank you

02:05:37             Ben Wrubel:       Reacted to “I totally concur wit…” with ➕

02:08:14             Taika von Konigslow:       Taika von Konigslow, PMDS

02:08:35             Tara Holm (she/her):       Reacted to “I totally concur wit…” with ➕

02:15:38             Keith Obadike:   Thank you, Maria.

02:16:00             Makda Weatherspoon (Cornell University):           Makda Weatherspoon, NES

02:16:25             Maria Gonzalez Pendas: Reacted to “Thank you, Maria.” with 👌

02:17:10             Rajesh Bhaskaran:           Rajesh Bhaskaran, Mechanical and Aerospace Engr

02:17:25             Florentina Bunea:             Florentina Bunea, Statistics and Data Science

Faculty Senate meeting

February 14, 2024

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Hello, I’m senate speaker Jonathan Ochshorn, Emeritus Professor from Department of Architecture. We start this meeting with a land acknowledgment. Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogoho:nq’ (the Cayuga Nation). The Gayogoho:nq’ are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign Nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York State, and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of Gayogoho:nq’ and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogoho:nq’ people, past and present, to these lands and waters. So, the meeting is called to order. The first order of business is the approval of the minutes. This is from the December 6th, 2023, meeting. The minutes have been posted and distributed online in the form of a verbatim transcript so, presumably, there are no corrections to the verbatim transcript. If there are please bring them to the attention of the Dean of Faculty. Hearing none the minutes are approved by unanimous consent unless there are objections. Hearing none, the minutes are approved. Our first order of business is an update on harmonizing the eight-year tenure clock in the S.C. Johnson College of Business. We have Suzanne Shu, Dean of Faculty and Research, Professor in Marketing. Is Dean Shu here or online? Okay. Either one. Ten minutes and then we’ll have ten minutes for discussion.

>> Suzanne Shu: All right, thank you all. So, Eve asked me to come back today and give an update on where we were on the eight-year tenure clock in the College of Business. This is something that just to give you some history, and — I will go slightly out of order from what I have on the slide — the college reorganized about two years ago in 2022. It was the outcome of a provost led task force that ran from 2021 through 2022. In that reorganization we took faculty that had been effectively in three separate schools, the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, the Nolan School of Hotel Administration and the Johnson School for Graduate Business programs. We took the faculty in those three schools and reorganized into more of a matrix structure where the faculty were put into disciplinary areas — you can think of these as departments. So, for example, a finance professor in Dyson, a finance professor in Nolan, a finance professor in Johnson were now all in the same department of finance or area of finance. In doing that we also put them — reorganized our tenure process so that if one of those finance professors coming up for tenure would be evaluated and — and a recommendation made by the faculty in that area of finance rather than the faculty in the school which cut across multiple disciplinary areas. So, that first bullet point is about that reorganization process. As we did that, we suddenly had an issue where faculty who had come out of the Johnson school historically already had an eight-year tenure clock and the faculty coming from Dyson and Nolan had six-year tenure clocks. Now that they were in the same disciplinary area being evaluated for tenure the provost asked us to look closely at can we harmonize the tenure clocks? So, we put together a committee. The committee came back with the recommendation of putting everybody onto an eight-year tenure clock. We put that for conversation in front of all of our faculty and as in the 4th bullet the faculty of the college strongly supported moving to that eight-year tenure clock. We then took it through the process here at the Senate and almost exactly a year ago I came here to the Senate to discuss that eight-year tenure clock resolution. It then passed in March of last year and we immediately went to work implements it for a July 1st implementation. And so, today is really an update of how that implementation has gone over that past year or so since the resolution passed. So, what happened? Well, we had six new assistant professors coming into the college that we had hired over the course of the academic year last year and we had told them as they were interviewing with us that there was some good chance that we would try switching over to an eight-year tenure clock for all new hires. Once that happened those six incoming new assistant professors were told that the clock had shifted to an eight-year clock and their offer letters were updated to reflect that. So that was kind of one of the easier ones to put in place because they hadn’t actually stepped foot on the campus yet at the time that the resolution had passed. So, the faculty that we actually already had here — there were about 21 assistant professors who had come out of the Nolan and Dyson schools and had been hired in under that six-year tenure clock. And so, for those faculty, we needed to really think carefully about how we were going to transition them over with help from the Avery August, and provost’s office more generally, we worked out what that process would be for those 21 assistant professors who fell in that category. We reached out to them with a letter describing some of the tradeoffs. For any that were here for less than three years so they had not gone up for reappointment yet under a six-year clock, they were given the choice to go from six years to an eight-year. They would get the full eight years which meant that their reappointment would happen at four years. They were given the option of either staying with the six-year clock or going to the eight-year. For faculty who had already gone through reappointment at the three-year mark they only had three more years left on their original clock. They were able to extend that to four if they wanted so that was effectively giving them a seven-year tenure clock. So, we have been trying to readjust for those faculty as we have gone through and that was — that was part of the process. So, we go to the next slide. I can show you the language. We lost our slide controller. So, the language in those letters said it is important that you consult with your area chair to understand the change in expectations for the longer tenure clock before making the change and then they would need to sit with their area chair to document the expectations. The thing we were worried about and continued to be something that we are working on is for the faculty who came in, hired under a six-year tenure clock wanted to stay with a six-year tenure clock — we needed the rest of the faculty in their area who would be discussing their tenure case to keep in mind that the expectation should be set at a six-year clock whereas someone else who might have joined that same year but chose to switch to the eight-year clock would be judged under a separate set of expectations that better reflect a longer clock. So, in other words, someone with an either year clock would have been expected to have produced a bit more and had a bit more impact before coming up for tenure. So, it’s been important to us to manage that process. Of the 21 faculty we gave that option to, about 11 chose to switch over to the longer clock. Ten stayed with the six-year clock. So, we are now managing those cases as they come through. We actually just had one come through recently. Someone who chose to stay with the six-year clock. They were almost at the end of that six-year clock. They preferred to go up for tenure after six rather than waiting for item and having that higher set of expectations. So, we have been working with, you know, making sure the faculty understand as they are evaluating those cases, as we send for external letters and so forth exactly which set of expectations we are working under. We figure we have a few more years of some of those six-year faculty coming up for tenure and going through the process and within about three more years we should have just about everybody through and we will be fully on a year clock for all of our faculty. So, that’s where we stand. I don’t know where I am on time but happy to answer any questions.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Thank you. Before we go to comments and questions, just a couple of announcements. If there are members of the press they should come up to the front and sign in and in general comments should be limited to about two minutes. So, are there any questions or comments? If you are on Zoom, raise your digital hand. If you are in the audience, just come up to the front. Okay. Seeing none, I think we’ll move onto the next agenda item. Thank you. We have an update on the proposed part-time bachelor’s degree for non-traditional students. Mary Loeffelholz, Dean School of Continuing Education, has ten minutes, after which there will be ten minutes allocated for faculty discussion. A senate discussion. Is the Dean here or on Zoom? On Zoom. So, go ahead.

>> Mary Loeffelholz: Okay, thank you very much. Can we have the next slide, please? I would just like to say before we begin a thank you to the University Faculty Committee who gave me some very helpful feedback in an earlier version of this when I spoke to them earlier this fall. Next slide, please. One of the things the University Faculty Committee advised me to do was put the why of the new degree upfront. This is the why. It came out of the October 21 report to Provost Mike Kotlikoff who recommended we proceed with this. It is a mission-driven proposal. We see it as enhancing equity and bringing Cornell education to people who otherwise wouldn’t have an opportunity to pursue it. I see it as a version of enhancing Cornell’s identity as the mobility Ivy. The social mobility Ivy that President Pollack has talked about in some years in the past. Next slide. The report of October 2021 to the provost had a lot of practical guidance in it which has been invaluable. In fact, almost every concrete guardrail they advised us to put in place has been vindicated by our experience in trying to get the degree designed. It needs to be a finite set of focused major options. We cannot mount a degree in everything that Cornell offers. We can’t bring the entire fire hose Cornell to students in this degree for reasons we can discuss. Nevertheless, we can try to sum up the essence of Cornell in a degree that would combine liberal education within demand — professionally in-demand professional skills. It’ll be — it’s proposed as predominantly asynchronous online degree that answers to the needs of part-time students — working adults with children and lives to live. However, with synchronous activities that would build connections between instructors, the faculty members and students in the course. We need to design this on the basis of existing eCornell certificates and courses at least in part for reasons that we’ll show in the report later on. In order to make this degree truly a Cornell degree it’s really important that it have faculty engagement and academic and career advising and so I have a little bit about how we are staffing up, proposing to staff up to provide that academic and clear advising within school of continuing education and it’ll be a student body by design different from that of the residential colleges. You see some of the populations there we intend to reach. There’s also a guardrail in place in the design of the degree. The requirement that students be at least four years beyond their secondary school graduation before they are eligible to matriculate in this degree. Next, please. So, what did we come up with? SEC working with some of the faculty advisory groups, some of the members of — which are here today. What we’re proposing is a Bachelor of Science degree that would be registered with SUNY as a contract college degree. We are certainly eager to get students from the New York region. It’ll be consistent with NYSED definitions for Bachelor of Science degree, at least 50% of the curriculum for every student’s course will be in liberal arts areas as they define it. Those will also be connected to SUNY transfer-friendly liberal arts distribution requirements. What we will — students to fill requirements in humanities and arts, social and behavioral sciences, natural sciences, mathematics and quantitative reasoning, communication, diversity, equity, inclusion, and global history and awareness. And in many of these cases students will be able to transfer courses that they may have taken in these areas from partnering community colleges for example, into their liberal arts distribution requirements here. All that said, some fundamental courses will be required of students that they take them at Cornell. Some writing courses, also consistent with the resolution passed by the Senate a couple of years back about diversity and equality courses. That course, one of those courses must be taken at Cornell. Next slide, please. So, the degree needs an initial major and what we’re bringing forward is a proposed Bachelor of Science in organizations, markets, and society. As consistent with the October 2021 report, this degree draws broadly on departments and courses from across the university rather than narrowly from one college. It is built around some familiar elements though. We have business fundamentals, the fundamental courses of the business minor, an additional course in data analytics. We have social sciences and policy disciplines. Engineering is contributed which you might find a surprising number of courses taken out of the area of engineering operations and management, data-driven decision making, project management and so forth. Statistics, data analytics, those 21st century skills, human resources management from ILR, ethics. Again, we are trying to honor both the principle reasons and for very practical reasons that we can talk about to mandate that the degree be broadly conceived and drawn from the rosters of all existing undergraduate programs. Next slide, please. As you know, we’ll have to have an admissions pathway that is very clearly distinct from that of the residential colleges. The four years from their post — their secondary education at the time of matriculation. We’ll be looking for not only secondary but also post-secondary transcripts because many of them will bring them additional credit. We’ll also be looking in the application process for their accomplishments in work and in military and in their life experience since the time that they graduated from secondary school. In addition to your standard kind of admissions process we will offer as many of our peer institutions can earn your way in option. You would enroll as a visiting student here. You would complete three required courses with at least a grade of B minus or better and then we’ll take that forward — and then the student would be eligible to matriculate. It is not intended — this degree as a transfer pathway into residential colleges although we can’t exactly set out forbidding anyone from applying for transfer. There’s certainly no promise that any other college at Cornell would accept students on a transfer basis and we would have to give students good counseling about that as part of the admissions process as we go forward. Next slide, please. We’ll want to know what our competitive position is in that online bachelor’s degree market. We can say something first off about the institutions with whom we would not be competing. We’re not competing with Penn State World Campus or Purdue, formerly Kaplan Global, or Arizona State University or with Maryland Global Campus which all have between 30,000 and 40,000 students in them. A completely different model, completely different faculty model. Not something really consistent with what Cornell wants to do with this degree. We’re looking at Ivy and near Ivy, Ivy plus online programs which is about the size of what we’ve checked our program to be. Penn School of Liberal and Professional studies. They are also — peer institutions worth looking at, Northwestern and Georgetown. Where we intend to be in relation to those institutions? We are aiming again to be about Harvard size. About 750 students within five years. Ultimately, however, we define selectivity, it’ll be comparable to Harvard. It’ll be a meaningly selective in its admissions. Harvard really focuses on earn your way in rather than examining people’s qualifications — is that okay? Can you hear me? Okay. So, we’ll be selective. Critically important, we’re going to give — we hope we will be able to brand more valuable degree than does Harvard or than does Penn. A degree with a specific focus in discipline. A degree that’s recognized as a Bachelor of Science. The Bachelor of Arts and extension studies, Bachelor of Liberal Arts and extension studies at Harvard for example is in many ways dissatisfying to students. It’s the subject of an annual demonstration in Harvard yard these days because they say they do not study extension and they want their degrees to say something about what it is they are studying. That is a wish that our degree will grant. We also want the degree to come with meaningful access to Cornell faculty members, talk more about the faculty model in a moment and the degree also needs to feature high-quality instructional design from online learning, distribute learning design from online learning rather than just positioning students in the back of a classroom (inaudible) during a Zoom lecture. So, what does high-quality instructional design look like? Many of you have already worked with eCornell on this but we’ll show you. (inaudible) competitive advantage active online learning. Earth and environmental –Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, 1220 Earthquake is the largest course in its department in its face-to-face version and eCornell recently brought it online with professor Larry Brown to bring it forward to title one High Schools with the national education equity lab and we’ve also brought it into the proposed new degree so high-quality instructional design intersperses short lectures, burst lectures, one main topic for the lecture expert (inaudible) identified students can come back and replay and replay this. One main idea, not a full hour of lecture, interspersed with active — activities where students cement their learning after listening to the lecture. The lecture excerpts I should say. Next slide, please. So, for example, you will listen to Professor Brown talking about the concepts at stake here and then start to lean those concepts in some other ways. Here is an illustration — animated illustration of how to start to use data to localize earthquake, seismic waves, you look at that and then, next slide, please, then student has an assignment, in this case a pretty complicated assignment to calculate from seismic data the location of an earthquake. This particular exercise has students go through three steps of calculation. Every step has a lot more additional information and then at the end of the process — this scaffolding process, they have located an earthquake, active online learning. And we build that very deliberately from module to module to module to end up with different course. Next slide, please. This is what you have seen is just a part of one week. Week 3, of this online course. Again, this is intended to be — we hope it is, it’s easy to navigate for the student. It’s varied, lecture, visual demonstration, calculation exercise, another lecture, there’s a lot going on in the course and again this is only one week, and it’s focused on what the student is doing it with their activity and have it related to their own — so that’s the course design for just one week of this course. Earthquake. There is a lot going on. And it follows next slide, please — that we put our stake — I’ll say we, SEC Cornell together in an account of a research account of the effectiveness of online learning, it’s focused on instructional design. There’s a huge body of the effect of research on the effect of (inaudible) online learning and it’s as many colleagues here have said to me it’s an extremely variable quality. There’s a ton of it that’s come out since COVID that’s pretty — where it’s difficult to disentangle everything that’s going on. So, I have a couple of earlier essays here about the effectiveness of online learning that speak especially to what, I think, we try to do at Cornell, eCornell. That first piece there, is — that’s our own Brad Bell who co-authored in 2013 with Jessica Federman a rigorous meta-analysis of the literature — the effectiveness of online learning that came to the conclusion that if you held everything else constant what really matters for the effectiveness of online learning is the kind of instructional design we just illustrated. It is deliberate, it is highly focused on student learning, it’s focused on active learning rather than just lectures. It’s about instructional design, Brad and his colleague concluded, and not about the median per se. The second piece there is from the UK, came out from — came out in 2016 and it’s interesting because it too was interested in what happened if you focused on instructional design and held other things more or less constant. A lot of the online literature is — research on the effectiveness of online learning is focused on trying to figure out whether works better for one kind of student or another, older students, younger students, and there is some method that it works better for older students. Women, men, different kinds of populations. What this comes back to though — this particular study came back to — what matters most that we can’t effect in designing programs — what matters most is the learning design, instructional design which is what we’re leaning into here for this degree. However, next slide, please — as you well know, as you can imagine online learning of this quality, design and developed and delivered with Cornell faculty is not exactly cut rate cheap. It involves a lot of instructional investment — a lot of upfront investment in instructional design which reflected in the model — which is reflected in our model. We are modeling a tuition rate of just over $900 per credit. Compared with some of our peers who are closer to 600, $700 per credit but we are baking into that figure an allowance for need based financial aid consistent with Cornell’s practices. In order to make this happen it has to be a lean curriculum, every course we develop here costs about 100,000 to bring online — to bring online and that’s the time of instructional designers in addition to the faculty. When we have to compensate for this effort. We have to compensate this effort. We have to find multiple — yes — we have to find multiple uses for courses that we create for this. We have to find good ways of reusing courses that have already been developed so what we’re going to do in order to make this more feasible for students is emphasize upfront compensation for their faculty effort. Unlike some of the Cornell graduate and professional space you might think of this as a more traditional faculty model. It’s less about the royalties or revenue share with colleges at the end and more trying to pay colleges for their faculty effort up front. What we’re modeling is a development side — however college wants to dispense the money but $5,000 per credit unit for the faculty after course development and then following that $10,000 — $10,000 per credit for faculty members serves as a faculty of record in their online courses. We’re also in recognition of the faculty get effort going into this development of these programs we are budgeting for faculty program directors for each major an additional hundred thousand and I’m delighted to say that our very first program director is projected faculty program director should be on call here — professor. We owe Dean Karolyi of the Johnson School a great big vote of thanks for having allowed us to have Dom’s time. So, the faculty directors, the payment for faculty teaching in their courses and there’s payment for the — the administrative and academic work of faculty members who will be directing these programs with SEC. And then we’ll return what is left over to the colleges after sharing some with eCornell and us for our overhead. And the — the model turns positive after four years of student enrollment. We will be investing our reserves — SEC will be investing our reserves in the course development. Next slide, please. We have a lot to do, assuming the degree is approved by the provost — by — by the senate, the board of trustees and SUNY ultimately. We need to develop the courses. We are already — we have a hiring plan underway to staff our admissions, financial aid, advising and peer services and SEC. There was a project chartered in August 2023 to do the plumbing needed to bring on board, into our systems of part-time degree pathway, and we just launched a marketing plan with eCornell. Next, please. This degree will need academic governance. Presently it doesn’t have a faculty of its own so we’re, working with an appointed faculty advisory board. Ideally, once we get this degree up and running as it’s standing up, those appointed members will transition out to faculty members who are involved with the new degree, they’re developing courses, delivering courses, in the new degree and those faculty members will be eligible to run for and be elected to the advisory board where they will do the things the faculty governance typically does so that by three years in the faculty advisory board will be entirely elected from those faculty (inaudible). Next, please. And now we’re at question time. If we may.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: If there’s people in house that have questions step up to the mics. Otherwise, raise your digital hand. I see Hadas, please unmute and go ahead for two minutes.

>> Hadas Ritz: Hadas Ritz, MAE and Engineering RTL Senator. I have a few questions. One is — it wasn’t clear to me whether the $30,000 was to the unit of the faculty or to the faculty member who was the faculty member of record. I have a couple of other questions, should I do them all at once?

>> Mary Loeffelholz: That will go to the unit.

>> Hadas Ritz: Thank you.

>> Mary Loeffelholz: (inaudible).

>> Hadas Ritz:  So, you said you want to limit enrollment to people who are four years post-secondary education. I can think of a lot of people who are four years post-secondary education but — well I’m thinking particularly of students who have taken several leaves of absence or several health leaves of absence and are not really succeeding as a Cornell undergrad and it’s been a few years and I see people trying to enter this program that would not kind of fall under the selectivity that you’re aiming for and kind of related to that I’m really concerned about the earn your way in three courses with a B minus or later. I think a lot of people — myself included, think of grade inflation as a major problem just across the university so it’s not that hard to get a B minus in three courses so, the selectivity of that I’m really concerned about.

>> Mary Loeffelholz: Well, I would say about your second case scenario, a student who’s not been successful at Cornell in their time as a traditional residential undergraduate — we’re under no obligation to admit that student. A student who has achieved B minuses in our course work — I’m — that student would not be thrown out of the residential program at Cornell to the best of my knowledge and belief so I would assume that — if they can pass their courses with a respectable grade in, they go.

>> Hadas Ritz: Can I sort of follow up on that?

>> Mary Loeffelholz: On what? The moderator —

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: — a bunch of people that would like to speak. Why don’t we go to David, then we’ll go to Zoom, and then Harold.

>> David Delchamps: David Delchamps, Electrical and Computer Engineering. Two years ago, this month I was chair of the Educational Policy Committee and I presented to the senate our little write-up on this proposal as it stood at the time. We had two well-attended meetings in November and December of 2021 after this first surfaced and some of our conclusions, I think are at variance with how this has gone forward even though Mike (inaudible) reassured us that as soon as, you know, he came on board (inaudible) things would all get straightened out and all our misgivings would be addressed, okay. First one that I want to bring up is that we, Educational Policy Committee at the time, felt that this degree has got to be differently titled from the Cornell degree. It has to be like Harvard’s. It has to be an unsatisfying degree because it’s going to be an inferior degree. Okay. Unfortunately. Just because of the nature of online learning. We think there has to be a distinction there and I think that this is kind of a (inaudible) for the program going forward it seems that they want it to be not that, okay. That’s one thing. Second thing is, who is it for? It wasn’t really clear. I mean the animating sentiment was wonderful, you know, these underserved communities, et cetera, but then they started talking about wealthy industrialists and crown princes who were going to pay sticker price and subsidize all these poor students in the U.S. and EPC members said, well, aren’t there plenty of poor people in other countries who could use this program? You know, and so, there seems to be a like — we weren’t sure who it was for. That was another thing. Third thing and maybe this is the most important, the whole thing and Hadas kind of touched on this in her question about compensation, where’s the faculty effort come from? Well, okay, you know It’s not going to be — people aren’t going to jump up and say I want to do this — I don’t think necessarily. It is not something we signed up for when we joined the faculty as tenured contracted members, in my case 42-plus years ago. So, you know, is the chair going to say you, you have to do this? Is that going to happen? I don’t know. How is this going to be assessed when people come up for promotion? Is it going to be value or is it going to be just like, you know, checking another box (inaudible) okay? The worst part of the faculty effort thing though, is that no matter how the faculty get compensated, whether it’s their department or themselves faculty effort gets siphoned away from the on campus residential program and it diminishes the quality of what’s happening for our students here who come and do the traditional thing and I think that is not adequately taken into account, okay. I’m not saying that this is a no go but I’m saying that these are all red flags that the Education Policy Committee at least two years ago saw, and I don’t think they are being addressed yet.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Thank you.

>> Mary Loeffelholz: Should I respond? ok

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: If you can do it briefly.

>> Mary Loeffelholz: I would point to the — one faculty effort matter — we are working with the College of Engineering on a senior lectureship appointment right now that will be split in terms of effort between this program and the other — and the engineering communications program. So that’s — you know one model for making sure that there is someone added to the faculty that represents this work where this work is baked into their appointment. I would also say we’re talking about offering about 50 courses per year. (inaudible) then I’ll stop just to get some other things.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Courtney, online. Unmute and identify yourself and your affiliation.

>> Courtney Roby: Thank you very much. Courtney Roby, Senator from Classics. Thank you very much. I do have a — a couple of additional concerns in addition to sharing the concerns already voiced by my colleagues and I think they’re related. The first of them is — so you have this financial model that’s set to pay a lot of money upfront for course development and then start making money after four years which seems to presuppose a model where you set up the course and then you kind of forget it and you’ve got faculty member doing some kind of maintenance while the course is in session but you’re not doing major revamping which I understand is very standard for online education. I think it is part of the reason why online education is inferior to the kind of education that we’re able to give and that the residential college. One big issue is I mean, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have had to completely redesign my courses from the ground up due to the advent of ChatGPT for example and brings me to my second question which is how do you envision maintaining standards of academic integrity in this online asynchronous course. It’s obviously a very big question and I don’t expect an answer but, like, for example, in your model earthquakes course are you able to speak to the kinds of measures that have been taken to maintain academic integrity in an environment where a student cannot only ask ChatGPT to write any kind of essay or do mediocre math or programming for them but can also through (inaudible) get someone in India to do any task for them. What kinds of measures are in place to make sure that students are actually acquiring the skills that the label on the degree says that they have?

>> Mary Loeffelholz: About — let me just go back. There’s — there’s the updating question — these courses will be developed more or less as needed, not three years in advance and then put on ice and then brought back and the financial model also (inaudible) revisiting the courses in a thorough way every three years, not just the sort of things one can do from year to year to year and offering but revisiting them every three years in order to make sure that they are updated. The ChatGPT — the AI — it’s a real issue. Cornell is investing in some proctoring software to do that but it’s not only here. I mean — my — my home discipline is English and we are trying to figure out what we’re going to do about that with in-person programming, right here and now cause any —

>> Courtney Roby: — with the in-person programming you have the option of what I’m doing now which is getting my students to write in class so that I know that they have had practice doing their own writing and I have seen what — when they produce. You just can’t do anything like that in an asynchronous course.

>> Mary Loeffelholz: Well you can do something pretty close to that with — with building in instructor, student, you know, revision guide — you know set one on one sessions where you are doing this but, again, I would say for my colleagues in English and myself and as a prospective teacher in this program — we have to be asking students to do more ambitious work than they can do in front of us in class. That’s just something, you know, they’re a variety of things we can do about that. I have nothing but admiration for the center for teaching innovation and what they’re doing to bring this home to us and figure out what we can do with this new world but none of us at least in the disciplines of interest to me are — you know — my own bread and butter are going — just to be able to retreat to saying, you know, what they do in front of us in blue book in class is what we’re going to assess them on.

>> Courtney Roby: Sure, but just in your model class — your earthquakes class, Can — can you say anything about the measures that are being taken?

>> Mary Loeffelholz: Oh, I would have to defer to eCornell about the proctoring software. I will say that I do some, you know, someone who — consumes certain kinds of online learning. Building in the short assessments and activities that are in the course — in, you know, watch this, do this, answer that question, there’s a certain intrinsic satisfaction in just trying to answer this little question that isn’t high stakes, you know? Where you just try to figure it out. And building in more of that rather than a single high-stakes thing at the end, I think has its value. Donna — Donna Hager wanted — I think I saw her hand in a bit ago. I don’t know whether it’s possible to —

>> Donna Hager: Yeah, I just wanted to jump in and respond, say hello To everybody and thanks, Mary for introducing me. I — I just wanted to share that I thought that — this degree — this proposition really does embrace the — the spirit of any person, any degree and it is not meant to take the place of any of the in-person teaching. It’s not meant to take the place of any faculty. Of course, it’ll be a heavy lift and we’ll need collaborations across Cornell and we’re looking forward to those. I have already enjoyed just reaching out to so many different units and speaking with people who are excited about this idea. We’re going to be reaching out to a really unique niche of individuals, not cannibalizing what we already have, and I think that really the assets we have in Cornell and, if you’re familiar, if you’re not familiar I’m working with Joe Ellis to design something that we can show you. There’s been quite a few questions about what the process even looks like. There are amazing, amazing people to work with if you haven’t worked with eCornell already and what they — what they designed is just, to me, beyond state-of-the-art and you can see that when you go through the materials. So, I think it’s a great opportunity and it’s a great opportunity to extend Cornell’s reach as well.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Thank you. I think we only have time for one more question and maybe a short response. Harold? Go ahead. Identify yourself and your affiliation.

>> Harold Hodes: Hi, I’m Harold Hodes in the Philosophy Department. In discussing this matter with some of my colleagues and I have two concerns and a question. First concern, it’s hard to believe that for most courses online learning is first-rate education. I — the experience we’ve had during covid at least for me and for my colleagues, suggests that at least for most sorts of courses the best you can do is kind of a second-rate education for a number of reasons that I think people can envision. I don’t want to take time to go into them. A second concern is the adjunctification of the faculty. I think it likely that there will be few full-time faculty members who want to take on the task of preparing entirely online courses. Most of us have come here because we like to teach in person. So, the effect would be to hire adjuncts, lecturers for example, as already suggest, and this would continue this trend of adjunctification which, in the long run, would be likely to end up eating its way into in-person education. So, I think that this is a very serious worry about launching down this line. So now for a question. Granted there are people out there who would benefit from getting college education and who can’t just go to college. The task of helping educate these people seems to me probably belongs to government. New York state doesn’t do too badly when it comes to supporting post-secondary school education, could do better, and if Cornell wants to contribute to reaching these people, I think it would be best for Cornell to lobby in Albany in favor of further support for SUNY rather than trying to sell this second-rate product which would end up just cheapening the Cornell brand. So, I think that it’s all a bad idea.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Thank you. I think that wasn’t the question so I’m not going to have a response. I think we need to move on and we’re going to go to faculty senate announcements and updates. Eve De Rosa Dean of Faculty and Chelsea Specht, Associate Dean of Faculty.

>> Eve De Rosa: Thank you (inaudible). So, I know that we’re actually here to talk about the interim policy on expressive activities so I’m going to keep this very focused so that we can move to getting faculty feedback on those policies. So, I’m going to just do one item. Every three years there’s a reapportionment, and so, behind me are the general principles that we’ve always used for updating the apportionment of the senate and so, unlike in the past I’ve — I went to nominations and elections committee and talked about the principles and reviewed principles that I wanted to bring into the apportionment and so, I vetted it through them and now I’m bringing it to you and so, next slide please. So, the changes are primarily two things. One to really get a snapshot of the structural changes that have happened over the last three years and the other one is to bring in new voices and so I’ll start with the structural changes. So, in the past three years we’ve seen new school introduced. We had new units that are multi-college, and we also have — what was the other thing? Oh, yeah, restructured units inside certain colleges. So, the ILR has five different faculty research areas. The business school is now — it’s fully integrated so it’s not just Nolan, Dyson and Johnson. They have seven or eight areas of faculty scholarship, and all three colleges and schools are — all three schools are represented in those units and so I wanted to reflect those kind of structural changes. So, now, when you see the listing of all the senators it’ll be by department and in each department, you will see whether there’s more than one college for those multi-college units. So that’s one difference and the reason I did that is because when it was done by college and there was a multi-college unit the larger college or the college that had the most faculty received all of the credit basically. And I noticed that CALS was actually underrepresented because CALS is comparably sized to arts, but it didn’t look like that. It almost looked like it was a half of its actual size. So now, we’re going to do it by unit within each department whether there’s more than one college represented and then the units get to choose how they represent those multi-colleges. Bringing in new voices. So, two changes. We are — we have currently, for example, a designated senator for the emeriti. I added two new designated senators because of the complexity of the different units and the different campuses so we have — we will have a tech campus representative so there’s always a guarantee of having that perspective and a Geneva senator so we happen to have Geneva represented but there’s no guarantee of it so now we will have that by having two extra designated senators. I added three different other RTE senators so we now will have a senator that represents research, translational research and extension from CAL and CHE, mainly through the BCTR, the Bronson Brenner Center for Translational Research. We had a research division that had lots of senator RTE faculty and they had no voice in the senate so now they will and the ILR extension is extensive and especially in Albany and Buffalo and they also didn’t have a voice so now those three units will have representation in the senate. And the last new voice that I thought would be welcome into the senate is we have ROTC ex officio senator and I’m just going to expand that so that they can select from both ROTC and students with veterans’ status who tend to be more — nontraditional and older and so bringing that voice in as well. And that is my update so if anyone has questions, if not we can move onto the free expression.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Not sure if (inaudible) — hand is up from the last session or whether he has a question at this point.

>> Eve De Rosa: Disappeared.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Again, if you have a question step up or raise your hand if you’re in Zoom land. Maybe we can go onto the next agenda item.

>> Eve De Rosa: Okay, so let’s move on then. Really at this point, this was two interim policies were introduced in the winter break and this is our first opportunity to speak about it and hear directly from faculty so that’s what I really hope that today will be. It’s the start of a conversation so none of these things are set so they haven’t gone through the — I’m going to call it the governance infrastructure for changing something into an — a final policy. It is definitely not at that stage, and it is at a stage where faculty should feel free to give their feedback on either the university assembly’s intake website or ours and we’ll make sure that the UA gets it. So, next slide, please. So, I am hearing from faculty and I — general counsel attended the university assembly on February 6th. There was a lot of really good energy at the UA. People were giving feedback and so the UA has had this meeting on the 6th. This is our turn, and so I will say that this was introduced in January, that there’s a place for feedback at the university assembly but also here in the office of the Dean of Faculty, and a lot of people are asking why the university assembly, and I highlighted in red — is predominantly because they oversee policy that’s important to the larger constituency in our community. Okay, next slide, please and the other thing that would — I think there was a lot of energy in the university assembly, was, you know, once people understood, you know, they collected all these policies from across campus and all different spaces, made one collective — interim policy. For example, I met with students immediately as soon as this semester started, met with students from the student assembly and they had critiques about, for example, the fact that they can only protest from noon to one and that’s really restrictive. Turns out that’s been on the books and that was not new and so it was a — it was new to me kind of feeling about it, but I took the feedback from those students to general counsel and I’m saying this because I do think that the university is being responsive. The students had concerns about if I preregister, I might be discriminated or outed. I don’t want to reveal the content of the — you know the protest so now you don’t have to do that. Students had complaints about using the 25 live system because of the two-to-five-day lag. It no longer — it has a 24-hour response time, so I just want to say that this is genuinely a time for us to be able to give constructive feedback and make this appropriate for our community. Those are the three changes and the new things that were — introduced as part of the interim policy and then I just open it up to the floor for people to start to comment.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Go ahead, Risa, there’s nobody online.

>> Eve De Rosa: I should mention that the provost and general counsel will attend our March meeting and Risa will introduce the next part.

>> Risa Lieberwitz (ILR): Thanks very much. There’s a lot to talk about with this. So, what I — what I’m going to do is focus here on something that I would like to make sure everybody knows about and that is a resolution that is in the pending matters part of the faculty senate website and that’s a residential that’s entitled residential concerning the faculty senate’s governance responsibility to consider and vote on the Cornell interim expressive activity policy. And that has been co-sponsored by at least now nine faculty senators and we have a growing list of non-senators’ faculty I think we’re probably up to about 60 or so who are signing onto co-sponsor that. Because of very real concerns — first with regard to the governance aspect of this new interim policy and the way in which the governance aspect of it, and the lack of respect for governance, particularly with our focus on the faculty senate that that lack of respect for governance processes is closely tied to the very serious academic freedom and freedom of expression concerns where governance is so important. And so, this is an interim policy that has been — oh, let me just tell you that I’m going to give you some key points from this resolution, and I realize that, based on what Eve said, that there will be a lot of time at the March meeting for us as a faculty senate to closely evaluate this residential and certainly bring in a lot of discussion. So, what I want to do is just give you some key points about this, urge you to please read the residential, share it with your colleges because there are very serious concerns. One of them is that this interim policy has been adopted and apparently is being implemented. It already has a policy number and — and so this is — once again kind of a fada complete (sic) problem that we have with governance, and why is this of such concern that it didn’t come to the faculty senate first? One is because there are substantial new restrictions on expressive activity which directly affect academic freedom and educational policy which is the purview of the university faculty as delegated to the faculty senate. So, of course, it should go to the university assembly, but it should also go to the different governance bodies and in particular I’m focused here on the faculty senate. In addition to the expectations that there are — that there’s registration for outdoor demonstrations of more than 50 people, those expectations are certainly presented as if they are requirements, and we have to address that — that at the very least it’s an ambiguity. There’s no sticks or poles at outdoor demonstrations, no picket signs apparently. All posters and flyers have to be dated, include the name of sponsoring Cornell organizations or the unit or individual, et cetera. There are a number of them that we identified in the residential and these are implemented through disciplinary action. This applies to all faculty, students and staff so there’s serious restrictions and serious concerns about academic freedom and freedom of expression and so what should we do about those concerns? We should have faculty governance, and this has not happened. We should have heard about this when this policy was being considered. We heard nothing about it until now and so now we have to reverse the problem here because we are basically being told, you can discuss this, you can give this comments but it’s not in our hands. And so, the residential has three resolved clauses and the first one is that the Cornell administration shall suspend any implementation of any new restrictions in this policy including the kinds of new restrictions that I identified until such time as has been full faculty senate discussion about this, and then of course with the university assembly. Also, the second resolved has to do with the need for full faculty senate deliberations including considering and voting on any amendments to this new policy and that the final resolve is that we actually do that. That we really take the time and do the sort of evaluation, consideration, amendments and real concern for addressing what is not apart from educational policy at all. Expression on campus whether it is in the classroom or outside the classroom has to do with educational policy and we should demand that. Thank you.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Go ahead. Identity yourself.

>> Yuval Grossman: Yuval Grossman, Physics. So, I have a few remarks. My first remarks is that I think it should be very fair — your residential should be very clear and think we recommend is not the right language. My second remark has to do with the extensive amount of paperwork the students have to go through and as a faculty adviser of the water polo club I’ve been working with them so much and really need to reduce it. My biggest issue and it’s basically the same issue that I was talking about in the last senate meeting in December, is (inaudible) no change in — and the fact that the university keep the idea to take over advising are okay and what we see is that we have this very kind of fuzzy and subjective idea when it’s — you cannot actually disturb what’s going on. Okay? And then we see people (inaudible) other people say extremely disturbing and they think, you know, according to us this is not. What we see on Thursday was extremely, extremely problematic. We seen people go over to a die in the library, harassing other students, okay? And many Jewish students show a lot of fear, and it’s real fear, okay? People are harassing me, okay? And the university basically just say, that’s fine, you know? It’s just a die in, it is just a takeover so my biggest concern about these things that we should not let these things keep going, okay? We have a real problem of harassment on campus, and we should really put it very clearly that those things cannot happen. Thank you.

>> Beth Milles: Hi, my name is Beth Milles. I am from Department of Performing and Media Arts. I sit on the university assembly as well as the University Faculty Committee. So, I guess I just want to encourage everybody to utilize the university assembly website and I’ll make sure that we all have access to the comments and I agree that comments aren’t the same as dialogue or information but I really encourage people to reach out to those of us who are on university assembly and are faculty to talk to us so we can represent the next meetings on February 20th, and I don’t know if the transcript from February 6th is available. It is available, so people want to look at it. Vice President Varner was at that meeting Discussing this policy and I agree, I was in a meeting December 20th, when I first heard about this policy. It was the end of the semester. The timing is complicated because it happened between semesters and then the first meeting we have is here, today. So, it’s complicated. My feelings on December 20th when I was traveling and the semester was over are very different than the ones, I had sitting in university assembly, listening to the impassioned students and graduate students with true concerns and faculty alike with true and valid concerns about the document and where it has come from. So, I’m encouraging people to really utilize university assembly and to reach out and talk about it. That’s all I want to say. Thank you.

>> David Bain: Hi, my name is David Bain. I’m an associate professor In the Government Department. I’m not a senator so thank you for having me here to listen. So, I — there’s a number of issues with this new policy and I strongly encourage us to — strongly encourage you to do what you can to stop it and delay it. It involves a mix of new policies and existing policies. Those existing policies have been cobbled together from a range of different policies around campus. However, centralizing them in this new document has two effects. One is it takes things over in the student code of conduct and makes them generally applicable to everybody at the university. Second is that it takes them from their context without taking other protections for academic speech. It takes them from their context, puts them into a document that is intended clearly to restrict speech and so it changes how we interpret existing policies. Each of the existing policies is now — is now going to be interpreted in a context of a document that asks us to restrict expressive activities. How they are going it be implemented has now changed. And the last major thing that I want to highlight is that it establishes a process for registration (inaudible) approval that is inevitably going to involve the university and viewpoint discrimination. The university does not want — suspect or hope to be involved in viewpoint discrimination but it’ll be because any issue that whoever is an approving person is going to be confronted with that they may suspect may generate controversy is going to go to their supervisor, make sure that they have support in doing so, is going to ask for more detail, is going to ask for more restrictions from the organizers of these events, is going to involve some students just backing out, not doing it all together which will be a diminishment of some speech based upon who those students are or what they expect to be engaging in and it will involve other students going around this policy because our students have some courage so they will go around this policy and then will be differentially targeted for sanctioning and punishment. This is going to impact any issue that could rise to a level of controversy. It’ll be conservative students targeted; it’ll be students of color targeted. It’ll be students with foreign visa or visa statuses which make them vulnerable who are going to be most scared. This is going to involve the university and viewpoint discrimination across the board in ways we can’t predict, and I think it’s just a train wreck of a policy proposal.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Are you waiting? Come up.

>> Shannon Gleeson: Hi, everyone. My name is Shannon Gleeson. I am the chair of the Department of Global Labor and Work at the ILR School as well as the co-director of the Migrations Initiative On campus. I don’t speak for either of those units but just to give you a sense of my positionality here. I have several concerns related to both the faculty governance and the academic freedom implications that have already been mentioned by my colleagues. I think it’s clear that this has been prompted by the current political context and debate. However, by no means I think should we be thinking about this as only bound to the specific conversations we are having on and off campus, and I would encourage us to get — not get too caught up in the specific details necessarily only of the interim policy, fire retardant paper for example but also, more importantly, the overall impact on free expression, ironically on our campus during this time. So, as Risa mentioned, certainly I have a lot of concerns about the faculty governance piece of this, that has been the — the policy has been applied clearly without this consultation that should concern us. I also think that this idea that this is already been policy that’s been cobbled together on the books does not necessarily justify it. The fact that it wasn’t being implemented should give us some sense about what was priority for our administrative — limited resources going into this, and I understand that this — having conversations with other administrators on campus came partly out of a risk aversion on the part of the university responding to outside influence but that should not — be how we — that should not be driving how we conduct business on our university campus. Finally, I would simply say that we should not be separating out the implications for various constituencies on our campus — I as a faculty member with relatively much more privilege than perhaps even others here with us today also care about what’s happening to my students as well as my junior faculty who I also have a responsibility to who are also being possibly subject to additional oversight in the classroom and this is something that should be concerning for us as university leaders. Thank you.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: We have someone online, Allison. Identify yourself and unmute.

>> Allison Chatrchyan: Hi, I’m Allison Chatrchyan. I’m an RTE faculty senator at large. I just want to echo the statements that were just made in person. Those were excellent points. I teach at the Cornell Law School. I teach about the importance of nonstate actors in civil society to the formation of environmental law and for the protection of environmental and human rights I encourage my students to participate in marches and to demonstrate and I feel that these types of restrictions, if they had been in place in the 1960s or 70s would have severely limited the civil rights or environmental movements. I feel these restrictions have been put in place without any proper review of the faculty senate, without — they’re very reactionary and I feel they should be put on hold immediately. These type of restrictions on demonstrations on our campus seem almost laughable except they have been adopted by our university in a country that is not the soviet union or communist China but the United States of America. Having students required to register outdoor demonstrations, prohibiting sticks or poles at outdoor demonstrations, prohibiting the use of candles, prohibiting — requiring posters to include the name of the sponsoring Cornell organization. These are all things that will severely limit freedom of speech and the right to demonstrate in the United States and on our campus. Thank you very much.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Thank you. Come on up.

>> Paul Sawyer: Hello everyone, my name is Paul Sawyer. I’m emeritus from Literatures and English and came out of retirement to speak today after I — I got a look at — at the proposals — at the policy and I want to say first of all that I’ve been over 44 years and been involved and direct and active member with — as the previous person said very important acts of protest that were not simply issues of public safety but were endemic not only to — were fundamental not only to the teaching project and the learning project of this university, which is a community after all which educates in various ways, and which educates from various constituencies including students — not only that but it is part of our history as a university and I have never seen anything approaching the extent of these limitations on freedom and so I was astonished the other day when I heard first of all that — this is essentially — not a defense from past — from past procedures because even in the divestment movement of the 1985 and following what the university was trying to get rid of shanty towns on campus and was desperately reviving — revising policy to get the shanties out, even then they did not go to the extent that we have just seen. What’s — several — several things troubling that people already mentioned and first of all is the absolute lack of an explanation. Why are — why is the reason? The other day No sticks because I believe sticks could be, you know, a safety issue, candles could be a safety issue. The previous speaker said it felt laughable almost. I was embarrassed at — to hear with a straight face the explanation that the only reason that we’re doing this is because people — people could be struck with posters. To think — the heart of Cornell University without legal posters or without candlelight vigil is utterly preposterous so the fact that — we know that there is no safety need for this because (inaudible) on February 6th said that an external committee said that we — we seem to be in no danger and we were perfectly able to protect our students and just finally, I want to say that though I do agree that the particular present context should not be determinative of the way we think about this interim report, nevertheless I — it is absolutely the worst conceivable time when the actuality or even the appearance of a crackdown on protest should occur. Young people are growing up in an era and a period of time more dangerous I think than any of us grew up in and they fund — major event that they are witnessing today is a massacre of extraordinary brutality and when they protest — and this is a peaceful, right? So, the group that — that is — is being targeted here is a peace group as was in the 1960s by the way, right? And to come into the — to come in and express their feelings about ending a war and then to be told that because of them universities today are a hotbed of antisemitism, right? We are already facing an enormously chilling attack on freedom of speech in the university. I’m glad I’m not the president of the university. I’m glad someone else is but that doesn’t mean that Cornell University should follow the example — for example, Columbia, right, and run away from — from the threats of free speech that face all of us. This is — a really critical moment for us and I’m — grateful for the opportunity to address the speaker and to see the conversations (inaudible) thanks.

>> Wendy Wilcox: My name is Wendy Wilcox. I am a member of Cornell University Library. And I just want to make two primary points. One is — is I cannot think about this policy and not consider our celebration of the Willard Straight takeover. It just — it — it just always comes to my mind. We celebrate that and in trying to tease out why I — those two things come so clearly in my mind. One is a policy, and the policy is to — to enforce the moment but in the moment sometimes we can’t evaluate how history will treat the way we monitor the activity of the moment and — and I don’t think we’re in a place to kind of make moral judgments about what is happening because we need time to evaluate that. So, I just want to make that point that I feel like there is a real dichotomy between how we’re going to view any protest or demonstration in a moment and how history will reflect on that. The second thing is — this is more because I’ve spent years working on 25 live and I understand how decision making of — of requests for use of space are — are managed and the lack of accountable of this in terms of who is making the decisions and who is making the approvals on any of these requests is egregiously overlooked in this document. My husband and I were talking about this morning, where is the commitment to transparency when someone — a request is submitted and declined? Why? Why? Who made that decision to decline or accept a request and what were the justifications and what is their position or qualification for making that determination? Are they a staff member who are literally just like I don’t want to step near this protest but with a ten-foot pole or are they committed to the — the vigor of — expression activity on university campus? I’ll just turn that over.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Thank you.

>> Toby Hines: I’m Toby Hines. I’m the faculty senator for the library and I always say you know it’s serious when you get the librarians really riled up about something. But I felt compelled to speak today not only because of my own concerns but — regarding these policies but also because after sharing the agenda for today with my colleagues in the library I heard from so many of them — like more than any agenda I have forwarded to my colleagues regarding their concerns in particular — the interim expressive activity policy. In addition to the troubling privacy and surveillance implications in this policy my colleagues and I have concerns regarding the overall effect this policy will have on substantially suppressing expressive activity on campus and the disproportionate impact that will have on students from marginalized groups. That’s actually a direct quote from a colleague’s message to me. Furthermore, I have to question any policy that is going to very likely increase the number of interactions there will be between students and CUPD. We saw that directly in the demonstration at Mann Library last week. A colleague — another colleague who reached out to me who was formerly an attorney who worked on civil rights and first amendment cases has described the policy as problematic to say the least and that — it amounts to a substantial restriction of speech rights on campus which invites and allows the administration of Cornell to have even more viewpoint discrimination than it already does and will chill speech generally across campus. She also said as someone who is a liaison — a faculty liaison to a student group where it says she has experienced this firsthand, pretty regularly. So, I really — I really thank Risa for the excellent statement that the AAUP executive group wrote for — on the 5thand the Cornell Daily Sun. I would recommend you all to read it. Risa did a great job of explaining that just now and I look forward to more opportunity to debate this, hopefully the residential that’s been put forward will give us. I also hope I can say just a few quick words about the anti doxxing policy that’s another policy that was put forward and so while I am generally very supportive of this anti doxxing — of an anti doxxing policy the one that’s been proposed does not really explain any consequences for those in violation. The Cornell community members should respect others’ rights to keep their personal information private, does not actually articulate any consequences for violating this policy. Furthermore, many of the actual incidents of harassment that Cornell students and staff have faced would not violate this policy making it largely ineffective when the names of — and photographs of students and staff are being circulated with malicious intent. So, I think that this policy would need major reworking before it can sufficiently protect members of our community. Thank you.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Thank you. Simone is online, so unmute yourself and go ahead.

>> Simone Pinet, Romance Studies: Yes, hi, thank you so much. I agree with all of my colleagues. I have to say it really helps me to know that there’s so many people that are objecting to these policies. I (inaudible) there were many common sensical elements in the policy and also very problematic elements, many of which have been addressed and I just want to point out three. The first one is that — I mean (inaudible) as we are at Cornell, I don’t think we have the ability to predict the future. I don’t think anyone knows when they might need to have a protest or how many people might show up to a protest so that immediately brings up a number of issues on the period of registration. The idea that you would need two weeks for anything effectively blocks our ability to react in a timely and relevant way to any events on campus, in our country or in the world and in addition, that the policy immediately inserts punishment after these restrictions is quite chilling, perhaps especially because of the vagueness of this threat. And, I just — I just want to address what my colleague from the library just said and people before about who will be deciding on these things and how intellectual or anti-intellectual it is not to consider that faculty, many of whom work on these kinds of issues who are experts on these kind of issues — shouldn’t they be the ones to decide which things are relevant and not just some person who has been unfortunately appointed to this role? Thank you.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Denise Ramsey, unmute.

>> Denise Ramsey: Hi, thanks. I’m Denise Ramsey. I’m from Dyson and the College of Business . I just — I — I really am so pleased to hear all of — all of the statements that have be made. I agree with many of them. I just wanted to add one thing which is that, you know, in a time when we see current policies and actions happening around the country in academic institutions, really chilling policies, chilling actions, that there is an incredible — there’s — there’s a sort of environment of fear right now in speaking up and so, you know, and that’s just exacerbated by the fact that we have social media, the fact that everything gets recorded, cancel culture, you know, the fact that you can — you can take someone’s likeness, you know, and — and use generative ai to manipulate it. All of these things, right, are — are chilling and then you add to that this idea that you have to register your protest two weeks in advance, 50 people or less, whatever it is. If students or faculty are going to protest they are doing — the bravery it takes in 2024 sadly to protest is immense and so to add all of these restrictions on top of what students are doing, students in particular but faculty as well, right, when all of us are afraid to speak out, I think, is — is dangerous and scary and I — you know just the fact that the administration is going along with it is — is not going along with this but — going along with a sort of national trend but — but also continuing it and adding and really making sure that Cornell’s campus is among those places where we might feel unsafe speaking out is really a sad state of affairs. Thanks.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Maria, online. We have about a minute and a half (inaudible) —

>> Maria Pendas: Yes, I’ll be brief, thank you. Maria Pendas, representative for Architecture. So I just want to — I did bring this to my — to my (inaudible) body and I just echo the concern that it has been explained in several ways in terms of suppression, the history of protests that have shaped Cornell but I wanted to point one other thing which is the fact that the policy seems to affect disproportionately, students (inaudible) in certain fields and practices and might have been pointed out the fact that artists and makers of space are singled out in the policy and this means that not only freedom of expression and (inaudible) will be curtail but also creativity in a very fundamental way (inaudible) we hold dearly in academia so the fact that artists have been singled out as needing a specific scrutiny has been raised as a further concern by my faculty. Thank you.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Our final five minutes is reserved for the good of the order. Yuval Grossman has reserved this time.

>> Yuval Grossman: Okay. Yuval Grossman, Physics. So, I’m here today because we are organizing a visit to Israel, me and another professor and I’m basically here to extend an invitation to all of you to come and consider the things. While (inaudible) not accept yet we hope to go toward the end of May, the beginning of June for a visit of about three and four days. So, what are the goals in doing this kind of a mission? So, the first thing is to connect and it’s to connect with Israeli academia and with the call of boycott Israel academia it unfortunately happened all over the world and unfortunately also at Cornell. I think it’s extremely important for us to actually go and show that we are against those boycott calls. Number two, is learn and — it’ll enable those of us who actually like to better understand what’s going on actually to come to Israel and see what’s going on, okay? You just go in Israel and what you see from there it’s really not what you see from here and you’re going to actually see things differently, okay? And the second is support and given the situation at Cornell many Israeli people do not like to send their children to Cornell . Unfortunately, I’ve been getting many emails, people say should I send my son to Cornell? I’m Jewish. I’m Zionist. Should I send my son to Cornell given that Cornell is unfortunately extremely high on the list of antisemitic institutions which is unfortunately very true, and I think that by sending — by going with this mission to Israel, show them that there is another side from Cornell. A side that’s really care and that is actually want Jewish people and Zionists actually to come here and anyone who want to come I will be happy to actually help with arranging other things. I would be more than happy to help you actually come to many of the Palestinian, Jewish initiatives that I’ve been taking and have been doing a lot on those. I would be happy to share it with anyone who is actually interested to actually come and join it. So, what I would like to ask you if you have any interest in this please email me. Yuval Grossman, it’s kind of easy To find me. Yuval, Physics, and I will also ask you to please send this message to the other faculty in your department. Thank you.

>> Jonathan Ochshorn: Having completed the agenda, the meeting is adjourned.

1. The differences in expectations between 6-year and 8-year tenure clocks will differ somewhat by discipline, which is why we asked the faculty to meet with their area chair to document the differences in each case. More generally, however, the differences will primarily be a slightly higher expectation for amount of publications and a higher expectation for impact of the work (through measures like number of citations, invited talks, etc) since there will have been more time for the work to be disseminated to the larger academic community. –Dean Suzanne Shu