At a Nov. 4 Florida Atlantic University Faculty Senate meeting, FAU’s Vice President for Research, Gregg Fields, announced that in early 2025, FAU would finally reach R1 status, a title given to the country’s top research and doctorate programs. 

In order to reach R1 status, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the American Council on Education require institutions to spend a minimum of $50 million on university-backed research expenditures and give out at least 70 doctoral research degrees in a year.

Fields shared at the meeting what this status means for the university.

“We have potentially unique opportunities and internships… we are building a rich academic environment. [R1 status] puts us in the position to be more competitive,” he said.

Faculty members raised questions about their involvement in this page-turning status. Fields shared that this opportunity can allow them to receive more funding for projects and programs.

LeaAnne DeRigne, a member of the Faculty Senate on behalf of the College of Social Work and Criminal Justice, expressed her concerns about how a lack of library resources has affected the school’s ability to reach R1 status in the first place. 

“I am hearing from our college representative to the library committee that they are very short on resources and that this is one of the areas that we didn’t meet the R1 classification requirements,” she said. 

Fields assured DeRigne that there are no requirements for university libraries in order to get the  R1 classification, but that with this classification, FAU may need to reevaluate library needs.

“What we really need to look at is what we actually need in the library in terms of what our electronic journal collection looks like,” Fields said. “What does it need to look like going forward if we want to compete with other R1 institutions?”

Senate announces new changes to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines

Bobby Brown, executive director of the Office of Civil Rights and Title IX coordinator, and Michelle Shaw, director of the Student Accessibility Services, announced new changes in Title II of the ADA. The act now requires federally-funded institutions to make web content, mobile applications and social media more accessible for students. 

Before this change, FAU professors and other faculty only had to make instructional material accessible upon request. Brown shared how this has changed. 

“Prior to this, if you had a student in your class who needed accommodation, they would submit an accommodation request to Student Accessibility Services, who would then review and approve those requests… under this new directive, all of our web content must be accessible from the start,” he said.

Many Faculty Senate members expressed their concerns about this new implementation, especially regarding the timing of creating and developing more accessible content. Members also asked how quickly staff are expected to make these changes. 

Shaw and Brown quickly eased the senate’s worry, sharing that the state intends to transition to these new guidelines by 2026, which gives instructors and other faculty more time to prepare and develop material.

Chris Beetle, associate professor of physics at FAU, also shared his concerns with this new implementation, particularly regarding the software he uses for the courses he teaches. 

“I am curious as to whether any faculty was involved before the decision was taken that we were going to commit to these standards, which might preclude faculty, like me, from using the software that we have to use in order to prepare for our students,” he said.

Brown responded to Beetle’s concerns, sharing that the university had no choice in making the decision to follow this new implementation, and said that they are currently complying with the minimum standard for this change. 

Introduction of new AI Faculty PlAIground

Julie Golden Botti, executive director, and Willie Freeman, associate executive director for Online and Continuing Education in the Office of the Provost, gave a speech on behalf of Interim President Stacy Volnick. Volnick was absent due to the recent passing of her father. 

Freeman took the time to share with the Faculty Senate the various opportunities online teaching gives to instructors, introducing what courses and training programs the faculty must go through to give online instruction.

“We have a basic course that you can go through called Teaching Online Orientation. We have courses that you can go into that take four or five weeks that lets you know how to teach an online course,” he said. 

Botti also introduced the Center for Online and Continuing Education’s new AI Faculty PlAIground, a new resource aimed at giving faculty enough resources to “play” around with AI materials and programs. 

“We purposely called our AI resources a plAIground, with “AI” in the middle of it,” she said. “We wanted it to be a place where you could come at the level where you are with AI… whether you like it, you don’t like it, you’ve tried it, you haven’t tried it… just to come and explore,” Botti said.

Updates to programs and courses

Senate members heavily discussed the proposed course MAR 4731, Artificial Intelligence in Marketing, with many concerned about how it would be developed. 

Specifically, faculty representing the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, which plays a major role in the AI courses offered at the university, shared that they were not made aware of this new proposal. 

Michael DeGiorgio, associate chair and associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, motioned to table this proposed course until the next Faculty Senate meeting, which the Senate quickly approved.

Other updates included a proposed change to the credits needed for a Bachelor of Science in Economics, which seeks to add a new course to the program in order to eliminate the Social Science Cognate necessary for the degree.

Angela Nichols, associate professor in the Department of Political Science, shared her concerns about this change, as she believes that the data analytics skills necessary to succeed in the economics field are important to the social sciences as well.

“We do these things in social science, so the justification doesn’t really make sense to me. We do a lot of data analytics in the social sciences… I think this needs further discussion,” she said. 

The Faculty Senate chose to postpone a decision on this degree change until their next meeting.

Other changes included reducing credits for the Gerontology Certificate and the Health Administration Minor from 15 to 12 credits, as most other similar certificate and minor programs only require 12 credits. 

The Senate also announced a curriculum revision in the Wilkes Honors College on the General Education Curriculum. The Senate also chose to postpone a decision to add a biomedical science concentration to the Honors College. 

Daniel Meeroff, dean of Undergraduate Studies, proposed two university-wide policy changes regarding the academic petition process and the bachelor’s degree requirements, removing outdated language in both policies.

Gabriela Quintero is a Staff Writer at the University Press. For more information on this or other stories, please contact her at [email protected]