Dean's Brief 1 · Monday, September 7, 2026
The One-Sentence AI Policy
The decision: Your faculty need a policy they can repeat in a hallway. If it takes a paragraph, it will not be followed, and if it is "allow or ban," it answers the wrong question.
What is happening
Most campuses have an AI policy. Few have one that faculty can say from memory. The long versions cover integrity, privacy, accessibility, and procurement, which is right for the catalog and wrong for the classroom. Meanwhile students already use AI, employers already expect it, and the people writing syllabi are choosing between a ban they cannot enforce and a permission they cannot bound. A policy memo does not fix that. A sentence does, if the long version stands behind it.
The sentence
"AI may help you think; it may not think for you, and you must be able to explain and defend anything you turn in." Change the words to fit your campus, but keep the three parts: it is allowed, there is a line, and the student owns the result. Everything else (which tools, which data, which assignments) hangs below that sentence in a document faculty can link to.
Three moves
- Draft the sentence with chairs, not committees. Ten chairs in a room for an hour will produce something faculty will say. A task force will produce something they will file.
- Put the long version in one place. Integrity, FERPA, procurement, accessibility, and the list of approved tools live on one page with a short URL. Every syllabus links to it instead of restating it.
- Give faculty the course-level switch. The campus sentence sets the floor. Each syllabus says how AI is used in that course, in two lines, chosen from three options: not for graded work, allowed with citation, or required for specific assignments.
What to say
To faculty: "The policy is one sentence. Your syllabus adds two lines. The details are on one page." To students: "You may use AI; you must be able to defend your work without it."
Monday step
Ask three chairs to say the campus AI policy out loud without looking it up. If none can, you have your first agenda item.