Minutes #585
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Attendance
Present (32):
Jacob Adler, Chevy (Schevaletta) Alford, Elton Beckett, Ned Benton, Bibi (Silvina) Calderaro, Kathleen Collins, Artem Domashevskiy, Jennifer Dysart, Jonathan Epstein, Diana (DeeDee) Falkenbach, Sergio Gallegos, Alejandro Garcia Lozano, Heath Grant, Sergio Grossi, Karen Kaplowitz, Allison Kavey, Anru Lee, Kyoo Lee, Jamie Longazel, Cristina Lozano Arguelles, Joseph Maldonado, Brian Maule, David Munns, Raymond Patton, Kumar Ramansenthil, Macushla Robinson, Amada Santiago, Francis Sheehan, Marie Springer, Todd Stambaugh, Charles Stone, Violet (Sung-Suk) Yu
Absent (5):
Joy Dunkley, Veronica Hendrick, Michelle Holder, Joshua Mason, Shilpa Viswanath
Agenda
- Adoption of the agenda
- Approval of Minutes #584 of the September 2, 2025, meeting
- Report from the Chair
- Election of faculty to the Faculty Senate Committee on Racial Justice & Inclusion
- Discussion on the Undergraduate Foundations Initiative
- Preliminary discussion about Artificial Intelligence
1. Adoption of the Agenda
Adopted.
2. Approval of Minutes #584 of the September 2, 2025 Meeting
Adopted.
3. Report from the Chair
President Kaplowitz spoke about our last meeting and noted that the Faculty Senate deals with contentious issues and we often disagree with each other as well as with members of the administration but we have always treated each other with civility and respect. It is important we continue to do this so that we on the Senate can feel safe from ad hominem attacks and also so that the Senate maintains the good reputation it has worked hard to create and establish.
President Mason will be our invited guest at our next Senate meeting and so Senators were asked to think about questions they might like to ask her.
President Trump has removed the MSI [Minority Serving Institution] and HSI [Hispanic Serving Institution] status from all colleges and universities. This is expected to have a significant negative effect on our college.
Recently, when the president of George Mason University was targeted by the Trump administration for his refusal to end DEI activities, the college’s faculty senate adopted a resolution in support of the president. The Trump administration then demanded to see all emails generated by the faculty senate members, something that is not known to have ever been done before. President Kaplowitz said that if faculty want their emails to be private they need not only use a private email provider but also equipment that is not owned or borrowed from the college or university. Even using a private email provider on a private laptop is not enough if, for example, one plugs the laptop into the wiring of a John Jay building. She said she doesn’t want faculty to have a false sense of security or of privacy.
4. Election of Faculty to the Faculty Senate Committee on Racial Justice & Inclusion
The following 11 members of the faculty were elected to the committee:
- Chevy Alford – SEEK
- Lissette Delgado-Cruzata – Sciences
- Sharon Gandarilla-Javier – LPS
- Jessica Gordon-Nembhard – Africana Studies
- Heath Grant – LPS
- Michelle Holder – Economics
- Linda Humes – Africana Studies
- Joseph Maldonado – Counseling & Human Resources
- Gerald Markowitz – ISD
- Belinda Rincon – LLS & English
- Shilpa Viswanath – Public Management
5. Discussion on the Undergraduate Foundations Initiative
President Kaplowitz noted that Senators wished to discuss UGF with more information and data and that Provost Pease and Associate Dean Kate Szur had provided the materials we requested, which were: the data about why students change majors; the assessment plan for the UF initiative; and updated data about the distribution of the First Year Seminars into the 5 UFs [see the chart, below].
President Kaplowitz said that, as the Senate knows, the four John Jay committees working on NISS [National Institute for Student Success] recommendations have reported out their proposals; she recently sent the report to the Senate. One of the committees has recommended the establishment of a Student Success Council as part of the College Council, so as to institutionalize student success and make decision-making part of our governance process.
Senator Ray Patton said as co-chair of one of the NISS committees he can report that faculty were not necessarily involved in discussions. He wants to see faculty especially involved in discussions of this proposal. Senator Todd Stambaugh said such a council sounds like a good idea, but the composition of the council matters and we have no details. Without a strong faculty voice, it will be of no use at all; the administration already has a strong voice in this area.
Senator Ned Benton said he would want to have clarity about the relationship between a student success council and UCASC and GSC. He is concerned that every academic proposal would have to go through the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee (UCASC) or the Graduate Studies Committee (GSC) and then also have to satisfy the Student Success Council before going to the College Council. He doesn’t want to subordinate UCASC or GSC by having things subordinated to a Student Success Council. It’s important that these two existing committees deal with curriculum and academic standards. He said we need to see a formal proposal to have a better discussion. Senator David Munns said he shares the concern for clarity.
Senator Violet Yu said there are different meanings of student success. We need to define what we consider student success to be. Is passing 80% of courses attempted with a 2.5 GPA student success or is it just avoiding probation, she asked, referring to data Provost Pease recently presented to her department. Is it being on dean’s list, she asked. If a student fails a course, does this mean that the professor is a bad teacher. Faculty need to have input in defining what student success means at John Jay.
Senator Patton agreed. The community and, specifically, the faculty must emphasize student learning as the key of student success. The reason he is in support of a student success council connected to the College Council is that faculty would have a strong voice through the Faculty Senate’s role on the College Council.
6. Preliminary Discussion about Artificial Intelligence
President Kaplowitz spoke of two issues regarding Artificial Intelligence that she’d like the Senate to discuss: whether to teach the use of AI (and, if so, how); and AI’s use by our students as a substitute to doing academic work. She reported that the Provost wants 25% of our courses to be incorporating AI as part of the coursework within five years because, as Allison Pease has explained at several recent venues, our students need to know how to use this tool and we have an obligation to teach them how to do so.
She asked the Senators how they are dealing with AI in their courses. Senator Jacob Adler reported that the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) annually conducts a year-long institute on this subject, called the AAC&U’s Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum. He and 6 other JJ faculty and staff are participating this year and are spearheading a number of different initiatives. The faculty participants are himself who is from the Library, Penny Geyer (LPS), Ray Rosas (English), and Kathy Stavrianopoulos (CHS). The staff participants are Gina Rae Foster (TLC), Nancy Yang (AA), and Kayla Bassknight (SA).
Senator Adler said policy and guidelines have to be holistic and there should be accommodations for all levels of usage including the choice to not use it at all. He advises an open mind about AI. His feeling is that there is an issue as to how AI is framed; he noted AI seems to always be framed as a problem. He said we always assume students want to use AI but, in fact, many students fear that their classmates will use AI to their own disadvantage and, at the same time, many fear that they themselves will be accused of using it. He hopes to report more in the future.
Senator Stambaugh said that, over his career of more than 15 years, Math faculty have been experiencing a preview of the kinds of problems those in other disciplines have reported in that there have been readily available, free to use technologies capable of solving math problems and showing each step of a mathematical solution long before the recent rise in generative algorithms. There are some telltale signs when such technologies are used. He’s been doing more and more assessment during class time because of the rise in the use of LLM’s and there’s a consistent cost to that. He feels as if the only choices are students cheating on work outside of class and thus not learning, or devaluing work outside of class leading to students’ reduced engagement on that work which also leads to learning decreases. He further noted that the idea that generative algorithms are “inevitable” and “ubiquitous” is deliberate marketing on the part of companies that wish to sell the public on these technologies despite their significant drawbacks.
Senator Jonathan Epstein said the History Department is actively fighting students’ use of AI by moving quizzes from online to in-class and doing the same with the final exam. Instead of at-home essays, they are now written in class on blue exam books. There is a new version of TurnItIn that claims to be able to identify AI written work; the History Department chair has forwarded it to the Faculty Senate’s Technology Committee for its assessment of this software.
Senator Christine Lozano Arguelles asked what Provost Pease means when she says she wants 25% of our courses to include AI. President Kaplowitz said she believes the provost means that she wants at least some of us to teach our students how to use AI. Senator Chevy Alford questioned how, if students are forced to use AI, they will improve foundational skills. Senator Elton Beckett said his friends in the corporate world tell him that hires must know how to use AI but our students also need to know how to think. He’s been doing a lot of reading about AI, and one suggestion he has is that at the end of every project, we ask students to reflect and tell us how they used AI.
Senator Marie Springer said she teaches fraud abuse and that government agencies are requiring their hires to know how to use AI. She requires her students to search government documents for errors.
Senator Jennifer Dysart said she, too, uses AI in her teaching: in her psychology senior seminar on eyewitness testimony, she asks her students to pose a question to AI and to then ask AI to identify the sources it used in answering; after that students analyze whether the sources are good. This really teaches critical thinking because the students are required to be critical about the answers they are getting from AI. She also has her students analyze whether the conclusions that AI reaches are warranted. Students think if something has been published, the research must be good, but in this way, they have to question and analyze both the sources and the conclusions. It becomes very much like an advanced research methods class.
Senator Sergio Grossi reported that this semester he is teaching a class that integrates knowledge gained from the TLC course on Artificial Intelligence led by Gina Rae Foster. In this course, students use ChatGPT to brainstorm initial ideas and then search for supporting evidence in academic databases, critically comparing the two sets of results.
The meeting was adjourned at 2:55 PM.
Provided by H. Grant and K. Kaplowitz