As the reach and impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) continues to expand, the questions we have about it — as individuals, students, teachers, and professionals — also continue to grow. How can we prepare students for a world filled with AI tools, while also ensuring that they understand the value of preserving creativity, intentionality, and meaning in their work? How do we as a community grapple with the ethical issues raised by systems that can replicate bias, reinforce privilege, and amplify existing inequalities?
In thinking about how to come to terms with what role AI can, should, or will play at the College, Carleton’s strategic direction, Carleton 2033, offers a potential approach in its emphasis on the value of curiosity and experimentation. In this spirit, the President’s Cabinet has decided to designate this year “A Year of AI Curiosity” at Carleton. We will be offering programs, creating structures, and developing resources to help students, faculty, and staff explore tools, capabilities, and issues related to AI.
Last year, we established an AI Coordinating Committee, co-chaired by Provost Michelle Mattson and Chief Technology Officer Janet Scannell, with 15 additional faculty, staff, and student members. This group will continue to advise the campus on organizing programs and discussions in conjunction with college departments and offices. In October, we will host a visit and lecture by Simon Cullen, assistant professor of philosophy and Dietrich College Artificial Intelligence and Education Fellow at Carnegie Mellon, who uses AI chatbots to train students in strategies for discussing controversial issues. Later this year, we will welcome José Antonio Bowen, author of Teaching with AI. The Perlman Center for Learning and Teaching (LTC) is also offering a number of AI-related workshops.
In the academic program, many faculty are already incorporating use or discussion of AI into courses, including: Living with Artificial Intelligence, The Coded Gaze: AI and Art History, Creative Coding and Generative AI, Education and Technology in the 21st Century, and Writing with Artificial Intelligence. To aid in further exploration, the Provost’s Office will be offering a special round of AI Year of Curiosity Curricular Development Grants for faculty who are interested in integrating an AI component into their teaching and learning or collaborating with other faculty and staff on larger curricular projects.
In our administrative and professional work, we are beginning to see the impact of many tools that are embedded in familiar software, or available for specialized tasks. It will be important for us to develop a common understanding of where these tools can make our work more effective, and where they run the risk of exposing proprietary information or diminishing the level of critical thinking and attention to excellence that are hallmarks of Carleton culture. Guidance on the risks associated with using some generative AI tools will be provided on the new AI website that is currently in development.
In addition to the AI website that will bring together all of these directions and initiatives, we are also working on defining a position that will be responsible (in cooperation with the LTC and ITS) for coordinating our institutional efforts related to AI, which we hope to announce later this fall.
Artificial intelligence technology will profoundly affect how we learn and work, and liberal arts institutions are uniquely poised to help students navigate the questions raised by this technology. I look forward to learning from and with all of you as we continue this journey together.
AI Coordinating Committee Members
- Co-chair — Michelle Mattson, provost and vice president for academic affairs
- Co-chair — Janet Scannell, chief technology officer
- Doug Bratland, web content and design strategist
- Kate Brooks, visual resources manager for art and art history
- George Cusack, director of writing across the curriculum and senior lecturer in English
- Chad Ellsworth, associate director of the Career Center
- Nathan Grawe, Lloyd P. Johnson-Norwest Professor of Economics and the Liberal Arts
- Kendall George, information security officer
- Wiebke Kuhn, director of academic technology
- Jeff Ondich, professor of computer science and Winifred and Atherton Bean Professor of Science, Technology, and Society
- Justin Rodriguez ’27
- Jennifer Ross-Wolff, director of the Perlman Center for Learning and Teaching and Humphrey Doermann Professor of Liberal Learning
- Sunny Sun ’26
- Christopher Tassava, director of the Grants Office
- Sam Thayer ’10, director of the Office of Accessibility Resources
- Solita Tullo, administrative assistant in the Center for Global and Regional Studies, to the director of the Quantitative Resource Center, and to the director of the Language Center
- Kristen Vogel, assistant director of the writing center and coordinator of multilingual writing support
Featured in Carleton Today, September 26, 2024