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The Evolving Classroom: AI, Robots, and the Importance of Human Connections

Faculty, staff, and administrators are trying to understand AI's potential benefits and risks to higher education. Colleagues from MIT recently published a handy guide  that provides good advice on topics ranging from “guidelines, guardrails, and governance” to “acceptable AI use.” In recent months, much has been written about the potential for AI to decrease the workload for campus administrators—from admissions to advancement and from counseling services to the registrar’s office

Instructors, on the other hand, have had mixed feelings at best with the arrival of ChatGPT and other large language model-based programs. Although a fair share of essays have expressed instructors’ feelings of loss and nostalgia, there is also a sizable number of professors who embrace AI in their classrooms, knowing that students will need to be AI literate for life after college. They realize AI is here for good and will change everything, including classroom instruction. We are, of course, only at the beginning of the AI revolution, and time will tell how drastic changes will be over the next decade.

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Student Success Through Open Educational Resources (OER)

A student cannot be successful in class if they do not have the reading materials that form the basis of assignments.  Yet in more cases than one might imagine, students do not purchase the required reading due to rising costs of text, whether in print or available in electronic format for download.  This is because a growing number of students on tight budgets have housing and food insecurity and they must make survival choices that cannot prioritize expensive books.  Without the learning material, student success suffers as they fall behind, neglect to the do the work, fail to achieve a passing grade or overall required gpa to stay in their course of study, and they become another negative statistic for retention and graduation rates.  

The purchasing of textbooks is just one more “hidden” cost or fee that goes along with rising tuition rates. While students may scour the internet for deals on used books (careful to ensure they are purchasing the correct edition, translation, etc), savvy students may select courses based on the expense of the required reading materials, and they may look to see whether copies of the texts are available in the library and under what conditions they may be borrowed (e.g., a couple of weeks or a couple of hours due to reserve policies to enable maximum sharing).  Some students may also form a “collective” and purchase one set of reading materials to share amongst the group. This too limits the flexibility and sometimes focus of class preparation. 

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Mergers and Acquisitions in Higher Education – What Provosts Should Know

According to a July 2023 report by McKinsey & Co, since 2020, the number of mergers and acquisitions in higher education has increased nearly threefold from 11 between 2001-2005 to 31 between 2016-2020. Since 2016 Higher Ed Dive has been tracking college closures and mergers.  Last updated on April 29, 2024, New York has had the most activity with 11 schools closing, merging or planning to do so. Massachusetts follow with 10 schools, 9 in Illinois and 8 in California.

The National Student Clearinghouse Research released in January 2024 reveals that there are still more than one million empty seats on college campuses as compared to five years ago, and there is still no growth among Freshman 20 years old and younger (this number is 5.3% below 2019 levels).  Further, undergraduate enrollment overall is down and remains 3.3% below pre-pandemic levels. 

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Faculty Evaluation as Development

The evaluation of faculty members is an important process at colleges and universities.  Faculty play the major role in the functioning of colleges and universities and the performance of the faculty is a significant factor in determining the quality of institutions of higher education.  National institutional accrediting organizations (e.g., Middle States, WASC, etc.) require that colleges and universities present evidence on the method that is used to evaluate faculty members and the way that information is used.  Specialized program accreditors (e.g., AMA, ARC-PA, ACOTE, etc.) also require that the programs they accredit have a carefully constructed plan to evaluate faculty and a plan for the use of that information.  

Faculty members have three major responsibilities: teaching, scholarship, and service.  Colleges and universities, and the schools and programs therein, place different weights on each of these factors depending on the goals and objectives of that college, university and program.  Teaching is usually evaluated using student course evaluations and some institutions use peer reviews.  Student course evaluations can be helpful, but they should be considered as just one piece of evidence. It is important to view these course evaluations for purposes of promotion considerations and future employment as longitudinal data points. For example, the faculty member may be a rigorous grader or attendance taker and students may react negatively to this. There may also be occasional conflicts between faculty and student expectations that can lead to harsh evaluations. On the other hand, there may very well be merit to constructive student feedback. Chairs and deans are in the best position to assess these situations.

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2024 Survey of Provosts Reveals Interesting Insights on How Campuses are Dealing with AI, Diversity, Free Speech and Financial Challenges

Inside Higher Ed, together with Hanover Research, recently released its annual Survey of College and University Chief Academic Officers, providing insight into the priorities of and challenges facing higher education institutions. With 331 provosts fully or partially completing surveys (a 13% response rate), the survey covered a wide range of topics including artificial intelligence, diversity, equity, and inclusion, campus speech, the future of academic programs, and more. While the comprehensive key findings and data tables can be found in the report, below is a highlight of several major areas.

Artificial Intelligence: Artificial intelligence continues to be an evolving focus at many institutions. 92% of provosts responded that faculty and staff members asked for additional training related to the developments in generative AI. Seventy-eight percent (78%) have offered training in response to faculty concerns or questions about generative AI within the last 18 months and an additional 20% have planned training. For students, only 14% of provosts said that their institution has reviewed the curriculum to ensure that it will prepare students for AI in the workplace, though 73% plan to do so. The use and future of AI is far from settled. Although 47% of provosts are moderately concerned, 20% very concerned, and 6% extremely concerned about the risk generative AI poses to academic integrity, only 20% of institutions have published a policy or policies governing the use of AI, including in teaching and research. An additional 63% have a policy under development. However, in contrast to those concerns, 40% of provosts are moderately enthusiastic, 32% very enthusiastic, and 11% extremely enthusiastic for AI’s potential to boost their institution’s capabilities. Several institutions are using AI for virtual chat assistants and chatbots, research and data analysis, Learning Management Systems, predictive analytics to predict student performance and trends, and in other capacities. This is an area where we can expect rapid developments in the coming months.

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Strategies, Structure, and Considerations for Implementing Artificial Intelligence into Education Delivery

The rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is creating both excitement and angst on where and how to begin safe, effective integration. While there are many ways AI can be applied, these suggestions are focused on educational delivery. For those who have begun applying and engaging student-facing AI, the vertical evolution requires structured and continuous development of institutional-level AI governance to maintain safe and ethical use. Governance structures should consider continuous growth of policies, guidelines and directives for use, approval processes, and staged training for faculty, staff, and students based on the speed of changes occurring in the market. 

Lacking or vague policies, structure, or training approaches may leave administrators, faculty, and students without the guidance needed to reap the benefits of AI use. Lacking governance structures or broad policies may unintentionally promote unsafe or unethical use of AI on the part of students, faculty, staff, and instructional designers who may not have the proper guidance to integrate. This can lead to compromised course design and program content, AI hallucinations, misinformation, and privacy breaches to proprietary university content, impacting the university and quality of education. 

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Teach-Outs for Closing Programs and Institutions

Teach-Outs for Closing Programs and Institutions
Patricia E. Salkin, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, Touro University

Lately, a week hardly goes by without news of another institution announcing plans to close programs or departments, and even entire colleges and universities planning to shut down.  According to University Business, in the last four years, more than 50 public and private nonprofit colleges have either announced plans to close, have closed, or have merged with another institution. Higher Ed Dive has been tracking the number of major colleges that have closed, merged or consolidated since 2016, providing an easy-to-use map showing that Massachusetts and New York lost ten schools each (with New York losing another one this week), followed by nine in Illinois and seven in California.   U.S. News and World Report reported that between July 2004 and June 2020 close to 12,000 college campuses closed. On a smaller scale, it is unknown precisely how many schools and majors within institutions are closed due to financial challenges and low enrollments. 

For provosts/chief academic officers, the elimination of programs and the closure of a college brings added responsibilities to ensure the orderly teach-out for enrolled students so that they may achieve the degree they signed up for with as little disruption as possible.  Staying student-focused is key during this time, however, it is also important to remember the impacts on faculty and staff who will understandably be concerned about their futures as well. What follows is a checklist of items to consider for provosts who are faced with teach-outs once the decision is made to close the program or school.


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The Power of Discomfort

I begin this writing with a painful admission, especially as a higher education professional. I was raised in a community that made racists feel comfortable to share their beliefs. Thankfully, my parents were not among them—I never once heard my mother or father judge someone by their skin color or nationality—but other community members, and sadly even other family members, regularly made comments about the propensity of entire races for laziness or theft or ignorance. Raised in the rural midwest, I had limited opportunity early on to let experience conquer stereotypes. I knew, though, the labels did not describe the admittedly few non-white students who attended my elementary school. When I felt uncomfortable hearing these comments and would ask my parents why even some family members talked this way, I was told, “That’s just who they are. We can’t change them, but we love them anyway.”

I did love my family deeply. I loved them with all of their flaws as I hoped they loved me with mine, but as I furthered my education, more discomfort would follow. I would feel it when we studied historical events such as slavery, Apartheid, and the Holocaust, and I realized the horrors that humanity was capable of. I would feel it when we studied more recent injustices such as new redlining, racial profiling, and hate crimes, and I had to acknowledge that humanity hadn’t fixed itself and not everyone wanted it to.

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Does General Education Meet the Needs of Today’s Students

In my long academic administration career, I was rarely warned against treading into an area of potential conflict.  But several times at different institutions, my “boss” indicated that General Education was not an area I could profitably address because it could be political dynamite.  I heeded the advice and held my tongue.  But as I watch my grandchildren prepare to go to college and I read the degree requirements of their prospective institutions, I am as perplexed as ever about the beloved Gen Ed requirements.  The unrest is even more acute today as the additional “hot potato” of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) has been added to the requirements at some universities. Are the concepts enshrined in Gen Ed so profound that everyone needs to understand them?   In our “What do I need to get a job?” era, should Gen Ed still be required?  In addition, does the current methodology of teaching these ideas through required courses or courses in required disciplines meet the outcome our students need?
 
At the beginning of my own days as a university student I was given a list of the university’s Gen Ed requirements.  The list named the courses to be taken to meet those requirements and a number of credits in each area that was needed.  And the advising was very essentially non-existent.  (I suspect this is the experience of most current provosts.) There was no rationale for the  specific courses and no indication how choosing any specific course would help me develop as a biology major.  There was no discussion about my career goals and, importantly, how choosing an inappropriate course might delay graduation because major program requirements might require a different course from the long list.  I am sure that advising is better today that it was in 1966, but as an interested grandparent, I cannot see that the student experience has changed much.  At best I am seeing a list of university core requirements and a list of specific program major requirements listed separately, but not the context that might explain why they were chosen, which courses aid achievement of desired careers, and which are safe backups, in case I chose to change my major from biology to business or vice versa.
 
I think the conundrum occurs because requirements are chosen without a specific career in mind.  In most cases the Gen Ed requirements were decided on by the university under direction of the faculty and with the consent of the administration.  The goal was, I believe, to give students insight into the breadth of universal knowledge as understood by the institution’s faculty, to make sure university graduates have a taste for different areas of possible interest and, perhaps, to bring students up to some minimal level of knowledge so that employers knew what to expect from university graduates.
 
The diversity of institutions and the diversity of faculty within their institutions means that the student experience has huge variation.  For example, at a university that stresses engineering, the requirements might include quantitative reasoning while at a liberal arts university they might include courses on intercultural perspectives.  I interpret this as meaning that general education is not something that can be generalized.  Professional accreditation requirements might also skew the choices a student might have .  In addition, more than one state appears to set requirements.  In Arkansas, Appendix C, Section 1 of the Division of Higher Education’s Procedures for Establishing Programs sets some requirements.  In Missouri, Statute 170.011 requires some knowledge of Missouri be included in the academic program.  In some states, such as Michigan, the requirements for state institutions to be able to accept transfer students means Gen Ed has been somewhat standardized through the Michigan Transfer Agreement.  Recent proposed legislative bills in Florida suggest the exclusion of some gender and diversity topics from Gen Ed will be made mandatory.  These decisions external to the university impede the individual institutions from making their degree requirements unique. 
 
But what happens to the student who does not follow the “traditional” path of tertiary education by attending a single institution for four to six years?  Does a student path that starts in a community college, where generality is more generally the rule, mean that the student who transfers is really at a disadvantage in acquiring the engineering or the history degree? The challenge of transferability may impact students so that for a student intent on a technical degree, the community college history course that discusses the social impacts of war to the exclusion of the technological aspects may not be accepted as part of the program at the school into which the student transfers.
 
What are the other unintended consequences of Gen Ed?  Does it impact student retention or graduation?  How many students have been put off by the mathematics requirement or the social sciences requirement?  At some institutions it is suggested that Gen Ed requirements be completed in the first two years (especially if the goal is transfer).  But a future engineer wants to do some engineering!  Many engineering programs now make sure there is a freshman engineering course, which may delay the taking of a Gen Ed course until much later in the student’s life at the institution.  Is so much emphasis on the “general” impacting the efforts toward “education” that the student decides to leave college and take a job that will never develop into a career?  Should the inability to pass a laboratory science course mean that the world loses a wonderfully creative graphic artist?
 
With all these questions, I think that now is the time to have a national conversation, perhaps hosted by ACAO or ACE, on the entire question of general education.  Perhaps Gen Ed should be eliminated as antiquated.  Perhaps graduation requirements should all be individualized.  Or perhaps providing a rationale for why all students of any age should have a general education will help us substantiate the need for higher education for all.
Michael A. Gealt is Professor Emeritus and former Executive Vice President / Provost at Central Michigan University where he served for six years prior to his retirement in 2020.  He previously served as Dean of Engineering, Mathematics and Science (and briefly Interim Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs) at Purdue University Calumet (now Northwest) and as Dean of the College of Science at University of Arkansas at Little Rock. 

Panel Discussion Explores the Impact of ChatGPT on Higher Education

On 21 February 2023, ACAO hosted a panel discussion on Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) and its potential uses (or abuses) in higher education. The goal of the panel was twofold: (1) to introduce provosts and other attendees to ChatGPT (developed by OpenAI) and similar AI language models and technologies; and (2) to discuss the opportunities and challenges of this new technology on our working, teaching, and learning environments.

Three speakers addressed attendees. First, Dr. Jing Peng from Montclair State University provided a high-level presentation on AI chatbot technology and its evolution over time. Dr. Peng’s presentation highlighted the fact that this technology is not “new,” per se, with roots that extend back decades – but its development is accelerating exponentially as it becomes “smarter” given the vast amount of data that are now available for its refinement and evolution.

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ACAO at ACE 2023

ACAO has several events for Provosts to attend while at ACE in DC this April.  If you're a provost, you won't want to miss us!

April 13th 5-7pm ACAO Provost Reception @ The City Tap House, 901 9th St NW

April 14th 7:30-9:00am ACAO Members Business Meeting, Marriott Marquis Room: Capital M4

April 14th 10:15-11:00am At the Pleasure of the President, Marriott Marquis Room: Marquis Ballroom 12-13M2

 

The Faculty-CAO Relationship: Making it Work

Regardless of how long you served as an instructional faculty member, as the institution’s Chief Academic Officer, you are no longer part of that club. You still work with and among faculty but make no mistake: You don’t have the same relationships that you previously did. You may have served as a department head or dean and think you are used to changing interactions with faculty, but the CAO role holds a specific set of foibles.

This doesn’t mean you can’t have a collegial association with your faculty; that mutual respect and commitment is more important than ever. But your interactions, communications and overall association is different and more delicate. Keep these three things in mind as you consider your own connections with faculty.

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Sharing Resources With Members

Sharing our professional experiences, especially the novel challenges faced by chief academic officers is an invaluable resource as we lead in academia. As the single national organization of and for Chief Academic Officers, ACAO endeavored in 2020 to develop and deploy a series of Town Hall Meetings. Sharing their expertise, CAO’s from a diversity of institutions participated in a series of live Town Hall meetings available at no cost.

With topics ranging from COVID-19 to The Great Resignation, seasoned professionals not only shared their expertise but welcomed questions and feedback from a community of practitioners. Recordings of the 16 discussions can be found at 

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Internal Leadership Training for Faculty and Academic Administrators Reaps Big Rewards

It is both expensive and time-consuming on many levels to launch a national search for every academic leadership position on campus.  Sometimes, of course, a national search is warranted for a Dean or for a Provost, but for other positions, such as department chairs, program directors, assistant and associate deans and associate/provosts, having a trained and ready “back bench” may be the best solution to maintain desired progress and efficiencies.  Admittedly, there are reasons to desire external candidates when changes and fresh perspectives are desired, but that is not always the case.  More often than not, leadership laments that there are no internal candidates ready to move up.

When colleges and universities want to retain their best, most creative, ambitious, and competent faculty and academic administrators, it is important for these people to sense a career path if they stay at the institution, and it is important to invest in their professional development so that they feel valued. With these two complementary goals in mind, the Touro College Academy of Leadership and Management (TCALM) was implemented five years ago in 2018.

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Transition to the New Academic Normal

It is now over two years since the COVID-19 pandemic first significantly affected the functions of higher education and the consequences of the impact cannot be under-estimated.  Many effects were budgetary, including negative enrollment growth, but probably most important to academic affairs in the long run was the changes implemented in the way we do our business as faculty and academic administration.  The pandemic resulted in rapid change, but as several authors have noted, primarily the pandemic was speeding up changes in education that were already in progress[1].  In 2020 we went from traditional “university speed” to Star Wars hyper-drive speed, but along the path we had already chosen.
 

The challenges we currently face getting back to a “normal” (thanks to vaccines and other immunity enhancers), are working with student impacts (including the challenges of new students whose instruction while in high school or community college was negatively impacted) and finding the technology mix that is appropriate.  We seem to be in a continuous transition state.  While in 2020, we were mainly responding without much time for reflection, we now need to perform assessments of the changes we made.  We need to assure that modifications that were improvements are not.  It is only through this assessment that our picture of the academy of the future will be realized.

Therefore, we will need to look at changes that were made in:

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Factors CAOs Consider to Remain in Their Positions

In June 2022, ACAO partnered with the American Conference of Academic Deans (ACAD), the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) to study the longevity of Provosts in their positions. The resulting study led to a research paper.

Factors Chief Academic Officers Consider in Deciding Whether to Remain in Their Positions

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ACAO @ ACE Annual Conference

ACAO Provosts presenting at the ACE Annual Conference April 13-15, 2023 in Washington, DC. 

Many CAOs attend the ACE Annual Conference and ACAO will host a session during the meeting.  If you’re a CAO in attendance you won’t want to miss the CAO meetings ACAO has planned in addition to the sessions. 

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