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By Marah Hurley
hurleym1@findlay.edu
The University of Findlay is moving toward a university-wide policy for artificial intelligence that would require faculty to establish clear expectations for AI use while allowing instructors to determine how the technology fits into their individual courses.
As AI becomes more common in college coursework and students encounter different expectations between classes, the proposed policy would establish a baseline of how AI use should be handled across the University. UF’s current guidelines, dated July 27, 2023, encourage faculty to create their own AI policies based on their courses, assignments, learning outcomes, and disciplines. The new university-wide policy would provide a common framework for faculty while maintaining flexibility for instructors to decide when AI can support learning and when its use is inappropriate.
Dr. Harley Ferris, assistant professor of teaching in English and director of the DeLong Writing Center, said UF began developing its current guidelines in 2022, with more work taking place in spring 2023. At the time, faculty intentionally avoided creating a university-wide policy because AI use varies between disciplines.
“We specifically chose not to call it a policy because we wanted faculty to have their own decisions,” Ferris said.
Ferris said faculty and students have since expressed a need for more guidance around AI usage. A proposed university-wide policy was presented to faculty Aug. 28, 2026. The proposal would require every instructor to have a clearly stated AI policy while still allowing professors to determine what uses are appropriate for their courses. Ferris said the Center for Teaching Excellence will be available to help faculty develop their individual policies.
The need for flexibility is partly because AI can be useful for some academic tasks while interfering with others. Justin Rheubert, assistant professor of teaching in biology and co-director of the Honors Program, allows students to use AI for some assignments but prohibits it for others. Rheubert also said that AI can be a helpful tool for certain disciplines while also being very hurtful to othes.
“If you write this overarching policy that’s very generalistic in nature, you are going to negatively impact somebody somewhere. But we should have a policy that states how we operate with AI within the institution,” Rheubert said.
For students, the differences between courses can make AI expectations difficult to navigate. Gabby Reck, a senior animal science/pre-veterinary student, said her professors’ expectations range from completely prohibiting AI to actively encouraging its use.
Reck said professors typically communicate their expectations through syllabi, classroom discussions, or assignment instructions. She has also been unsure whether certain tools, such as Grammarly to fix grammar and spelling, count as AI use.
“I do think that having guidelines in place for all professors to go off of is a good idea,” Reck said. “Especially when there are professors that heavily use it, and then there are other professors where they turn around and they say, ‘No, you get an automatic zero if I even think you use AI.’”
UF’s current guidelines state that AI should facilitate or augment, rather than replace, human thought. They also encourage instructors to base AI use on the learning outcomes of individual assignments.
