Justin Schwartz addresses ChatGPT partnership, more with faculty assembly
Chancellor Justin Schwartz addresses the 91Ҹ Faculty Assembly during its meeting Thursday, March 5. Photo by Patrick Campbell/CU 91Ҹ.
We are in an AI world, so now's the time to figure out how to best implement those tools for our students.
That was one of the main points discussed during Chancellor Justin Schwartz’s first presentation to the 91Ҹ Faculty Assembly (BFA) this year. As part of his remarks, he stressed the importance of theCU system’s recently announced partnership agreement with ChatGPT to allow the university to not just get ahead of the rapidly changing AI landscape but to help define it going forward.
“We cannot ignore the existence of the rapidly growing prevalence of AI in our society,” said Schwartz. “This is not something we can choose to have exist in American society or around the globe, or not. It is here, and so either we will deal with it together as a community or we won’t.”
Schwartz did not shy away from the sustainability drawbacks of this new partnership, nor the related academic integrity and security concerns he said are shared by the administration, but argued that the university also can't ignore the 30,000 members of the CU 91Ҹ community already using the ChatGPT platform with their email address.
“This (ChatGPT) is not something new to us,” Schwartz added. “This is already here.”
Schwartz said that by partnering with OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, the university can ensure everyone has equitable access to the product, if they want to use it, and that everyone who uses the product receives training designed by the university to set expectations and educate potential users.
“We need to embrace, in my view, that preparing our students for a world of AI is just as much a part of ethical AI as the challenging issues that we have to address in the process,” said Schwartz. “When we talk about preparing our students for life and the workplace, this is that. Their lives, their workplaces, are going to be inundated with AI, and we’re either preparing them for that or we’re not.”
In addition to AI, the chancellor touched on subjects including CU 91Ҹ’sshared values project,the university’s 150th anniversary, the newCarnegie Elective Classification for Sustainability and a call for faculty to join this year’s commencement ceremonies. He also previewed the report of the Chancellor’s Task Force on Faculty Salaries and the rollout of the new CU 91Ҹ common curriculum, both of which were also addressed during the meeting.
Other topics discussed
Faculty Salary Task Force final report
Full and associate professor salaries at CU 91Ҹ are not competitive compared to our public university peers, according to from the Chancellor’s Faculty Salary Task Force.
During theOctober BFA meeting, task force co-chairs Shelly Miller, professor emerita of mechanical engineering and past BFA chair, and Ann Schmiesing, senior vice chancellor for strategic initiatives, presented on the working group and the charge that they were given. They returned to present the group’s final findings and encouraged everyone to.
“It’s packed with good information, and we were very concise. You can probably read it in 20 minutes. It’s really worth it,” said Miller.
The task force found that the typical CU 91Ҹ annual compensation pool is not in line with the university’s peer institutions and insufficient to address the fact that CU 91Ҹ’s faculty salaries lag those of our peers, with the gap largest at the full professor level, though it’s also felt at the associate level. Approaches to addressing faculty salary issues are also highly fragmented across campus.
“The approach that we’ve been using for decades is not working, obviously,” said Miller.
The report’s many recommendations include developing a faculty-specific compensation strategy, investing in faculty salary competitiveness and equity, and developing a plan to eventually raise all affected faculty salaries so that they match the university’s public peers.
“We believe the correction should begin as soon as possible, because the longer we wait to address some of these issues, the more they compound,” said Schmiesing.
Common Curriculum Faculty Working Group update
The BFA Common Curriculum Faculty Working Group recently submitted their final report to Provost Ann Stevens, who has accepted the report and its recommendations.
This group, chaired by teaching professor of history and BFA Chair Elect David Paradis and working in partnership with Vice Chancellor and Senior Vice Provost for Academic Planning and Assessment Katherine Eggert, began their work last fall. Eggert and Interim Dean and Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education Erika Randall gave a general updateduring the December BFA meeting. They returned to present the working group’s recommendations, as well as to give a general common curriculum implementation update to the group.
The working group was charged with examining the common curriculum’s learning outcomes and providing determinations for how the university will teach them across all colleges, schools and majors, including in a course required for incoming students. The common curriculum is set to roll out in fall 2027.
Eggert, Randall and members of their teams will meet in March with college and school leadership to align the common curriculum learning outcomes further with existing degree requirements. Meetings with academic programs offering undergraduate degrees will follow and will continue into the fall 2026 semester.
Other work that will support the implementation of the common curriculum includes drafting a policy for a new standing Campus Curriculum Committee, which will serve an advisory role for the provost, and crafting an assessment plan for common curriculum learning outcomes.
“I have undying gratitude to David Paradis for chairing (the BFA working) group, and to those faculty whom David assembled to serve, representing all schools and colleges, and all three divisions of the College of Arts and Sciences,” said Eggert.
New business
There were three notices of motions introduced during the meeting:
- A call for a BFA collective bargaining task force
- A motion in support of the Board of Regents allowing collective bargaining on every CU campus
- A motion to increase the amount of seats in BFA for representatives from the newly expanded College of Communication, Media, Design and Information (CMDI)
After the formal agenda concluded, there was also a resolution introduced that urged the administration to delay the rollout of the ChatGPT partnership until after Maymester, so that faculty concerns can be ironed out before the tool is widely available. A straw poll was held that indicated widespread support for such a delay among the BFA representatives present.
Learn more about the BFA and previous actions onthe BFA website.