Faculty Senate – May 7, 2025
Agenda for Faculty Senate Meeting
Meeting Time: 3:30-5:00PM
Physical location: G10 Biotechnology Building; reception immediately following in atrium
Contact your unit’s Faculty Senator for the zoom link.
Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫʼ Land Acknowledgement
Call to order
Approval of Minutes: April 9, 2025
Senate Speaker Jonathan Ochshorn, Emeritus Architecture [ 4 minutes]
Policy 6.13 updates
Katie King, Associate Vice President for Office of Institutional Equity and Title IX [5 minutes]
Senate Q&A [5 minutes]
Motion to vote on revised proposed Resolution to Adopt a Unified Transfer Credit Policy for Undergraduate Transfer Students
Lisa Nishii, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Industrial and Labor Relations [10 minutes]
Senate Q&A [10 minutes]
Generative AI Advisory Council update [5 minutes]
Steve Jackson, Information Science and Vice-Provost for Academic Innovation
Senate Q&A [5 minutes]
Announcements and updates
Eve De Rosa, Dean of Faculty, Chair of the University Faculty Committee, Psychology [15 minutes]
Chelsea Specht, Associate Dean of Faculty, Chair of the Nominations and Elections Committee, Plant Biology
Q&A [10 minutes]
Motion to vote on Teaching Professor proposals [hyperlink to proposals in College/School names below]
Senate Discussion [15 minutes]
In attendance:
• Larry Blume, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for Bowers CIS, Information Science and Economics
• Jeff Niederdeppe, Senior Associate Dean for Brooks School of Public Policy, Communication
• Alan Zehnder, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs for Cornell Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Good of the Order [5 minutes]
Senator Chris Schaffer, Biomedical Engineering
Adjournment [1 minute]
Jonathan Ochshorn, Senate Speaker, Emeritus Architecture
2 thoughts on "Faculty Senate – May 7, 2025"
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In regards to the unified transfer credit policy: the proposal is conflating two issues: transfer *students* and transfer *credits*. Students who start their education at Cornell may look to transfer *credits* for a number of reasons, including inability to pass the class at Cornell. These two situations should be handled differently.
The prohibition against considering rigor or academic integrity standards of proposed transfer courses is also a major concern.
I am strongly in favor of a policy that streamlines this process, makes relevant information available to students, decreases staff and faculty time spent assessing individual courses, and makes more unified determinations. But I am not in favor of this version of the policy.
I agree that rigor is a legitimate and critical concern. However, the policy does not contain a “prohibition against considering rigor or academic integrity standards of proposed transfer courses.” To the contrary, the criteria of course “scope, content, and learning outcomes” set forth in the proposed policy for considering equivalency encompass rigor.
Regarding academic integrity, the proposal was revised on Friday (5/9) to address the concern that external courses with online exams are more susceptible to cheating than in-person exams and, thus, should not be accorded equivalency status. More specifically, the f9llowing clause was added: “If a department/major consistently applies a strict standard of giving only in-person exams in its courses, an external course could be held to an equivalent standard. If, however, a department is not consistent in its own application of a standard that all assessments must be held in person, then external courses could not be held to a different standard.” (Revisions are reflected in the most recentt version of the policy and responses to feedback.)
It’s also worth pointing out that if a transfer student cheated on an exam in an external course, they are only hurting themself. They may struggle in a more advanced course at Cornell that relies on the external course, and they may find that they need to spend a lot of extra time catching up, or, in the worst-case scenario, they may do so poorly in the next course in a sequence that they decide to take the original course over again at Cornell. If they were to do that, they would not also receive credit for the original external course.