Connecticut College AI and the Liberal Arts Symposium: Full Schedule

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1:00pm EDT

Lightning Talks - Critical & Rhetorical Perspectives

Saturday October 17, 2026 1:00pm - 2:00pm EDT

This session includes the following four talks:
10 minutes for each presenter with 20 minutes of Q&A for the group.
1. Hegel, Mastery and Servitude, and the Pathologies of AI
Michael Reno | University of Mary Washington
2. Scaffolding Rhetorical Authority through Intentional Failure
Jeffrey L. Jackson | State University of New York Cortland
3. Tools of One's Own: Portable Prompting and the Iterative Craft of Professional Identity
Ben Harwood | Skidmore College
4. Adding Nuance to Student AI Refusal
Annabel Rothschild & Theresa Law | Bard College

Saturday October 17, 2026 1:00pm - 2:00pm EDT
Shain Library Chu Room (First floor)

Lightning

1:10pm EDT

Scaffolding Rhetorical Authority through Intentional Failure

Saturday October 17, 2026 1:10pm - 1:20pm EDT

Shain Library Chu Room (First floor)

This lightning talk introduces Iterative Failure Tracing (IFT), a framework that reframes generative AI errors as catalysts for critical inquiry. While Large Language Models threaten to replace student effort, their propensity for noun-heavy syntax and factual hallucinations creates a productive validation burden (Sanz-Tejeda et al., 2026). By identifying these critical incidents, students transition from the success trap of passive acceptance to genuine rhetorical authority (Colby, 2025). My presentation demonstrates how prompting as writing functions as a rigorous rhetorical act. Drawing on sabbatical findings from 42 student artifacts, I illustrate the metacognitive shift that occurs when students perform linguistic repair on AI output (Graham, 2023). Finally, I will examine how to scaffold assignments that require students to locate and correct AI failures, ensuring the human writer remains the primary agent of meaning-making in the liberal arts tradition.

Speakers

Jeffrey L. Jackson

Instructor, SUNY Cortland

Jeffrey L. Jackson, PhD, is an Instructor of First-Year Composition at SUNY Cortland with over 20 years of experience teaching writing at the university level. He earned his doctorate in Mass Communication from Syracuse University, where his research focused on identity and moral... Read More →

Saturday October 17, 2026 1:10pm - 1:20pm EDT
Shain Library Chu Room (First floor)

Lightning, Pedagogical Practice & The Human Element

Company SUNY Cortland

1:20pm EDT

Tools of One's Own: Portable Prompting and the Iterative Craft of Professional Identity

Saturday October 17, 2026 1:20pm - 1:30pm EDT

Shain Library Chu Room (First floor)

Many students use AI passively, and AI literacy is often taught apart from disciplinary work, so students graduate owning neither their nascent professional identity, their digital presence, nor their AI workflows. Crafting Digital Identity answers that gap by teaching tools of one's own. Because its real content is the students themselves, the course is interdisciplinary by design. Students build a Creative Thought Journey, a story-driven digital narrative of their learning on Skidmore Domains, and design custom AI bots they can keep. The lesson is portability: once you learn to prompt, on BoodleBox or any platform, the skill travels with you. Professional identity develops the same way, through iteration and revision across text, audio, and video. Run as a platform pilot, the course treats AI as a liberal arts question of identity, authorship, and reflection, and shows how ownership turns AI from a force that flattens voice into one that amplifies it.

Speakers

Ben Harwood

Lead Instructional Technologist, Skidmore College

Ben Harwood works as an instructional designer in the Learning Experience Design and Digital Scholarship (LEDS) group in the Information Technology office. He partners with community members to analyze and support technology needs and offers instructional opportunities that promote... Read More →

Saturday October 17, 2026 1:20pm - 1:30pm EDT
Shain Library Chu Room (First floor)

Lightning, Pedagogical Practice & The Human Element

Company Skidmore College

1:30pm EDT

Adding Nuance to Student AI Refusal

Saturday October 17, 2026 1:30pm - 1:40pm EDT

Shain Library Chu Room (First floor)

Bard College students often have an unusually steadfast position of AI refusal, resulting, for example, in campus protests against a planned generative AI promotional event and reticence to engage in assignments that necessitate thinking with AI. We are both heartened and concerned by this stance. While students are finding their voices, their standpoint is based on a limited understanding of AI as a technology and sociotechnical phenomenon. Here, we describe our efforts to help students better understand how generative AI works so that they can communicate their position to various stakeholders, including post-graduate colleagues and managers. As students graduate into a working world which increasingly demands the use of generative AI systems, they will be confronted with pushback on their stance; our intention is not to dissuade them, but to help equip them with the critical AI understanding and literacy that they will need to explain and justify their position.

Speakers

Theresa Law

Annabel Rothschild

Assistant Prof, Computer Science, Bard College

Saturday October 17, 2026 1:30pm - 1:40pm EDT
Shain Library Chu Room (First floor)

Lightning, AI, the Liberal Arts, and the Future of Work

Company Bard College

Connecticut College AI and the Liberal Arts Symposium

1:00pm EDT

1:10pm EDT

Jeffrey L. Jackson

1:20pm EDT

Ben Harwood

1:30pm EDT

Theresa Law

Annabel Rothschild

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