7:30 – 8:15 am: Breakfast
8:30 – 9: 30 am: Breakfast Keynote with David Rettinger
9:45 – 10:45 am: Concurrent Session E
E1. Strategies for Engaging Faculty Across Disciplines in AI: A Case Study
Emily Todd, Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences-Eastern Connecticut State University; Garrett Dancik, Chair of Computer Science-Eastern Connecticut State University; Julia DeLapp, Director of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment-Eastern Connecticut State University
At Eastern Connecticut State University, Connecticut’s designated public liberal arts institution, we embarked on a yearlong effort to bring faculty together to explore the challenges and opportunities of AI. Led by the Computer Science department chair, the Dean of Arts and Sciences, and the Director of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, this effort has prioritized bringing faculty together from across disciplines to explore the challenges and opportunities that AI poses for teaching, learning, and creative activity in our liberal arts context. We will describe the process we used to engage faculty—roundtable discussions, a detailed survey, and a daylong AI colloquium open to all faculty, students, and staff—and we will share how the ideas that emerge through the upcoming colloquium (scheduled for March 24) will shape AI initiatives going forward. What is distinctive about our approach is that it is fully interdisciplinary, bringing together full-time and part-time faculty from both the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education and Professional Studies, and is rooted in true exploration of what possibilities AI affords us but also what pedagogical challenges it poses across disciplines. Our approach is also designed to include faculty regardless of how much prior experience they have with using AI, whether they have yet to experiment with AI or whether they are avid users. Audience members attending this panel will learn specific models for engagement (the structure for roundtable discussions and learning communities, the survey content, and the schedule and design for the AI colloquium), as well ideas for how to take insights from these events and use them to plan next steps for engaging faculty to navigate AI in a liberal arts context.
E2. Dual Paper Session
E2a. Prompting a New Design: Composition Pedagogy Approaches to AI Literacy in Writing Across the Liberal Arts
Brenta Blevins, Associate Professor of Communication and Digital Studies-University of Mary Washington
This presentation draws on my Spring 2026 “Writing with/about Generative AI” course as a case study for how composition pedagogy can meaningfully support MLA’s definition of AI literacy, whether in Writing Studies or courses across the curriculum. In describing how I adapted a pre GenAI Writing Studies course to the current context, I explore how the design aimed to support AI literacy using long-standing composition pedagogical theories around process, genre, literacy studies, and Writing Across the Curriculum.
To illustrate how composition pedagogy can guide interdisciplinary curricular revision and help students develop durable composing skills for writing both with and without generative systems, the session shares course readings and practical class activities, such as a voice analysis exercise, comparative writing process mapping, and generative AI vocabulary-building opportunities. I conclude by identifying future considerations and questions as liberal arts educators as we continue to adapt to address critical AI literacy in rapidly evolving contexts.
E2b. Rethinking Authorship and Accountability in the AI-Integrated Liberal Arts Classroom
Ryan Cheek, Assistant Professor of Technical Communication-Missouri University of Science & Technology
As generative AI becomes embedded in writing, research, and classroom practice, higher education faces a foundational question: what does authorship mean when intellectual work is produced through human–machine collaboration? While current debates often focus on whether tools like ChatGPT should be credited or whether their use should be restricted in academic settings, this presentation argues that such discussions miss a deeper pedagogical issue. The liberal arts have long celebrated writing as an expression of individual intellect and voice; yet the boundaries between human intention, editorial mediation, and machine generation are now too entangled to sustain the ideal of the single, autonomous author.
Some scholars have proposed crediting AI systems as co-authors, while others have rejected this move as ethically and conceptually inappropriate (Hosseini, Resnik, & Holmes, 2023, pp. 451–453). This presentation contends that both positions rely on legacy assumptions about authorship that are no longer adequate. Instead of defending a romanticized model of pure human originality, educators and institutions must develop new frameworks for accountability, transparency, and contribution that reflect contemporary writing practices. Drawing on Noble’s (2018) critique of the supposed neutrality of algorithmic systems (pp. 1–6), this presentation emphasizes that ignoring AI’s epistemic influence risks reinforcing the very cultural and structural biases these systems encode. Likewise, echoing O’Neil’s (2016) warning about the social consequences of opaque computational processes (pp. 3–9), it argues that ethical engagement with AI in the liberal arts must foreground responsibility rather than purity.
For classrooms, this means shifting from policing AI’s presence to cultivating situated accountability: teaching students to reflect critically on how AI shapes their thinking, to articulate the distribution of labor in their work, and to evaluate the integrity of their arguments regardless of where individual sentences originate. This approach prepares students not only to write with AI, but to understand—and act within—the evolving conditions of knowledge production.
E3. AI Pluralism, the Future of Ethical AI Development, and the Role of the Liberal Arts
Anand Rao, Professor of Communication and Director of the Center for AI in the Liberal Arts-University of Mary Washington; Stefan Bauschard, Adjunct Instructor in Communication and Digital Studies-University of Mary Washington
While artificial intelligence continues to advance rapidly, its development faces critical challenges: algorithmic bias, opacity in decision-making, safety concerns, and homogeneous perspectives that fail to represent human diversity. Rather than viewing these as technical problems requiring technical solutions, this presentation argues that AI’s greatest challenges demand exactly what liberal arts education has always cultivated—critical thinking, ethical reasoning, rhetorical argumentation, and comfort with intellectual diversity. This presentation introduces AI Pluralism as a framework that positions liberal arts institutions not as passive adapters to AI disruption, but as essential leaders in creating the next generation of ethical, transparent, and genuinely diverse artificial intelligence systems. Drawing from research for our forthcoming edited book “AI Pluralism: Fostering Diversity and Dialogue in Artificial Intelligence” (April 2026), we demonstrate how the differentiation of AI agents based on perspectives and capabilities—core principles of AI Pluralism—requires precisely the skills liberal arts has taught for centuries. Through examples of AI-facilitated debate and rhetorical argumentation, I argue that liberal arts classrooms can become laboratories for developing more explainable and contestable AI systems. Rather than fearing AI’s impact on traditional assessment and pedagogy, liberal arts educators can leverage their expertise in perspective-taking, dialectical reasoning, and ethical analysis to solve problems in AI development and alignment. This presentation offers a transformative vision: liberal arts institutions as innovation centers for AI development, where humanistic values and diverse voices shape artificial intelligence systems that enhance rather than diminish human capability and agency.
11:00 am – 12:00 pm: Concurrent Session F
F1. Practical AI Strategies for Your Classroom: A Hands-On Workshop
Laura Dumin, Professor of English and Technical Writing-University of Central Oklahoma
This interactive workshop helps faculty develop assignments and policies for AI integration in their courses. Through structured activities, participants will draft AI syllabus policies aligned with TILT principles, design AI transparency assignments for their discipline, and create tasks that acknowledge AI tools using local knowledge and personal insight. This workshop emphasizes practical application over theory—you’ll spend much of the time creating materials for YOUR classroom.
F2. Dual Paper Session
F1a. The Year of AI Exploration: Lessons Learned From an Institution-Wide Initiative at a Liberal Arts College and Conservatory
Adam Eck, Arts & Sciences Director of AI Strategy and Innovation-Oberlin College
News headlines and conversations have been awash with the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on higher education, the workforce, and society at large. Cutting through bold claims and the mystique surrounding AI to understand what this technology actually affords (or harms) requires the critical thinking, interdisciplinary reasoning, curiosity, emotional development, and collaborative spirit central to a liberal arts education.
Before institutions can decide whether, where, and how to incorporate generative AI — let alone form guidelines, policies, and best practices informing its usage — it is imperative that faculty, students, staff, and administrators understand and experiment with this technology. Oberlin College has embarked in a “Year of AI Exploration”: a Presidential initiative of community-wide exploration of generative AI at a liberal arts college and conservatory.
In this presentation, we will describe the process Oberlin has followed to guide its Year of AI Exploration, as well as lessons learned from across our shared experience by faculty, staff, students, and administration.
F2b. Building Sandboxes in a Tornado: Educational Development in the Age of AI
Victoria Russell, Director of the Center for Teaching and Associate Professor of Education-University of Mary Washington
In 2024 with support from a National Endowment for the Humanities Spotlight Grant, the University of Mary Washington joined with four fellow Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC) institutions for the purpose of developing curricula and infusing humanist perspectives into institutional responses to AI. This session will share, through an educational developer’s experience, how purposeful, “critical” choices in the grant’s program design created community and dialogue across 20 humanities faculty while also supporting the development of skillsets for faculty to leverage in leadership roles and institutional conversations about the place and value of AI in college classrooms. We will also grapple with the role of educational developers as “sandbox builders” between faculty and administration in the AI debates on campuses.
F3. Dual Paper Session
F3a. Crafting Learning Resources in Language Teaching
Guillermo Pupo Pernet, Visiting Instructor of Spanish-Oxford College of Emory University
This presentation demonstrates a systematic approach to personalized content creation and pedagogically guided adaptation of authentic media in foreign language instruction. Drawing on classroom-tested practice, it presents the design of customized instructional modules targeting specific grammatical structures and lexical domains, as well as level-appropriate adaptations of television series for proficiency-based instruction. The session shows how instructors can deliberately control linguistic complexity, align materials with curricular objectives, and differentiate instruction without sacrificing authenticity or rigor. Through concrete classroom examples and replicable design processes, participants will gain practical strategies for creating high-quality, personalized instructional materials that increase learner engagement and instructional precision.
F3b. Deep Reading in the Age of AI: Designing an Interactive Reading Companion for Literary Interpretation
Scott Powers, Professor of French-University of Mary Washington
As artificial intelligence tools enter liberal arts classrooms, much of the conversation has focused on questions of replacement, efficiency, and academic integrity. This paper offers a different perspective by examining how AI can be designed to support rather than supplant the slow, attentive reading practices central to humanistic inquiry. Drawing on a faculty–student collaborative research project conducted in Spring 2026, this presentation will reflect on the development and classroom use of an AI “Reading Companion” intended to scaffold deep reading in undergraduate foreign-language courses. The project explores how an AI chatbot, designed and tested collaboratively with three advanced students, could function as a dialogic partner rather than as an interpretative authority. By situating AI within a tradition of close reading and interpretative rigor, this case study contributes to broader conversations about ethical and pedagogical frameworks for integrating AI into the liberal arts classroom.
12:15 – 12:45 pm: Until Next Time!
Pick up ‘to go’ snacks and make connections with conference attendees before departing the conference.