The University Senate discussed campus logistics for the NFL draft, artificial intelligence and adopting a subscription-based network system and during the Faculty Assembly meeting on April 16.<\/p>\n
Kristin Kanthak, University senate president and political science professor, said the Senate joined with the Pitt Staff Council<\/a> and other stakeholders to ask administration to allow faculty and staff to work remotely during the NFL Draft<\/a>.<\/p>\n The draft is expected to \u00a0bring around 500,000 people or more to Pittsburgh<\/a>, causing increased traffic<\/a>. While classes will be in session and student-facing staff will need to report to work in person, non-student-facing faculty and staff are encouraged to work from home.<\/p>\n \u201cOftentimes, it\u2019s faculty who have the most flexibility about where they work, so please consider staying the heck out of Dodge,\u201d Kanthak said.<\/p>\n John Stoner, a member of the Education Policies Committee<\/a> and a teaching professor of history, said he was concerned about a recent article<\/a> discussing students using AI services for a fee to bypass Canvas<\/a> and take quizzes.<\/p>\n Henderson said Pitt, with help from Pitt IT and the Senate Computing and IT Committee<\/a>, is looking at what the appropriate guidelines are for AI.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cHow we secure the environment and the implications [is by] looking to the provost and the faculty to inform us on how best do we utilize these tools and technologies going forward,\u201d Henderson said.<\/p>\n David Salcido, chair of the Campus Utilization, Planning and Safety Committee<\/a>, discussed \u201cproductive engagement\u201d with public safety partners<\/a> and Pittsburgh Regional Transit<\/a> to consider the construction on Fifth Avenue.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Salcido said the CUPS committee is also prioritizing the addition of private spaces for faculty in new and pre-existing buildings in order for faculty to be able to address private matters on campus. Salcido said some faculty may share open office spaces, not allowing them privacy.<\/p>\n \u201cWe value dignity and respect across the institution, and part of dignity is privacy,\u201d Salcido said.<\/p>\n Mark Henderson, vice chancellor and chief information officer, said Pitt is considering adopting Network as a Service<\/a> for its administrative buildings as a more cost effective and sustainable network infrastructure. NaaS is a subscription-based model in which an external provider manages network infrastructure instead of the University owning their own personal software equipment.<\/p>\n Henderson said the hardware Pitt currently buys from Cisco has increasing maintenance, licensing and network device component costs year after year.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have aging hardware in our network. The actual life expectancy of [administrative] network equipment is between three and five years,\u201d Henderson said. \u201cIt makes more sense for us to keep our capital dollars free to do things like address classroom [issues], acquire residence halls [for] growing incoming classes and [fund] faculty startup packages.\u201d<\/p>\n Henderson said the University currently utilizes NaaS at multiple locations, including the School of Computing and Information<\/a> and the Petersen Events Center<\/a>, which use this software for security, coursework and AI implementation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe benefits of modernizing our aging fleet of network equipment [is] having a simplified environment, much like we have at home,\u201d Henderson said.<\/p>\n Kanthak announced that Stoner was elected to serve as vice president of the University Senate. She also said committee elections will run from April 28 to May 12 and all faculty are eligible to vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The University Senate discussed campus logistics for the NFL draft, artificial intelligence and adopting a subscription-based network system…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,6160,2497],"class_list":{"0":"post-6735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-faculty-assembly","11":"tag-nfl-draft"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}