Penn’s Faculty Senate released its annual committee reports last week, detailing recommendations on artificial intelligence policies and non-standing faculty tracks.
Each summer, the Faculty Senate — a body representing standing faculty across campus — publishes findings from its standing committees, which oversee a range of University matters and can make policy suggestions. This year’s reports, posted on June 16, include the Senate Committees on Faculty and Academic Mission and on Students and Educational Policy.
The committees’ 2025-26 findings have implications for lecturer career paths, an expansion of shared governance, and guidelines on student AI use. The Senate Committee on the Economic Status of the Faculty also released salary statistics for standing faculty across Penn’s 12 schools.
The Senate Committee on Faculty and Academic Mission’s report lays out a new teaching professor track that current full-time and senior lecturers can shift into. The Senate Executive Committee adopted a resolution endorsing the track in a vote last month, “with the goal of Faculty Handbook revision and implementation” by the 2027-28 academic year.
Get the DP delivered straight to your inbox.
The designation of full-time lecturers as academic support staff — “a category historically associated with temporary or support-oriented roles,” according to the report — has been a topic of Faculty Senate deliberation for several years, educational linguistics professor and 2025-26 SCOF chair Nelson Flores explained.
“We were asked to do some fact-finding and then to come up with a series of recommendations based on that,” Flores told The Daily Pennsylvanian.
The report acknowledged that “persistent concerns have been documented regarding the professional status, advancement opportunities, and evaluation processes” of full-time lecturers, who “frequently hold long-term or effectively career-length appointments” despite their formal classification as academic support staff.
RELATED:
Penn Faculty Senate overwhelmingly rejects draft open expression guidelines
For Faculty Senate Chair Roy Hamilton, Penn’s values are built to last
According to the Faculty Handbook, full-time lecturers are limited to three consecutive years of appointments with exceptions approved by Penn’s provost. Some full-time lecturers can be promoted to senior lecturers, for which “successive appointments are allowed.”
Flores explained that those who do not become senior lecturers are “theoretically” meant to “leave the job,” though this often does not happen in practice.
“As we show in the report, a lot of schools have found ways around that because it wasn’t something that they felt was aligned with the needs that they had for wanting people to be there longer term,” Flores said.
In response to the “misalignment,” the report stated, a number of Penn’s schools have developed their own frameworks — including the “expansion of renewable lecturer categories” and “use of practice professor appointments” in place of full-time lecturer positions.
“This is where we came up with recommendations on how to maybe create a University-wide response that’s actually addressing all of these challenges,” Flores said.
Compared to other possible solutions, the report stated, the proposed teaching faculty track “provides the greatest clarity in rank structure” and “more accurately recognizes the central pedagogical and programmatic roles of these faculty.” The new track would fall under the associated faculty category.
In a statement to the DP on behalf of the Faculty Senate tri-chairs, neurology professor and Faculty Senate Chair Roy Hamilton wrote that the “creation of a teaching track for non-standing faculty could help address important challenges” as discussed in the report.
“The specifics of how such a track might be implemented will be an important area of consideration for both the Faculty Senate and University leadership moving forward,” Hamilton wrote.
Flores said that he anticipates eventual collaboration with the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty “to begin to think through what the implications of moving towards a teaching track would be.”
Over the past several years, conversations regarding the placement of lecturers have broadened into wider discussions about the role of associated faculty and academic support staff in governance, according to Flores.
As a standing faculty body, the Faculty Senate consists of professors, associate professors, assistant professors, and clinician-educators. Officially, it does not currently include associated faculty — such as research and adjunct professors — and lecturers.
Over the past year, SCOF examined “how the Faculty Senate could more effectively represent the interests of non-standing faculty,” according to the June 16 report. The committee worked with an advisory subcommittee of lecturers and associated faculty “as an initial pilot.”
“Composed of members nominated by SEC representatives, the subcommittee worked in collaboration with the standing faculty members to create a structured space for sustained dialogue, feedback, and shared problem-solving across faculty tracks,” the report read.
“It was a very active committee,” Flores told the DP. “I think it was people who really cared about the issues and is something that we have recommended continues as a practice moving forward.”
SCOF’s work involved looking at faculty governance at peer institutions and within Penn’s schools. The report found that including associated faculty and academic support staff in formal governance “has the potential to strengthen, rather than diminish, faculty voice.”
“In this respect, Penn’s current governance structure is notably out of step with its peers,” the report stated.
After reviewing potential models of governance, the committee concluded that a “unified governance structure” — which includes standing faculty, associated faculty and academic support staff — “should be the ultimate goal.”
To begin moving toward such a structure within the current governance framework, SCOF recommended that SEC vote to establish a committee focused on non-standing faculty and expand their inclusion in other committees as non-voting members. Flores said that those issues may be taken up in the fall.
He also expressed a personal hope that the Faculty Senate would “develop robust structures for incorporating the perspectives of non-standing faculty.”
“There are increasing numbers of faculty in those positions,” Flores said. “I think they serve very important, integral roles in the academic mission of the institution.”
The Senate Committee on Students and Educational Policy focused its report on AI’s impacts on education at Penn. The report stated that AI would “fundamentally change the way we teach and what we teach” and acknowledged differing perspectives on using the technology within the University.
The committee recommended that Penn adopt “centralized guidelines about acceptable and unacceptable use of AI” as “broad guardrails” while maintaining “academic freedom and flexibility in the classroom” for faculty.
Currently, the University offers general guidance on AI use. For course expectations, Penn’s policy is that “each instructor is responsible for setting their own guidelines.”
SCSEP also issued a recommendation on grade distribution incorporating AI use.
“In most courses, a certain percentage of grades will come from authentic assignments that reflect engagement and skill, and the other percentage allows use of AI to a greater or lesser extent,” the report stated.
It recommended that students “learn Penn’s institutional policies on the practical and ethical use of AI in courses when they become available,” which could be during New Student Orientation.
The committee also suggested that professors directly address their AI policies through “a conversation” at the start of the semester instead of solely providing details in a syllabus, as such an approach “will help to level the playing field and lower stress for students.”
The report called for faculty training on AI “to inspire them to try experiments of their own.”
“Penn should think about how it can distinguish itself from institutions that use AI in generic ways,” the report read. “A more human-centered learning approach, instead of AI-centered learning, is likely to be more beneficial to students and more consistent with Penn’s mission.”
The Senate Committee on the Economic Status of the Faculty did not produce a report, instead pointing to themes from the previous year.
In 2025, the committee found gendered and racial pay discrepancies among faculty. It recommended that administration articulate “measurable metrics on faculty compensation, recruitment and retention” and called for a base salary increase to account for a rising cost of living.
As in previous years, SCESF published salary statistics which were provided by the Provost’s Office and generated by the Office of Institutional Research & Analysis, according to the report. The data includes details about base salary percentage increases for continuing standing faculty from fiscal years 2024-25.
From June 2024 to June 2025, the Philadelphia area’s consumer price index growth was 3.3%. On average, the salary increase percentages for Penn professors were higher than the CPI growth.
Still, 14.1% of Penn’s standing faculty had salary increases that did not exceed the CPI growth.
Past SCESF reports analyzed the extent of a gender pay gap at Penn. Like previous years, women earned less in their base salaries than men on average across all three professor ranks for the 2024-25 academic year.
After weighting by school and discipline, women have earned more than men on average in the associate professor category since the 2021-22 academic year.
RELATED:
Penn Faculty Senate overwhelmingly rejects draft open expression guidelines
For Faculty Senate Chair Roy Hamilton, Penn’s values are built to last
Staff reporter James Wan covers academic affairs and can be reached at wan@thedp.com. At Penn, he studies communication and computer science. Follow him on X @JamesWan__.
The Daily Pennsylvanian is an independent, student-run newspaper. Please consider making a donation to support the coverage that shapes the University. Your generosity ensures a future of strong journalism at Penn.
Leave a Reply