Dean's Brief 9 · Monday, November 2, 2026
Faculty Readiness Without a Mandate
The decision: Make AI readiness a job with time attached, not a workshop with a sign-in sheet. One lead per college, one cohort per department, and workload credit for both.
What is happening
Most campuses have run the one-hour AI workshop. Attendance was fine; behavior did not change. The faculty who came were already using the tools, and the ones who stayed away are the ones whose courses are most exposed. A mandate will not move them either. Faculty unions, including mine, will rightly ask what time is being taken from what, and the answer "none" is not true.
The pattern that works is older than AI. In the management textbook I published this year, the fourth lever of the DART model is Teaching and Transforming: development only compounds when it is treated as a second-period investment in people already hired, with time budgeted and a measure attached. Faculty development is no different from any other workforce. Ask people to learn on their own time and they will learn what they already like.
Three moves
- One readiness lead per college, in the workload. Three units of release or a stipend, a title, and a charge: run the cohort, keep the approved-tool list, answer questions within a day. If it is nobody's job, it is nobody's job.
- Peer cohorts, not demos. Eight to twelve faculty from one department meet monthly for a semester, each bringing one real assignment to redesign. The lead facilitates; a colleague who is one step ahead answers questions. No vendor presents.
- One measure per term. The share of courses with at least one AI-resilient assessment, reported by department. It is countable, it is honest, and it tells the provost whether the money is working.
What to say
To faculty: "We are not requiring you to use AI. We are giving you time and colleagues to decide how your course should handle it." To the provost: "Here is the lead, the cohort schedule, and the number we will report in May."
Monday step
Find the faculty member in each department who other faculty already ask about AI. Those are your leads. Fund them before you announce anything.