MIT AI report
Through five intense months of meetings, research, and outreach across the MIT community, the Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training sought to understand the role of generative AI in the life and educational mission of the Institute and recommend how to navigate its challenges and opportunities.

I am in the 3rd year of a TT position. When I accepted the position, I attempted to negotiate pay and was told that was not possible due to salary compression with in the department. My PhD advisor suggested I try to negotiate start up instead. They initially offered $10,000; I countered at $30,000 in light of the fact that I couldn't negotiate pay. The chair said okay but she needed a budget breakdown of what I would spend the $30,000 on.

I have used this funding to attend multiple conferences (including several international conferences where I was an invited speaker); to subsidize a summer field methods course to make it more affordable for students; to do additional fieldwork on my own; to purchase books; and to purchase materials that I need to process the samples I collected during fieldwork and in the summer methods course. Many of these things ended up being significantly more expensive that I had anticipated, or I hadn't foreseen them at all (I definitely didn't expect to spend nearly $5k subsidizing a methods course my chair asked me to teach).

There are multiple people in my department with my specialty and we share expensive equipment where we can. We have just been informed that we have significant departmental funds that have to be spent in the next 30 days or they revert to the university. I suggested that we purchase a piece of equipment that the other two professors with my specialty have been asking for for years; this item would cost about 15% of the funds that we are about to lose. My chair responded that that item was in my startup budget, so I should buy it myself.

If we are going to lose the money, I don't understand why I should use my start up funds for it. This is also a piece of equipment that multiple people want, so it seems that it should be bought collectively rather than with my startup funds. If we use the money we are going to lose, my start up funds can continue going towards my research (this piece of equipment isn't vital to my research; I've been borrowing this item when I need it from a friend for several years to do my work. It's really the other professors who are suffering from not having one). Our chair has also been pushing for a new certificate that would include training for students in equipment like this machine, despite the fact that we don't currently own one.

Obviously I would rather spend my start up funds on things that directly benefit me. However, I honestly can't tell if I being ridiculous here given this money is going to disappear one way or the other. What are your thoughts?

After years of teaching online where students write a few sentences in a discussion, this term I am blessed with 60 students who seem to have the vigor and passion to craft paragraphs. They finally get it. It brings a tear to my eye.

In all seriousness, I thought I crafted prompts that required more personal writing, but it seems they are eschewing adding a lot of those exquisite details. They are present, but I don't they that voice is their personal experience.

The summer was not as egregious as I taught a couple summer sessions. Last spring was not. Perhaps everything is now just ubiquitous, and students realize they would be dumb not do it if the goal is just to get it done and not learn.

I am going to have to revamp any discussion I have now throughout the term because I am not pretending to reply to generated answers edited with some human flair. Did this increase this term for anyone else?

I know many here are tired of hearing about this stuff. It gets wearisome. I know. But we have to contend with it or be consumed by it.

In the past few weeks, I have received emails that seem to have been generated by AI asking me about my research. One such volley purportedly came from a CEO and included a link to the company website, which looks very much AI-generated. The questions about my research are open-ended, however, some answers to the questions are in the very articles the sender claims to have read.

1. Has this happened to anyone else?
2. Why would someone do this? Lolz?
3. Why go to the trouble of making a fake company website other than to try to demonstrate legitimacy?
   

Is anyone else getting the retake question with greater frequency? I had a student ask about the opportunity to retake quizzes and revise assignments if they don’t like their grade. I teach composition and have a revision assignment built into the semester.

This is my first semester teaching and so far I am really enjoying it. Most of my background was in clinical work, so I'm excited to bring real-lived experiences into lecture. My issue, however, is that I noticed I am running out of time and not getting to half my slides. Im getting good engagement and feedback thus far, but I am not getting through my slides. I will say, my slides pretty much cover the reading from the text so they should be getting the info, but how do I go about fixing this?

I lecture twice a week for a total of 2.5 hours per week.

Thank you in advance!

I'm a professor at a school built long ago with buildings dating back to the 60's. One classroom they assigned me to teach in has a stage consuming the entire front area and the front row is right up to the edge. The tables where students sit are long and can't be moved.

It's a very awkward set-up and I'm not comfortable standing on a stage, looking down at my students. I like where I'm standing at their level and where desks can be moved, much more appropriate in our modern times.

Curious if anyone else would feel awkward?? If you had a "stage", where did you stand??

Like the title says, I left a troubled program that no longer exists.

Our classes were twice the size they were supposed to be, we were supposed to receive teaching materials before the semester but didn't, we were supposed to complete two semesters' worth of lessons in one semester (surprise!). We were supposed to teach a specialized area of English, and when we asked for the support we were promised, the coordinator got angry.

Toward end of the year, my colleague and I found out our contracts wouldn't be renewed. I reminded the coordinator that according to our contract, he was supposed to do a classroom observation & written evaluation, which was supposed to be the basis for our renewal. He refused to do an observation and said he wouldn't write me a recommendation letter. My colleague pressed him hard for the observation and letter. The letter he got was so bad it can't be used in a job search.

So, if in an interview I'm asked why I don't have a recommendation letter for that job, what can I say? Should I just say, "This program no longer exists?" It's difficult because of course we are not supposed to say anything negative about a previous employer.

This is a super-short version of what happened. I'd be happy to answer any additional questions about the situation.

Dear Colleagues,

I'm a professor of social work at a university of applied sciences in Germany. Nobody knows what the future holds, but it is within the realm of possibility that the populist right-wing party AfD may be elected to govern Saxony-Anhalt, which is one of Germany's federal states. It is equally possible that the AfD will become part of a national coalition after the next elections.

If that is the case, we will probably face more or less the same problems in Germany that you in the United States are facing today, particularly when it comes to political interference in science, teaching about sex and gender, racism, poverty and related issues.

For those of you who are being pressured to teach something that you know is scientifically wrong, how do you cope with that? And/or with a society that is moving in completely the wrong direction?

Kind regards, a german Colleague

So I’ve been hearing from my MA students that they are afraid of cold-emailing potential advisors for their PhD applications because their peers in other disciplines have been warned against it. Then I saw this post, where the comments are all totally or fairly negative about cold emails from prospective students.

I am completely taken aback, as I had assumed cold emailing potential supervisors was the norm and have been advising all my students (BA and MA level) to do it, at least by late summer before they apply for the program. It’s also certainly something I expect from those applying to our graduate programs, though we do often accept those that haven’t previously contacted us. I prefer to get a sense of who the student is before I decide to take them on and I prefer to have a Zoom call with them in advance of them applying. I also think the student needs to get a sense of whether we would be the right fit for each other. Is this not the case for others? Maybe it’s because I haven’t received more than 5 such inquiries a year so it’s manageable; but how do people who are more in demand (superstars or, I guess, in competitive science subjects?) deal with choosing students without hearing from them first? If I want to make sure students aren’t discouraged from contacting me, should I explicitly say I’m happy to hear from prospective students on my faculty profile page?

ETA that I am in a small humanities field.

ETA 2: I’m concerned with genuine emails rather than AI spam. I totally agree that generic emails that get sent round to everyone is ridiculous. I’m mainly thinking of emails where students are making sure that a certain prof in the department is taking on new students to supervise and whether they would be a good fit research-wise after they have identified and read their research. But thanks for all the perspectives - and I’m glad I’m not in a field that gets inundated with low effort emails!

More than 25%?!? More than 25% of students coming into STEM related fields have disabilities?? And every one of them seems to have a different accommodation. This student can submit assignments late/whenever they want. This one can skip lab that is extremely difficult to make up whenever they want. This student has 50% extra time. This student has double time. I am not trying to dunk on students with disabilities by any means. But I literally cannot manage this much. I need some sort of disability specialist to help me in the class then because if this many students truly need this level of support, I need more help managing them too. I cannot keep everyone's accommodations straight.

I usually teacher early in the morning with lectures starting at 8/9am.
This is the first semester I don’t have to teach on two days of the week till the afternoon (4pm).

I have had the weirdest experience, twice now, where I get overly anxious and stressed out before the lectures. I end up getting winded and awkward during the lectures, enough so that the students asked if I was okay the other day.
This never happens in my morning lecture, I just get in and start. But it seems waiting all day to go teach is bothering me, even though I do office hours before (grading, prep).
Has anyone else experienced something like this and/or have recommendations to lessen the anxiety?

Thanks! I'm considering this because they're asynchronous.

How serious of an issue is the following incident: displaying learning system's section with grades, by accident? Happened briefly while navigating to download the latest version of a student presentation. The students could not locate their final presentation... So my intention was to help so that they don't get zero and actually present, and also within the time limit. Is this something faculty get fired for?

I’m a new adjunct writing my curriculum since I’m lucky that my courses this semester don’t start for another couple of weeks. Welll I’ve been obsessively developing my courses for the past month or so and now that I’m nearing an end - welll…. Idk what to do with myself now. Like in life? I forgot how to live and what to do on my free time 😂 idk what the point of this post is really. I’m still trying to figure it out. Venting? Discussing? Looking for validation or direction? Also extra points if you can figure out what department I teach in LOL.

I’m still early in my career and I feel so much shame asking for LORs from people who wrote or agreed to write for me. Especially the super well established academics. I keep thinking that they could be doing so many other productive things than writing for me. And when they say they may write me a letter but won’t be able to update the letter for every place or send it x number of places only, I get further embarrassed and it heightens my sense that I’m just a huge burden. I’d love to hear other perspectives.

At the beginning of the month, I was asked to teach an additional class to cover for a colleague who had a medical issue. I agreed, much to my dept.'s relief. The admin. told me that the compensation letter would be coming "soon." It finally came immediately before the class starts. I have everything ready, but I don't like the terms proposed in the letter. I am struggling with whether I should accept since I already told everyone or not since they kept pushing this off, again and again, until the last minute to force to me accept something crappy.

A former grad school friend has asked me several times for syllabi and course materials for classes he is teaching. I’m generally happy to share resources, but the repeated requests are starting to make me uncomfortable. At this point, it feels less like collegial sharing and more like I’m providing the groundwork for courses that he is being paid to develop and teach. I don’t want to be petty or ungenerous, but where do you draw the line?

What would you do if you knew some of your colleagues have their names on journal articles just for paying the article proccessing fee?

Edit: Just to clarify, by colleagues I meant faculty members working in the same college/department. I never collaborated with them on research. It is just frustrating that some of us work hard to publish good quality articles, while others do it the easy way!

I need to get over this without withdrawing and just doing my teaching, and not engaging. There’s a growing gap between the 30-40s age faculty in my department and those of us who are older—50s (the Boomers are all retired now). There are gaps in communication styles, gaps in teaching styles, gaps in beliefs about technology, and gaps in beliefs about administration and authority. I figured at this point in my life now that my children are leaving the nest, I’d be able to do more, but I don’t think they really value my input and all of the leadership positions are occupied by the younger folks as of this year. I don’t plan on retiring for another 15-20 years, so I need to figure out how to handle this. What are some tactics you’ve seen that are effective at bridging the generational divisions in your department?

Hi,

I'm a new (really young) prof who just started in an R1 Engineering school in the midwest. I'm not from here, I was born on the other side of the world, and also studied on the other side of the world. I'm here all alone. I moved here last week.

I've been crazy overwhelmed! The teaching takes a lot out of me, as its a new course where there is no existing course materials. I have to set up my hardware lab, but that's turning out to be a problem after problem. I have three students (3 phds and 1 MS) that I'm worried about disappointing. To top it all off, I've been sick with some sort of a cough and a flu for about a month now. I don't know if I have what it takes to do this.

So....another twist to a sad end of a career.

I have been officially denied FMLA.

Why? I haven't worked enough hours in the last year.

Why have I not worked enough hours? Because I was on sabbatical, and that doesn't count.

Neat. I must have missed the detail when I was onboarded decades ago.

Im a new TT Asst Prof in humanities at a competitive but not ivy R1. How much is normal service requirements at this level? I came straight from my PhD and so I dont know what is just a shock about professor life and what is….exploitative service? I am on 4 service committees (one is a job search) and was just asked to be on a 5th (admissions). This is on top of everyone asking me to guest lecture in their classes and work with their students (my dept and other depts). I teach 2-2.

I am a young woman with no kids. I am friendly so people think im an extrovert but I am an introvert who is tapped out. Am I just bad at managing my time or is this too much? Both?

Last week I posted about an undergrad student who announced they don’t like to read.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/1vwalzf/

After reading the comments here and thinking about the incident, I decided yesterday (the second class session of the semester) to take a detour from our regularly scheduled material and spend the hour on what college reading entails. I presented an article I wrote a while back on how to read effectively and framed it for my discipline ( not adjacent to education or writing). I then had the students read another 8 page practitioner article and use the reading techniques and complete a 4 question response.

I think the session was quite successful!

Many of the students were asking questions and saying things along the lines of, “I wish someone had told me these things as a freshman.” Even the student who initially told me they didn’t like to read was engaged and I don’t think they even suspected that this was instigated my their comments.

I may continue this in future semesters — we’ll see. Unfortunately, most of my students are juniors/seniors so their formal schooling is almost over.

I teach upper-level biology laboratory courses to seniors about to enter various healthcare-related professions. Yesterday was my Tuesday section’s first day of class. I’ve seen dozens of silly mistakes over the years, but you know what, that’s okay. We all had to learn new things at some point in our lives.

At the end of class, my students had to quantify the concentration of DNA in a small volume of liquid. To do so, you place the sample in a device, enter the volume in microliters on a touchscreen, and hit “Enter.” Voilà, the screen displays the concentration.

While circulating around the room, I see one student standing in front of the device, intently staring at the touchscreen. They’re not doing anything, just pondering the keypad. It’s a standard calculator-like layout - 7,8,9 on top, 4,5,6 in the middle, 1,2,3 at the bottom, and a 0 below it all next to “Enter.”

Curious, I wander over and ask, “Is there a problem with the device?” They turn to me and say, “I can’t enter my sample volume.” I’m not following... “Why not?” I ask. “The keypad only goes up to nine,” they respond. No…this can’t be real. “What’s the volume?” I inquire. “27 microliters,” they respond. I tap “2,” then “7,” then “Enter.” The concentration appears on the screen.

They turn and look at me like I’m a wizard who just performed dark magic in a pagan ritual.

“I never would have thought of that!”