Students complete IBM SkillsBuild courses and certificates, including AI Literacy, Artificial Intelligence Fundamentals, Make Agentic AI Work for You, Enterprise Design Thinking Practitioner, Getting Started With Artificial Intelligence, and Getting Started With Generative AI. Each certificate carries a verifiable digital badge that students can showcase on LinkedIn and résumés to signal their AI skills to employers.

Email Myles Bassell with questions.

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Students develop skills in generative and agentic AI, responsible AI design, and IBM watsonx while creating portfolio-ready work that can make them career ready. By the end of this career-connected learning lab, students will have completed AI projects they can showcase to employers and will earn IBM-recognized digital credentials for LinkedIn and résumés. This initiative reflects Koppelman’s commitment to experiential learning, industry engagement, and preparing students to lead in an AI-enabled economy.

Email Myles Bassell with questions.

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The award will support Hussain’s innovative project to develop AI‑powered tools that enhance cancer survivorship. His work aims to expand access to high‑quality care for underserved communities and address persistent gaps in healthcare equity.

In addition to advancing cancer research, the initiative will create hands‑on learning opportunities for students, helping cultivate the next generation of scientists and engineers. It will also deepen collaborations between ������Ƶ and leading healthcare partners, positioning the institution at the forefront of technology‑driven solutions in cancer care.

Hussain is also developing an AI healthcare startup, Ranea.ai, focused on making healthcare more accessible and affordable. He credits Doctoral Lecturer Katherine Chuang and Associate Professor Devorah Kletenik of the Department of Computer and Information Science, along with Ana Bartolomé, operations manager and community outreach coordinator for the ������Ƶ Cancer Center, for their support in helping him reach this milestone.

“Being named an ACS Scholar is both an honor and a responsibility,” Hussain said. “This support allows us to harness the power of AI to transform survivorship care and ensure that no community is left behind.”

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When ChatGPT launched in 2022, few expected that a simple text box would trigger a global debate about artificial intelligence. Today, AI is no longer a novelty; it’s a force reshaping how we learn, create, and work. At ������Ƶ, we’re committed to meeting this moment with thoughtfulness and integrity—equipping our students and faculty with the knowledge, tools, and ethical foundation they need to navigate and lead an AI-driven world.

Designing the Future Together

This fall, ������Ƶ convened 32 students, staff, faculty members, alumni, and industry partners for a one-day visioning workshop focused on career readiness in the age of AI. The workshop, structured as a charrette, invited participants to co-design a framework for how ������Ƶ should respond to the rapid evolution of this technology.

A charrette is more than a meeting—it’s a creative, inclusive process that brings diverse voices together to tackle complex problems. Led by the National Charrette Institute, the session marked a critical first step in understanding the scope of AI’s impact and the need for sustained, cross-sector collaboration.

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs April Bedford explains, “Our goal is to ensure AI serves as a meaningful complement, and not a substitute, for human scholarship and instruction. Faculty are developing course materials that include clear guidelines on the responsible use of generative AI tools, along with expectations for transparency and disclosure. This empowers students and faculty to engage ethically and thoughtfully with emerging technologies while preserving the integrity of academic work.”

Participants in the charette discuss AI.

What We Learned

The conversations revealed urgency about AI’s role in education and society. Participants noted that even middle school students now understand concepts like “humanizers”—tools that make AI-generated text sound more natural. They agreed that critical thinking is more essential than ever and that ������Ƶ must help students become creators, not just consumers, of technology.

Career readiness emerged as a priority, with calls for strategies that span departments and embed AI literacy into core learning. The emphasis shifted from product to process: understanding how to think, not just what to produce. Participants warned against complacency—AI is not infallible, and without understanding how it works, educators and students risk misusing it.

Grounded in Empathy

Faculty stressed that AI integration must be rooted in human values.

Norman Eng, a doctoral lecturer in childhood, bilingual, and special education, put it this way: “With AI, we probably won’t go wrong if we focus on the experiences, motivations, and feelings of our students—especially those marginalized by this technology.” Quoting Jurassic Park’s Dr. Ian Malcolm, he added, “‘Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.’ It’s no different with AI. We want our students to question and reflect on the ‘should.’”

Eng advocates embedding digital literacy and AI ethics into every course: “AI has shifted education toward process and performance. Instead of grading lesson plans, we analyze and improve AI-generated ones. Students develop meta-learning skills—learning how to learn—so they can adapt and thrive. Ultimately, it’s not AI itself, but how students use it, that will define their success.”

Norman Eng

Practical Leadership

Mariya Gluzman, an instructional designer at the ������Ƶ Library & Academic IT Department and champion of AI literacy, leads practicums for staff and faculty to explore AI tools for course design and assessment.

“The reality is that AI is already part of the academic landscape and students are using it, often without proper guidance. Many industries are rapidly adopting generative AI. Given who we serve as a public university and our mission, it’s crucial we help our students succeed in today’s job market. They need to be just as prepared as applicants from brand-name colleges who’ve had every opportunity to work with cutting-edge technology,” said Gluzman.

Mariya Gluzman leading a workshop on AI for staff and faculty.

Training Creators, Not Consumers

For students, AI offers opportunities to build practical skills.

Anna Belenko, a computer science major, recently attended a hackathon at Columbia University, where her team built an AI agent prototype in 24 hours—winning $2,000 in company credits and earning the “Best AI Agent Use” award.

As president of the Computer Science Club, she’s now organizing a ������Ƶ hackathon for the spring semester. “We need to use AI tools to empower students—and give them the freedom to become creators of AI, not just consumers,” Belenko said. “As a computer science student, it’s essential to be AI literate, especially in a field that’s evolving so quickly.”

Looking Ahead

As AI continues to redefine education and work, ������Ƶ is not only preparing students to navigate the AI era, but to shape it. Success will belong to those who can adapt, reflect, and lead with both technical skills and human insight.

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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 ������Ƶ, 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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Under Hui Chen’s leadership, ������Ƶ is not only keeping pace with technological change—it’s preparing students to lead it. By blending fundamentals with hands-on experience and an emphasis on ethics, our computer science programs equip graduates to navigate complex challenges and seize new opportunities. For Chen, the mission is clear: empower students to become adaptable, responsible innovators who will shape a future where technology serves humanity.

How is AI being integrated into the computer science curriculum at ������Ƶ?

AI has long been an important component of the computer science curriculum at ������Ƶ. Both required and elective courses include machine learning, AI, and computer ethics. Embracing recent advancements in AI, we also offer classes in pattern recognition, data mining, machine learning, neural networks, and artificial intelligence. Furthermore, our faculty are in active discussion about how to address the pedagogical challenges presented by AI, as well as to deepen students’ knowledge of the societal and ethical issues related to AI use.

What skills can students learn with a computer science degree that will make them better prepared for a career now that AI is here?

The most important skills remain problem solving and critical thinking. The distinction of a computer science major lies in the type of problems we solve, and the specific skills required to think critically within the domain. For example, AI tools can help our graduates write code; but they are far from able to determine whether that code truly meets user needs, is architecturally sound, or is robust enough to withstand security threats.

Students still need a solid foundation in computer science fundamentals, such as programming, data structures, algorithms, computability, systems architecture, and software engineering principles, to name a few. This core knowledge will enable graduates to work alongside AI tools, and not just depend on them. In addition, students need to develop a deep understanding of the strengths and limitations of AI tools, allowing them to become responsible practitioners.

We are seeing a shift in the emphasis placed on different knowledge and skill sets in computing. For instance, a graduate’s ability to master the syntax of a particular programming language may become less critical. At the same time, their ability to design, construct, and evaluate complex, multi-component computing systems becomes far more important. Students should be mindful of this, especially, when they are preparing themselves to join the workforce.

Do you have conversations with students about bias, privacy, misinformation, and the environmental impact of large data processing?

These are important and pressing issues. Computers and Ethics has been a long-standing course, which is jointly run with the Philosophy Department and is required for all of our major students. This course directly addresses these topics.

The course is also a designated writing-intensive course. Students engage in writing and presentations of analyses on real-world cases, including assessment of software systems or AI tools in use and design. This ensures our graduates are not only skilled computer science specialists but also responsible practitioners.

How do you see AI reshaping computer science programs in the next five to 10 years?

The role of computer science programs has been to transform curious learners into skilled, disciplined, and ethical practitioners in computing. Graduates often join the workforce as computer programmers, software developers, computer system analysts, and information security analysts. In the next few years, the role of computer science programs in society should still be as the main feeders of these career paths.

However, a shift is underway. The demand for entry-level computer programmers may decrease; but there should be an increase in careers that require high-level skills, such as software developers and information security analysts. Particularly, there should be a demand for professionals who can design, implement, and secure complex systems integrated with AI technologies.

AI advancement has brought about a shift that some characterize as seismic. Colleges should embrace this shift. First, on the level of computer science curriculum, we should explore ways to shift from language-centric, syntax-focused instruction to a pedagogy centered on AI-assisted problem-solving. This can include designing inputs for AI systems, evaluation of AI-generated code, and effectively applying software engineering principles in the presence of AI assistants.

Second, we should explore new course offerings. This can be an exploration of courses that go beyond using AI as a tool, such as teaching students to design computer systems that facilitate human-AI collaboration, including user experience design and delegated decision-making with AI.

Looking beyond computer science programs, colleges should continuously hold to their broader mission as knowledge curators and disseminators. Our fundamental purpose remains to prepare our students for enduring careers, not just their first job. We should continue to strengthen the fundamental knowledge and skills that enable lifelong learning.

Nevertheless, we should strive to balance enduring fundamentals with near-term job readiness. We should innovate cost-effective ways that are aimed at bridging the academia-industry gap with hands-on, AI-fluent practice. With both strong fundamentals and job-relevant, near-term experiences, we expect our graduates to prosper in the workforce, adapt in their careers, and contribute to a future where technology serves humanity.

If you were starting in your career today, would you still pursue a career in computer science?

Yes, without a doubt.

At its heart, computer science is about solving computational problems. I have been interested in solving problems in two closely related domains: computer science and computing education research. This career is a privilege that allows me to explore solutions for many problems in those domains. It has also been a privilege to work alongside students. The value our students bring to these pursuits far outstrips any AI assistants can offer.

The advice I wish to give students is to grow a genuine passion for the discipline and the profession. Computational problems in computer science span algorithmic foundations, hardware realization, linguistic realization, and their myriad applications. A long-standing “crown jewel” of those computational problems has been to investigate how to build machines that mimic the human mind. The pursuit to solve that computational problem has led to the recent advancement in AI.

In my view, AI is not a replacement for computer scientists; it is a catalyst. It invites and emboldens more people from all fields to seek computing solutions for problems in their lives and work. While there may be a cyclical downturn in computing jobs, AI will ultimately act as an amplifier—creating new, unforeseen roles, and thus eventually accelerating job growth in our society. The future belongs to those who are passionate, driven, and prepared.

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Panelists

, Managing Director, Accenture and ������Ƶ Foundation Trustee

, Responsible AI Associate Manager, Accenture

Soribel Feliz ’09, AI Governance and AI Risk Management LinkedIn Instructor and Team Member

This event is open to students and alumni. If you’re interested in how AI is being used in today’s workforce, be sure to register. It will be a panel format.

This event is co-sponsored by the Office of Alumni Engagement, ������Ƶ Honors Academy, Wolfe Institute, Political Science Department, and Computer Science Club.

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Michelle J. Anderson and Aaron Olson at the Presidential Lecture Series event on September 30.

The op-ed focuses on how colleges can prepare students for careers in a rapidly evolving landscape shaped by artificial intelligence. We spotlight ������Ƶ’s pioneering partnership with Aon, a deep collaboration that has enhanced certain academic programs with fresh insights from the work world. This initiative is especially important for first-generation and low-income students on a pathway of economic mobility.

������Ƶ is working to strengthen these kinds of collaborations with employers; integrate AI literacy across the disciplines; and equip our graduates with the know-how not just to adapt to change, but to drive it. You can read the piece .

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