The Faculty Assembly provided updates on AI regulation in classrooms, pedestrian safety and three University policies during its Dec. 3 meeting.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Senate President Kristin Kanthak said the Senate Computing and Information Technology Committee<\/a> conducted a \u201cdeep dive into artificial intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the bigger issues out there that tends to span a large number of the Senate committees is artificial intelligence,\u201d Kanthak said. \u201cThe AI space is moving fast<\/a>, and if Pitt is slow, it will not be in the game.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Kanthak met with Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer Mark Henderson to discuss the role of AI in Pitt\u2019s classrooms moving forward.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe assured me that he understood the important role for those who know pedagogy and that he had no interest in issuing dictates to faculty about how they use or choose not to use AI as part of their teaching,\u201d Kanthak said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n David Salcido, chair of the Campus Utilization, Planning and Safety Committee<\/a>, shared concerns about pedestrian safety during inclement weather and construction during his report.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAs you see outside, not only do we have complex multi-lane intersections that do not belong to Pitt, but they can and will be further complicated by construction and suboptimal conditions like weather,\u201d Salcido said. \u201cVigilance is absolutely essential when you\u2019re crossing any of the intersections in Oakland.\u201d<\/p>\n In the past two years, three pedestrians were killed<\/a> after being hit by vehicles or construction debris in the De Soto Street corridor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Salcido emphasized the importance of bringing concerns regarding pedestrian safety to the CUPS committee.<\/p>\n \u201cBringing safety concerns to the right people at Pitt can translate into improvement either directly or through institutional advocacy,\u201d Salcido said. \u201cPitt is actively advocating for improvements at those intersections, but it may take time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n According to Kanthak, the Educational Policies Committee<\/a> is working on issues pertaining to the rollout of new general education requirements and the University calendar.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Following the Senate committee reports, Kanthak reviewed three policies currently under consideration to be decommissioned<\/a>, which means they would no longer be in effect.\u00a0<\/p>\n The AO 40 U-PARC<\/a> policy regulated an applied research center no longer owned by Pitt. AC 09 Certification of English Language Fluency<\/a>, which was last updated in 1991, is being considered for decommissioning because it no longer aligns with best practices according to Kanthak. Kanthak said the AC 31 Financial Aid Satisfactory Academic Progress<\/a> policy is no longer necessary because the federal government determines financial aid eligibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n Public commentary on those policies closes on Dec. 5.\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n After Kanthak\u2019s report, the Senate moved into closed session. This limited the discussion to faculty physically present in Posvar Hall and is a measure Kanthak chose to take, given the current \u201cunusual\u201d interest in government relations and related issues.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m happy to take feedback about this choice to move to a closed session, and the executive committee and I will take that into account as we decide whether or not we want to continue with this experiment,\u201d Kanthak said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Faculty Assembly provided updates on AI regulation in classrooms, pedestrian safety and three University policies during its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[278,18061,22942,73,75,74,4953],"class_list":["post-52956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-ai","tag-faculty-assembly","tag-pedestrian-safety","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-university-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}