ELT: October 27, 2025 – Office of the Provost

News | Advising | Grants and Fellowships | Conferences and Workshops

October 27, 2025

News

Student Course and Material Fees Reminder

As we’re thinking about textbook orders for winter term, it’s a good time for a reminder about our student course and material fees policy. As announced in the April 14, 2022 edition of Carleton Today, beginning with the fall term of 2022, Carleton has discontinued most student course and materials fees related to academic credit. Faculty, departments, and programs who would previously have charged students directly for course packets or other course materials now have two options. One is that the department or program can use their operating budget to cover the cost of the materials, and give them to the students free of charge. The other is that faculty can arrange for their materials or course packets to be sold at the Carleton bookstore. Course packets printed and bound by Print Services are easy to distribute this way, at a reasonable price to students. Please note that departments, programs, and faculty are not allowed to bill or collect payment from students, either directly or through the Business Office. If you have questions about this policy, please contact Eric Egge or Jane Rizzo.

Your Support Needed: Support Our TRIO SSS Survey

The TRIO Student Support Services (SSS) Program invites all faculty to participate in a crucial, confidential survey to help refine our collaborative approach to student success. The SSS Program plays a critical role in supporting students at Carleton, and your unique perspective as a teaching faculty member is vital to understanding how we can better partner with your departments. The goal is simple: to improve communication, eliminate barriers, and ensure a seamless, holistic support network for our shared students. The survey will only take about 5 minutes to complete and will directly inform our strategy for the coming year. The original invitation, which includes your unique survey link, should have arrived in your inbox on Tuesday, October 21. You’ll also receive a reminder email on Thursday, October 30 and Tuesday, November 4, and we ask that you submit your responses by 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 5. We sincerely appreciate your time and commitment to making a profound difference in the lives of these students.

Progress Reports

Faculty members should submit progress reports to the Dean of Students Office for students who are not meeting class expectations. This could include any of the following: missed classes, missed assignments, lack of communication, disengagement in class, or wellness concerns.

The purpose of having the Dean of Students Office receive progress reports is three-fold: to confirm for students that they are in academic difficulty, to inform those in a position to assist and support students (Class Dean) of the nature of the concern, and to reveal patterns of behavior about students as they may not be meeting expectations in multiple classes.

To initiate this process, please use this progress report form. Your academic progress reports have proven helpful in assisting students with their academic success.

Fall 2025 ACES Faculty Newsletter

The fall 2025 issue of the ACES faculty newsletter is now live. Please see the ACE faculty website for information about updates on the Broom Fellow position, ACE faculty awards, resources and support from the CCCE, public scholarship resources, and community-engaged teaching and scholarship national networks.

New Research Security Training Requirement for Senior Personnel on Federal Research Grants

Federal funding agencies have begun to require all senior personnel on federal research grants to undergo training in research security. These requirements were introduced in the CHIPS and Science Act, which was signed into law by President Biden in August of 2022. Carleton is complying with this requirement by providing a Moodle course that contains the modules required for compliance. When and how often PIs are required to complete this training varies by funder, so watch for further information from Charlotte Whited, our compliance officer, with details applicable to you and your particular federal grant.

Advising

Advising Days are Here!

The official Advising Days start today! Please remember that there are many resources available to help you navigate these meetings with your advisees. The Advising Handbook provides a clearinghouse of information on a range of topics organized into major areas such as Academic Requirements and Student Academic Progress. If you are seeking someone who might provide a specific answer to a question, consult the Whom To Contact page to see who you might email or phone directly. Pathways remains a useful resource for students, advisers, and departments. Take a look and use this tool in your advising of first- and second-year students who wish to start their research on career tracks and their professional development.

In preparation for your meetings with your advisees, you may wish to share this short video, which introduces them to the curriculum and the tools available for exploring it.

New Courses for Winter Term

One of the Workday reports designed to help advisers encourage their advisees to explore the curriculum is the “Newly Added Courses ” report. You can access this report via your “My Advisees” dashboard under the tab “Additional Reports,” or by typing “Newly Added Courses” in the universal search bar in Workday.

“Department Pick” Workday Report

Do you want to highlight a new course in your department? Department chairs are invited to select one course they wish to feature each term and communicate their selection to the Registrar’s Office. Students who explore the “Department Pick” report in Workday will see the highlighted course from each department.

Academic Integrity

As we approach the end of the term, some of your advisees might be feeling the crunch of our ten-week term. Please remind your advisees, especially first-year students, what constitutes academic misconduct. Excessive procrastination and poor time management are often the primary culprits that lead to academic integrity cases. The Academic Support Center maintains a time management coach who can help your advisees with time management skills. You can find more useful information in our Advising Handbook for your advisees, especially in the Academic Integrity/Academic Misconduct section.

Advising Key Dates and Deadlines:

Monday, October 27: Advising Days Begin (through November 5)
Friday, October 31: Ten-week Course Late Drop and S/CR/NC Deadline, due 5:00 p.m.
Tuesday, November 4: Priority Registration for Winter Term Begins
Friday, November 7: Second Five-week Course Late Drop and S/CR/NC Deadline, due 5:00 p.m.
Saturday, November 22: Exams Begin (end on November 24)

Advising Quick Links

Grants and Fellowships

Mellon Foundation Opens Higher Learning Grants

The Mellon Foundation’s Higher Learning Program has issued an open call for humanities research and/or curricular projects focused on either of the following two areas:

The emergence of generative AI has triggered a firestorm of techno-utopian promises and apocalyptic predictions alike. These reckonings often imply that AI is “intelligent” in the human sense, even though from the iconic use of this term in his 1950 “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” Alan Turing called this attitude “dangerous” and famously defined artificial intelligence only in terms of how well computers could imitate human thought. Are we now facing an existential abdication of human capacities to machines? Or the usual evolution of how we define intelligence in keeping with our shifting technologies? Meanwhile, the terms of human and more-than-human intelligences are also unstable, with greater or lesser value assigned to particular populations, species, and objects according to our historical, social, and ecological contexts. How might different forms of AI – generative, predictive, agentic, and others, including models that are currently still theoretical – complicate or exacerbate the inequalities that arise from these norms? With so much at stake, the humanities have an urgent role to play in shaping contemporary understanding of artificial and other intelligences – and in making practical, informed recommendations about how to regulate and/or adopt AI in our learning, work, and most intimate lives.

The concept of normalcy is paradoxical. It entails the statistically average that is at the same time a moral imperative, a completely ordinary state that is nonetheless much to be desired, a cultural ideal. Moreover, the normal often functions as the ideal even when it is not numerically average. Despite the seemingly universal character of these formulations, the normal entered Western consciousnesses only in the modern era with the nineteenth-century efflorescence of statistics, bringing with it its opposite: the deviant, exceptional, aberrant, not normal. How does the concept of normalcy govern notions of human life, and when doesn’t it? What are the structures and systems that keep it in place, in realms as disparate as the aesthetic, socioeconomic, psychological, physiological, political, spiritual, and ethical? What, if anything, does the historical knowledge of its recent invention – and vigorous social rejections – enable?

Projects should engage teams of scholars and/or students, and have visible, enduring impact at the institution. Principal investigators must be faculty members or deans. Applicants must register with Mellon by Dec. 1; concept notes are due Feb. 17; finalists will be invited to submit full proposals in the summer of 2026. Awards will range from $250,000 to $500,000 for a duration of up to four years, with start dates around Dec. 1, 2026.

There is no limit to how many individuals can register, but each institution is limited to three concept notes. If you have interest in applying for the grant, please contact Christopher Tassava in the Grants Office.