Dear Faculty Colleagues,
As you finalize your syllabi for the spring of 2024, we write with some information relevant to your teaching this coming term.
General Expectations
Many of you are familiar with Colgate’s expectations for teaching faculty and this note will serve primarily as a reminder about some of these. You may find a review of the Faculty Handbook and Colgate Catalog helpful, as these contain information on Academic Regulations, as well as Regulations Governing Classes, Grading Policies, and so forth.
Academic Advising Resource
Please consult the Academic Advising Resource Guide for guidance about advising students. If you have suggestions for additional information or edits, please send them to djohnson@colgate.edu.
Academic Honesty and Advances in Artificial Intelligence Software Tools
Please follow Colgate’s policies when dealing with suspected violations of the academic honor code. The most recent plagiarism resolution form is online and fillable. Please note that you are putting yourself and the institution at legal risk if you do not follow Colgate policies when dealing with cases of potential academic dishonesty, plagiarism, and cheating.
Please consider being very clear with students in your syllabus and/or written assignment prompts concerning your expectations of what digital tools are allowed to be consulted for graded work in your course. If your expectation is that tools like ChatGPT should never be used for work in your course, it would be helpful for the syllabus to state this explicitly. The CLTR has sample syllabus statements for those interested.
Faculty Absence from Class
For faculty who need to miss the occasional class due to professional travel or illness, canceling a class day (or two) has always been, and continues to be, acceptable. As noted in the handbook, as faculty members you are expected to inform your chair or program director of any missed classes (Handbook IV.C.4), and when an absence from class is predicted before the start of the semester, the syllabus should clearly indicate any canceled classes. If you plan to “make up” classes you know in advance that you will miss for professional reasons, please include details on your syllabus so students can adjust their schedules as needed. If your plan includes convening students outside of the scheduled class period, please provide flexibility for students who may have competing obligations.
Please do not let the availability of digital tools impinge upon your time while away for a professional meeting or during an illness: when you are with colleagues and collaborators at a conference, we hope you will immerse yourself in the learning opportunities before you; when you are truly sick, we hope you will devote yourself to getting better. In these instances, we do not expect you will Zoom in to campus to teach your classes: canceling a class session or two during the term is perfectly acceptable. Should an unexpected circumstance arise, however, and you find yourself needing to take a longer absence from your teaching obligations, please work with your chair/program director, division director, and Doug Johnson, the dean for academic and curricular and academic affairs, to minimize the impact on you and your students.
Student Absences
Just as we have allowances in the Faculty Handbook for occasional faculty illness, so too do we encourage you to deal thoughtfully not only with student mental and physical illness but with absences due to personal circumstances. There are many good reasons to expect your students to be present in your classes, not the least of which is that research suggests there are strong associations between regular class attendance and academic performance. But we respectfully request that you think carefully about balancing a policy that encourages attendance and considerations about public health: given that we continue to work in an endemic, we hope not to create incentives for students to attend class when they are potentially symptomatic of any infectious disease.
Of course, individual faculty ultimately have control over their class absence policies. Whatever you elect to do, please make sure that your class absence policies are clearly stated on your syllabus. You may also want to highlight them in an early class session, as the catalog states, “attendance practices for each course will be announced by the faculty member at the beginning of each term.”
Please do not create a policy that asks for documentation for absences that are not “prolonged” nor for medical record information.
Presence During the Semester and End-of-Term Matters
Faculty are expected to be engaged in research, teaching, and service. Balancing these three demands can be complicated and often requires establishing appropriate boundaries. As you think about how to manage (and protect) your time, we hope you will bear in mind our commitments to residentiality. There are great benefits to students, staff, and faculty in having our academic buildings well-populated during the academic terms. Serendipitous encounters among community members in offices, hallways, lounges, and between buildings can be intellectually energizing and also personally fulfilling.
Thinking not just in terms of day-to-day choices about where to work, but in terms of the obligations of a semester, be reminded that your obligations as instructors extend throughout the term, which is to say from the first day of class to the end of finals week. Please time your travel to be on campus before the start of classes and to be present through your last final exam slot as scheduled by the registrar. As noted in the Faculty Handbook, it “is expected that every class, with the exception of senior seminars, will have one and only one major assignment due or exam take place at the time set by the Office of the Registrar for the final exam. All other coursework must be submitted by 5 p.m. on the last day of classes.” Do not make arrangements with students to complete work during finals week that was due during the term, or to extend the due date of any work beyond finals week, without a communication with the student’s administrative dean. (You can find a student’s dean by clicking through the student’s name on your class list in the portal).
Note that incompletes can only be authorized by a student’s administrative dean in consultation with you as the instructor. If a student is asking you for permission to turn work in after the end of the term, or to delay taking a final past finals’ week, please direct them to their administrative dean. Once a final grade is submitted to the registrar, an incomplete is not possible. As noted in the Faculty Handbook, any grade changes must be based on reevaluation of work completed by the student during the term and not additional work completed after the end of the term.
We hope your spring semester is productive and rewarding, and we look forward to seeing you on campus soon.
With best regards,
Lesleigh and Doug
Lesleigh Cushing
Provost and Dean of the Faculty
Murray W. and Mildred K. Finard Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religion
Doug Johnson
Dean of Academic and Curricular Affairs
William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences