Carleton College is excited to offer all full- and part-time employees at Carleton College a structured opportunity to explore ways AI can align with their routine job responsibilities: The Employee Certificate for Critical AI Literacy. Nominate a colleague or yourself to participate in the first offering, which takes place this summer, June 23-24. This 8-hour program will be grounded in Carleton’s Critical AI Literacy Framework, and participants will earn a certificate that recognizes successful completion. No prior experience with AI is necessary (we will offer a pre-workshop as an elective to introduce people to generative AI); all levels of expertise are welcome. Please nominate someone on your team or yourself by April 8, 2026. We will review nominations quickly and may, based on demand, open more summer sessions.
Participants gain a foundational understanding of generative AI and practice incorporating resources and tools responsibly into everyday workflows (e.g., drafting of emails, automation of data analysis, image generation for communications). The program will help us to build a community of practice for sharing participants’ discoveries within the group and with the larger campus community.
The program will be offered in person, with an online component, to allow as many colleagues as possible to work in community and will include a mix of foundational and targeted sessions. Participants will be encouraged to apply their learning to their own workflows and share their successes with their colleagues.
Foundational knowledge and skills: 5 hours, required for everyone, including
- Practical application of Carleton AI tools, e.g., effective prompt writing
- Critical evaluation of AI output
- Ethical considerations
- Accessibility
Targeted sessions, based on interest: at least 3 hours, to be chosen from a smørgåsbord of topics, including
- Pre-Session: Getting started if you have never used any generative Ai ever before
- Guiding student workers in responsible AI use for work
- Bot development
- Intellectual property and copyright deep dive
- Media creation (image, video, graphic design)
- Opting out of generative AI – technology and philosophy
- Supporting your teams: develop AI guidelines for your team
- Mental health
Additional iterations of the program will be offered during the Fall, Winter, and Spring terms (2026/7).
At the end of Fall term, we hope to showcase participants’ findings and successes during a community event.
Generative AI, specifically large language models, has the potential to change our work as much as the internet did 30 years ago, so let’s learn together how to use this new technology responsibly and effectively.