A short docket gave the WKU Faculty Senate the opportunity to share concerns about threats to course quality and integrity, and to discuss the inclement weather.

The Faculty Senate’s first meeting of the semester in Downing Student Union Thursday afternoon featured open discussion from faculty about the academic impacts of AI, as well as shortages of time and resources.

“One of our goals is to illustrate that it’s not just that we’re exhausted,” Vice-Chair Brooke Gross said. “This exhaustion is now something that has real negative impact on our students, on WKU as a whole, on the value of our degree.”

Speakers noted the impacts of the university’s 2018 Resource Allocation, Management and Planning Strategic Plan. RAMP’s stated goals include ensuring WKU student completion and success, which has caused some faculty to feel pressured to relax expectations for students. RAMP also calls for “Base resource allocation decisions on actual results, implementing a performance-based financial model,” which Faculty Regent Shane Spiller said has resulted in cuts for most departments.

“My biggest concern is that we become a degree factory and we’re just rubber stamping students and sending them right on out the door,” Spiller said. “It’s not just graduation, it’s graduation with a meaningful degree in the discipline which we’re in.”

Spiller said that class sizes have grown while staffing has remained stagnant, increasing the workload for faculty. Spiller also said that the spread of AI has added to the strain, as teachers police its use and find ways to circumvent its abuse. Some, for example, have returned to requiring in-class writing to certify the authenticity of student work.

Spiller said concerns about such issues as faculty workload and resources have sparked a renewed strategic planning process to reevaluate the RAMP model. Spiller said the new steering committee had a kickoff meeting earlier this week.

This weekend projects upwards of 10 to 14 inches of snowfall in Bowling Green, making the weather a concern for safety, as well as academic planning.

Provost Robert “Bud” Fischer said that in-person classes will not be changed to online meetings, as not all students are guaranteed to have internet or computer access at home. Online classes should proceed as normal. Fischer recommended that anyone who doesn’t need to be on campus stay away, and that the university’s priority would be taking care of students living on-campus.