AI in Academia: Navigating the Future

Dr. Jennifer Brown is the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Bentley University and a scholar of English, Medieval Studies, and Women's Studies---as well as a novelist! She joins us to discuss how AI is impacting writing and creativity, how to teach writing in the age of AI, and what we can learn about all this by looking back to the biggest disruption in the long history of writing technology: the invention of the printing press. 

Dr. Dave Rivera Jr., professor of applied management at Flagler College, shares his experiences exploring generative AI with his students in business classes. He discusses ways of getting honest feedback on when AI helps students learn and when it doesn't, how he uses AI to reinforce but not replace creative and critical thinking, and how he keeps up with the fast, evolving pace of AI. You might walk away from this episode feeling a little more optimistic about the future---we did!

Jeff LeBlanc, a Lecturer of Management at Bentley University discusses the evolving role of AI in business education and leadership. Jeff shares insights on the human elements of organizational behavior, emphasizing that while AI is a powerful tool for generating ideas, it cannot replace genuine human connection and empathy. The conversation explores Jeff’s engaged empathy leadership model, highlighting the importance of kindness, fairness, and structure in guiding students and future leaders.

Nathan Carter, Professor of Mathematical Sciences and Director of the Center for Analytics and Data Science at Bentley University, joins the podcast to share his current research on whether AI can accurately grade mathematical proofs and provide meaningful feedback to students. The conversation explores the challenges of precision, logic, and ethical concerns in AI-assisted grading, and considers broader implications for teaching, learning, and faculty development. Listeners will also gain insights from Bentley’s participation in the AAC&U Institute for AI in Pedagogy and Curriculum, including practical frameworks for evaluating and integrating AI tools in higher education.

Denny Hummer. assistant director of the Bucknell SBDC and Amber Guerrero, a business consultant at Bucknell SBDC discuss their roles in driving the use of AI among local entrepreneurs in Pennsylvania. They share their experiences with AI, including how it has transformed their work processes and improved efficiency. They emphasize the importance of AI in providing better service to clients and the need for students to learn and use AI tools effectively. The conversation highlights the evolution of AI in small business development, the integration of AI in educational settings, and the impact of AI on student internships and job roles.

Mareike Möhlmann, associate professor of computer information systems at Bentley University, discusses how her university has been working on guidelines and guidance for faculty around AI, what Uber tells us about the future of AI and work, and how to support digital literacy.

Dr. Dawn Edmiston, an award-winning Clinical Professor of Marketing at William & Mary (W&M) discusses the use of generative AI for personal branding and digital marketing, practical strategies, challenges, and ethical considerations for integrating AI in the classroom and online learning. She also dives into the importance of asking better questions, and how AI can support—not replace—human creativity and connection.

Karen Saxe and Courtney Gibbons, two math professors who moved into careers in public policy, discuss Congress’s response to AI, key legislation affecting AI literacy, ethical concerns and bias, AI’s role in teaching and research, the U.S. vs. EU approach to AI regulation, and how academics can engage in policy-making at the local and national levels.NOTE: This episode was recorded on September 10, 2024. As you will hear in our intro, our guests on this episode work on public policies and with the current changes in the administration some of the discussions you will hear may no longer apply. Our guest Courtney Gibbons lost her intermittent expert appointment at the NSF. Gary C. Peters is now ranking member of the committee I worked for (HSGAC).

Julian Togelius, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering, discusses AI and games, learning strategies to assess AI in teaching, strategies for designing assessments, and when to use or avoid AI.

Ian Cross, Senior Lecturer in Marketing @ Bentley University, discusses one of Bentley's first AI courses, the impact of AI in advertising and marketing, AI's relation to the printing press, how AI helps companies evaluate and assess their brand, and why AI might be the next big wave of economic opportunity.

Melissa Hey, lecturer in Natural and Applied Sciences at Bentley University, discusses her experiences teaching environmental science and sustainability in a post-ChatGPT world. Melissa shares how she AI-proofed her assignments, how much is too much AI to bring into the classroom, what worked well, what didn't, and the importance of collecting student feedback and data.

Lindsey Kosinski, Associate Director of Business Intelligence at Bentley University and a student of Bentley’s Masters in Analytics program, discusses her journey of upskilling before and after the release of ChatGPT, how students can leverage tools like it to learn more effectively in a dynamic environment, the skills that remain crucial as generative AI proliferates, and the evolution of business intelligence from the early days of big data to today.

Janelle Estes and Sarah Pagliaccio, lecturers in Experience Design at Bentley University, join us to discuss the role of AI in user research and design. Topics include strategies and approaches for teaching with AI in the classroom, how gen AI can be considered as a junior intern for UX professionals, how it can help make room for higher order learning and thinking, how we can probe to reduce hallucinations, and the role of AI in designing with empathy.

Jennifer Xu, professor of Computer Information Systems at Bentley University, discusses how to teach AI to business students, the intellectual  value of learning coding, the data needs of AI versus human brains, and why curiosity and empathy are paramount as we prepare for jobs of the future. 

Fred Ledley, professor of Natural & Applied Sciences at Bentley University, discusses how today's AI grew out of the big data methods of computational biology from the past few decades, how AI is changing the way science is taught and researched, how it's paving the way for personalized medicine, what scientific research papers might look like in the future, and what chatbots do better than web search and what web search still offers that chatbots need to improve on.

Chris Beneke, professor of history at Bentley University, discusses how Bentley's university-wide first year seminar class dealt with AI disruptions, what teaching AI and teaching sex ed have in common, how web search is evolving with AI, and how AI is forcing higher ed to confront some challenging questions around its mission and clarify its purpose.

Chase Cicchetti, Lecturer in Finance at Bentley University, discusses what happened when his students created their own class policy on AI, how generative AI sped up his research, how LLMs are poised to impact the finance industry, and what the biggest indicator was that some of his students used ChatGPT to write their essays.

Monica Garfield, Professor and Chair of the Computer Information Systems department at Bentley University, discusses the evolution of AI, low-code/no-code environments, how to prepare students for a rapidly changing workforce, the right way to teach prompt engineering, Bentley's new cross-disciplinary AI major, what other universities should be mindful of when building AI programs, and what research tasks AI is ready to help faculty with. 

The head of Bentley's philosophy department, Axel Seeman, chats about the new computer science/philosophy joint major in AI at Bentley, why interdisciplinarity is "bloody hard," what role philosophy plays in AI and in preparing students for a world full of AI, what Descartes would have said about the latest chatbots, and what impact AI is going to have on our social lives and our feelings of loneliness.

In this inaugural episode, Paul Tesluk, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Bentley University discusses the role of higher education leadership in supporting AI, Bentley’s response to the use of AI in teaching and scholarship, a new AI task force at Bentley, and using AI for scaling operations and reducing costs for programs and initiatives.