Adapting to new technologies is a staple of academic life, but the rapid rise of generative AI is creating an unsustainable mental and emotional landscape for faculty and librarians. Beyond the daunting technical learning curve and the exhausting game of “whack-a-mole” as AI “assistants” pop up in familiar tools, this shift brings profound existential repercussions. Ethical dilemmas and the relentless pressure to innovate while maintaining pedagogical integrity have pushed many to a breaking point.Together, we will situate AI burnout within the broader cultural context of higher education while reflecting on our personal and professional values. Through prompts, small-group discussions, and personal inventories, participants will identify current challenges, discover areas of agency, and find sparks of hope and inspiration.
Irene McGarrity is Head of Research Services at Mount Holyoke College, where she leads a team of four research and instruction librarians. She holds an MSIS in Information Studies, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing, and an MA in English Literature. Irene has presented regionally... Read More →
The rise of generative AI has disrupted the "finished essay" as a proxy for critical thinking, creating a profound paradox: tools that mimic analysis threaten to hollow out the very processes they simulate. This session proposes a shift from "policing output" to "partnering in process." Moving beyond surveillance-based integrity models, we explore how to evolve the Honor Code into a proactive pedagogical contract. By emphasizing "Process-Oriented Pedagogy"—including the use of prompt logs, iterative drafting, and reflective AI-critique—we can restore the human element to the center of the curriculum. This session explores a "tiered transparency" model that allows for varying levels of AI integration, encouraging students to navigate the generative era with agency and intellectual honesty. Participants will leave with a framework to move their classrooms from a state of suspicion toward a "covenant of transparency" that preserves the core values of a liberal arts education.
Associate Professor, Community College of Rhode Island
With extensive experience teaching across Northeast colleges over the past 25 years, Alyson Snowe brings a profound understanding to the English Department at CCRI, where she's been since 2018. Holding a Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island, Dr. Snowe teaches diverse courses... Read More →
As colleges and universities grapple with the opportunities and tensions surrounding artificial intelligence, many institutional conversations occur without substantial student input. At Gettysburg College, we sought to address this gap by inviting students to become co-designers of our emerging AI initiatives through a series of design thinking workshops titled Designing the Future of AI at Gettysburg College. These sessions guided students through empathy-building, problem framing, ideation, and rapid prototyping activities designed to surface their experiences, concerns, hopes, and ideas regarding AI's role in teaching and learning.In this interactive workshop, participants will experience an adapted version of the process used with Gettysburg students while examining insights generated through these sessions. Attendees will leave with practical facilitation strategies, adaptable activity structures, and a replicable model for engaging students as partners in shaping institutional responses to AI. Rather than designing for students, participants will explore what becomes possible when institutions design with them.
Richard Russell is a professor of psychology at Gettysburg College. Trained in cognitive science, he discovered and named super-recognizers, people with exceptional ability to recognize faces. He is now working on humanistic, cybernetic, and cognitive science approaches to understanding... Read More →
Can an AI play a video game? This workshop uses that deceptively simple question to explore one of the deepest paradoxes AI poses to liberal arts education: the difference between knowing about an experience and living it. Drawing on a Francophone video game course taught at UMass Amherst featuring Valiant Hearts, Life is Strange True Colors, and Under the Waves, this session demonstrates how AI tools become most pedagogically powerful not when they succeed, but when they fail. Participants will experience firsthand how ChatGPT, Gemini, Mistral AI, and Copilot generate fluent yet experientially hollow analyses of games they have never played and how students, as actual players, are uniquely positioned to identify, contest, and surpass those analyses. This "player vs. machine" dynamic transforms AI from a threat to academic integrity into a catalyst for embodied critical thinking, intercultural analysis, and genuine French language engagement.
