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 7: Laura Barré

Wednesday, May 14, 2025 · 12:00–1:00 PM · In-person · Upson Hall 102

Laura Barré, Assistant Clinical Professor in the Division of Nutrition Sciences, described leveraging GenAI to create case studies for developing and assessing students’ knowledge and critical thinking, as well as simulating patient interaction.

Session 6: Liz Karns

Wednesday, April 30, 2025 · 12:00–1:00PM · In-person · Upson Hall 102

Liz Karns, Senior Lecturer in Industrial & Labor Relations as well as Statistics & Data Science and Provost Fellow for Undergraduate Education, shared findings from the Accepting Responsibility pilot aimed at promoting academic integrity and provided valuable takeaways for the age of GenAI.

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, provided a live demonstration of an AI Values Coach and described its potentials for the Leadership for All program in the College of Engineering.

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

Rene Kizilcec, Associate Professor in the Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, summarized current research and shared practical advice for using GenAI tools in teaching and learning, with the particular example of the HiTA tool.

Session 2: Generative AI for Second Language Writing

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

Silvia Amigo-Silvestre, Senior Lecturer of Spanish Language, presented about using a GenAI tool for formative feedback in a Spanish writing course.

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.