Each year, the Bovay Engineering Ethics Program organizes a variety of events in addition to the Annual Bovay Lecture and the Annual Braudy & Manker Workshop. This page highlights the current academic year’s events. For past years’ events, visit the Events Archive.

Bovay / CTI Seminar Series: Generative AI for Teaching and Learning Community of Practice

We invite instructors across disciplines to come together as a community of practice to build expertise around teaching in the age of generative AI. These monthly lunches will provide an opportunity to learn more about genAI as it applies to multiple disciplines, hear what other instructors have tried, ask questions, and share ideas. We’ll learn about the interests of those thinking about, teaching with (or against), and researching genAI at Cornell.

This series is co-sponsored by the Bovay Program in Engineering Ethics and the Center for Teaching Innovation (CTI). For more information and links to register for upcoming events in the series, see the CTI website.

Session 6: Liz Karns

Wednesday, April 16, 2025 · 12:00–1:00PM · In-person · Upson Hall 102

Liz Karns, Senior Lecturer in Data Science and Provost Fellow for Undergraduate Education will share some of her experiences with generative AI as one of the leaders of a new academic integrity initiative at Cornell called Accepting Responsibility.

Session 5: Erica Dawson

Wednesday, March 26, 2025 · 12:00–1:00 PM · In-person · Upson Hall 102

Erica Dawson, Professor of Practice, Director of the Selander Center for Engineering Leadership, and Assistant Dean for Engineering Leadership, will share some of her experiences with generative AI in education.

Session 4: Checking In as a Community of Practice

Wednesday, February 12, 2025 · 12:00–1:00 PM · In-person · Upson Hall 102

In this first meeting of the new year, we took some time to check in as a group. Dr. Goetze shared some of their experiences with generative AI in the classroom in Fall 2024, and facilitated a discussion of other experiences and perspectives that have emerged in the past few months amongst the community. We also discussed some recent developments in generative AI applications.

Session 3: Practical Advice on Using AI in Teaching

Wednesday, December 11, 2024 · 12:00–1:00 PM · In-person · Upson Hall 202

At this meeting, we started with a short recap of things discussed in the previous session, followed by a presentation by Rene Kizilcec, Associate Professor in the Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. Here is the description Rene shared:

Students are using AI which was not designed for education and instructors have no insight into how they use it. Moreover, AI has upended the integrity of many commonly used assessment approaches. From the perspective of a faculty member who uses AI to teach and whose research focuses on AI in education, I will provide practical advice for integrating AI into teaching and assessment practices to support student learning and more.

Session 2: Generative AI for Second Language Writing

Wednesday, October 30, 2024 · 12:00–1:00 PM · In-person · Upson Hall 202

At this second meeting, we started with a short recap of things discussed in the first session. We then heard from Silvia Amigo-Silvestre, Senior Lecturer of Spanish Language, about her experiences using MyEssayFeedback, a generative AI enabled tool to assist students with learning writing skills.

Session 1: Community Building

Wednesday, September 18, 2024 · 12:00–1:00 PM · In-person · Upson Hall 202

The first session of the series focused on building our community of practice. We hope to better understand participating instructors’ needs and schedules in order to set the dates for monthly series and gather topics of interest. In addition, Dr. Goetze facilitated a level-setting demonstration of some large language model–based applications, as well as a discussion of data ethics in a higher education context.

Enhanced Geothermal Systems Workshop

In October 2024, Prof. Chloé Arson (Civil & Environmental Engineering) is organizing a workshop on the role of enhanced geothermal systems in the energy transition at Cornell. Dr. Goetze participated in a session focused on ethics, justice, and regulatory frameworks in this emerging area of energy generation.

A report of the workshop’s discussions is available on ArXiv.

Engineering Teaching Day 2024

This annual event for engineering faculty at Cornell, organized by the McCormick Teaching Excellence Institute, celebrates the teaching mission of Cornell Engineering. Join us to share your passion for teaching, workshop ideas with fellow faculty, and—most importantly—improve the learning experience you offer to students in the coming year.

For Engineering Teaching Day 2024, the Bovay Engineering Ethics Program led a workshop on integrating social and ethical issues in technical courses in engineering.