English Department Chair Martha Nadell at a recent convening about AI.

Science fiction has long imagined artificial intelligence, but few could predict the scale and speed of its real-world impact. Today, AI is reshaping every sector, sparking both excitement and unease.

At ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ, faculty and staff are navigating this transformation in real time. We spoke with three faculty experts—Martha Nadell (English), MJ Robinson (Television, and Radio & Emerging Media), and Karen Stern-Gabbay (History, Roberta S. Matthews Center for Teaching and Learning)—who shared how the college is responding.

Here, they discuss AI’s influence on classroom learning and how both learners and educators are preparing for an AI-driven future.  Responses have been edited for clarity.

What was the initial reaction to AI by your colleagues?  

Martha Nadell: Late in 2022, when ChatGPT first made headlines, academia seemed to lose its collective mind; the Great AI Panic of 2023 was about to begin. Some of my colleagues immediately went apocalyptic, imagining a world in which AI took over. A few were ready to have AI integrated, somehow, into their brains. But others stuck their heads in the sand and pretended it didn’t exist.

How have you seen AI take shape in the classroom?  

Nadell: Early on, it was very easy to spot generative AI-produced work. ChatGPT was producing solidly mediocre work, C+ at best. The problems were obvious: deeply conventional language, workaday structures, and unoriginal thought. Some students were offloading their cognitive work to a pattern-matching machine, which could produce prose that possessed an air of authority, if only you didn’t read too closely.

MJ Robinson:  As a journalism professor, I teach, per Phil Graham, that journalism is the first rough draft of history. So, in one respect, the students I teach are writing the history of AI—in culture, society and their anticipated industry and practice but—and here’s the difference: that technology can also be writing it with, or prompted by, them. So that’s an interesting conundrum.

I started including AI modules in my Journalism Capstone course in Spring 2023.  From the beginning we were examining how journalism was covering the release of ChatGPT to the general public as well as interrogating how it was affecting the journalism industry itself and considering how these text-generating technologies will affect the future of journalism as an industry and a public good.

How should a college education prepare students for this new world?  

Karen Stern-Gabbay: It is unclear what sorts of preparation students have for working with AI (agentive and otherwise) when they enter college. Colleges today, therefore, play a critical role in establishing expectations and setting rules for the game. We are uniquely positioned to encourage students to interrogate their assumptions about authorship and intellectual property, and to reinforce how essential it is to develop human skills (related to critical thinking, emotional intelligence, analog skills, etc.). College students have opportunities to practice responsible AI use inside classroom settings before these skills in the workplace.

Nadell: Universities are where critical thinking happens, and where students can recognize the limits of what AI is good at–predicting the likelihood of common and formulaic arrangements of language and thought—and can think through ethical quandaries with empathy.

How important is it to develop AI literacy among educators?

Robinson: We will, shortly, be in a world where K-12 educators have been educated in the age of AI and teaching children with these technologies from a very early age. That’s going to make critical AI literacy even more important. Asking questions about why one is using generative AI for a particular task prior to using it, insisting upon human-in-the-loop processes, knowing what one does not know about these platforms—these are key.

What have you and your colleagues been doing to enhance the understanding of AI on campus? 

Stern-Gabbay: At the Roberta S. Matthews Center for Teaching and Learning we have hosted events and workshops during the past year that particularly engage with the complex roles of AI in the classroom. Of course, academic integrity and data privacy appear to be the biggest issues that we have explored, but several of our faculty (rightly) point out the environmental impact of big data associated with AI.

I do think, however, that discussions of AI in the classroom bring into starker relief topics that we should be discussing anyway, including the reasons why college classrooms have become more invaluable than ever—that is, to engage in and strengthen students’ critical thinking skills—these are invaluable in an increasingly automated and AI driven world.

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A proud ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ alumnus with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s in industrial/organizational psychology, Frontera brings his passion for student development to both his work at the Magner Career Center and as an adjunct lecturer in the I/O Psychology graduate program. His dual role allows him to test ideas in the classroom and translate those lessons into broader initiatives for the college.

Beyond the classroom, Frontera is driving corporate engagement that expands student access to professional opportunities. In recent semesters, he has coordinated events with companies like Aon, KPMG, PwC, and Enterprise to foster partnerships that connect ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ students with mentors, internships, and job pipelines.

Having started working at the center as a student, Frontera loved the work so much, he turned down other opportunities to stay and help students. We asked him more about what it takes to prepare students for their dream careers and why it is more important now than ever.

In addition to offering a quality and affordable education, ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ has dramatically increased its work with companies like Aon, KPMG, and PwC to help connect students with internships that lead to jobs. How have you seen that evolve?

While I’ve seen employers engage since my time as a student at ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ, their interest and participation have ramped up in the past few years. Their commitment stems from the quality of talent they recognize in our students. Driven by a desire to see our students succeed, employers reach out to us months in advance to plan their visits to campus to ensure we maximize turnout. Most recently we had Aon on campus right before our Job and Internship Fair to help prepare our students for the fair. Aon demonstrated its commitment by sending one of its professionals to campus to lead a session on personal branding—an area the representative regularly oversees for Aon employees across the company. The visit gave our students valuable, firsthand exposure to Aon’s approach to professional development and training.

Your work is supported by many others outside the Magner Career Center on campus. Who are they, and how do they help support this shared mission of lifting students into their dream careers?

We often say it takes a village to support our students in career services. During my time at the college, I have had the opportunity to engage with so many students, staff, faculty, alumni, and professionals to support this shared mission. We couldn’t do what we do without each supporter.

Staff and faculty help us spread the word and connect students to us and attend events to hear directly from our industry speakers. Alumni and professionals are eager to support our students by speaking at events, mentoring, and recruiting. And our students are crucial in this. They serve as ambassadors for the work we do—whether this be clubs or individuals. I’ve had students bring their friends or classmates to me to help support them. I see students on campus who recognize me before I even recognize them.

You also work with faculty in the Center for Teaching and Learning. How has that helped students?

One of my passions is helping connect career readiness to the classroom. I’ve had the opportunity to work with faculty in various settings, including building out a comprehensive resource for faculty, having organized and moderated a panel of faculty last Faculty Day, and through workshops at the Center for Teaching and Learning.

The more we can expose students to career conversations, the greater we can support them in career success. Being able to do this in the classroom helps students understand the importance of becoming career ready. The Center for Teaching and Learning has been instrumental in allowing me to connect with faculty and lead workshops around this work, while also sharing the comprehensive resources developed to support faculty.

This also has given me the opportunity to connect with faculty across schools, inviting them to panels and co-presenting with them to bring this vital work to others. It opened up the opportunity for me to work one-on-one with faculty to advise them on best practices and tweak their course breakdown to include career readiness. I’m excited, as we are planning a spring event for faculty to celebrate those who bring career readiness into the classroom.

You were recently interviewed by MarketWatch about social media trends in relation to job searching. What was your key advice to students about that?

was a lot of fun! We discussed the rise of short videos posted on social media containing career advice. This is a great resource, but I recommend checking the credibility of the advice and visit your career adviser to verify its relevance to your personal journey. In addition, there is nothing like a career adviser who can help you bring out your personal story and strengths in the job search.

What do you think sets ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ and the Magner Career Center apart in this work?

The thing that sets us apart is the culture of giving back. Alumni advocate for our students; our employers see the value in recruiting our students; students support each other. We also have an incredible team of full- and part-time student staff—every team member is willing to pitch in and support each other. The team is passionate about the work we do—to see students succeed. Our part-time staff work on projects that have a real impact on the students we serve, and we couldn’t do it without them.

Our office is also very good at adapting to change. I’ve had the opportunity to support a variety of initiatives like our office’s transition to remote work, streamlining our communications to students, supporting senior employment programming, and now I’m working on enhancing student skill development, especially in AI. The reason each initiative has been successful is because of our adaptation skills.

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It was somewhat accidental that Carlos A. Cruz ’00 ended up at ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ for more than 20 years. The Cuban-born multimedia instructional designer came to New York City after earning degrees in art and anthropology in Cuba and Mexico. He figured he’d work in the art world and had enrolled in a master’s degree program in computer art design at ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ when he was asked to work on a historical encyclopedia project for the Puerto Rican and Latino Studies Department. They needed someone with technical expertise, and Cruz’s background in design, Cuban art, and history made him a shoo-in. After working on that project and graduating with his degree, he transitioned to his current role, in which he provides instructional support and trains faculty members on using Blackboard and other multimedia platforms now in hyper demand.

¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ: Talk about a job that changed pace overnight! When you first started in this position there were maybe 20 courses using Blackboard to teach online courses. Thanks to COVID-19, the majority of our courses now have some online component, and you are the main IT support for those courses. How has that been?

CC: Before the pandemic, we had three departments that were fully on board with Blackboard—by that, I mean using it or planning to use it often or in the process of putting a fair amount of classes online. So when the pandemic hit, there were so few people on campus who knew how to use it. When the university moved to online mode, we had to train everyone from the beginning. For those first months, I was conducting workshops four times a day.

One thing that made it a little easier on me was that the ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ community became very strong at sharing their knowledge thanks to the Center for Teaching and Learning and the group. We created support groups that also helped to answer a lot of questions for students and faculty members, and that was a very important part of the transition.

But it was definitely crazy for a while. Some days I had as many as 200 questions in my queue. I just had to be calm and ready to deal with people’s frustrations. The work I am doing includes high-level customer service, among other skills. We receive a question, search for the possible answers, discuss the alternative solutions with the instructor, and suggest the option that will work better technically and pedagogically for each case.

¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ: How did you end up in your current position?

CC: My job with the encyclopedia project was ending and I was looking. This position was open and I applied. I didn’t know it at first, but through this job, I realized how much I love helping people. It’s the kind of thing you never realize until you start doing it. I’ve been spending my life helping people, and it’s a good feeling sharing my knowledge.

¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ: But your original passion is art and specifically Cuban art.

CC: Yes, I was born and raised in Cuba, my major in college was art history, and I worked for 10 years for the Ministry of Culture. I still spend a lot of time in museums when I can. I like the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I recently went to Philadelphia to see a Jasper Johns exhibit.

I have been working on a big personal project for three decades—a chronology of international recognitions received by Cuban artists from 1889 to the present. It is an interactive database for art specialists, students, art collectors, and art lovers. It includes all art manifestations: painting, printmaking, sculpture, performance, design, cartoon, architecture, and photography. The final version is not ready yet, but it will be my first goal when retirement comes.

¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ: What are some of your other favorite pasttimes?

CC: I like to go to flea markets to look for nice stuff. I love to be social, to be with friends. It’s part of what I loved about ¿ÉÀÖÊÓƵ from the start. There’s a community here. People make time to spend with friends, to stop by your office and say hello, even if they only have five minutes.

I love what I do here. I feel useful. We do a good job of proving that nothing is too difficult if we work together.

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