Dear Colleagues,
As the new semester begins, I wish you all a great start to the 2026-27 academic year. I hope that you have had time to recharge this summer, and that you are bringing renewed enthusiasm to ongoing research projects, the courses you will be teaching and your mentoring of students, and your engagement with external partners and the crucial work of keeping curricula in sync with intellectual developments and the needs of our students.
As I am new to GW, I am going to take this opportunity to offer a longer than usual message, to give you a sense of my efforts to get up to speed. Since beginning as GW Provost in July, I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the campus and the talented faculty, staff, and students whose dedication and ingenuity make this such a compelling destination for research and education. I’ve had intensive on-boarding meetings with trustees, deans, other senior leaders, the FSEC chair, the SGA president, and many other offices and groups. At summer research poster sessions, New Faculty and New Academic Leaders Orientation, First Year Move-In, the Welcome Day of Service, and more, I have received warm welcomes and heard great enthusiasm about the promise of the university’s Strategic Framework.
As President Granberg observes in her start of semester message, American higher education continues to face strong headwinds. Those challenges, however, present GW’s faculty and other constituencies with a generational opportunity to engage with new ideas, grow as researchers and educators, and collaborate as we adapt to quickly evolving circumstances around student demand, research funding, and the issues confronting the world, the United States, and our neighboring communities.
This spring and summer, Working Groups with extensive faculty participation have been offering wide-ranging recommendations about translating the Strategic Framework’s broad goals into actionable recommendations. We will soon be distributing the Working Group reports and synthesizing those recommendations into a draft three-year implementation plan, which will also be shared with the Faculty Senate and the broader GW community for input. Even as we continue to shore up GW’s financial underpinnings and address the imperative of affordability for our students, we will be making judicious investments. Key areas of focus include faculty lines that advance the Strategic Framework, interdisciplinary scholarship, student support, and enhanced community/policy engagement that leverages our location in D.C., through both courses and co-curricular experiences. The Strategic Framework’s compelling vision was a key reason I was drawn to GW, and you all will have an indispensable role to play in realizing its potential.
I also want to take note of one area where we have been working especially diligently in the last several weeks. After significant engagement with the Educational Policy and Technology Committee of the Faculty Senate, as well as the Deans and their leadership teams, we are updating 2023’s guidance to faculty and students on the use of AI in connection with academic work. The revised guidance responds to extensive requests from faculty and students for clarifications, especially in light of fast-moving technological innovation. You can find the new guidance here.
We had hoped to get you this revision ahead of the start of the semester, especially since it offers suggestions about language that might go into syllabi. But we also needed time for sufficient consultation, and all the input greatly improved the document. While faculty will only be able to draw on the revised suggestions for syllabus language for the spring term, the updated guidance clarifies how the Code of Academic Integrity governs use of AI in academic work, including new dimensions of AI not available in 2023. The guidance also stresses that instructors should explicitly convey to students how their course policies about reliance on AI relate to learning objectives for a given course. For guidance on specific concerns about academic integrity, instructors should consult Conflict Resolution and Student Accountability (CESA).
I look forward to partnering with you as we make GW stronger than ever: a better place to teach, learn, research, engage, work, and equip our students to make a difference as citizens, community members, innovators, and leaders. And I wish you the very best for a productive and fulfilling semester.
Sincerely,
Edward J. Balleisen
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
Professor of History