Presented in August, 2024, at a Faculty Development Workshop

First, I want to thank everyone for coming, whether you are in person or online. Our goal for this workshop has been to give more context for what is happening with artificial intelligence and how it is already and may further impact higher education.

We neither wanted to scare you nor suggest to you that there is nothing to be afraid of, because both are true. We both must be vigilant of the problems AI may create. But we should also be open-minded to consider the solutions it also offers.

Once again, we educators exist in the eye of a great disruption. Before it was a fiscal exigency. Before it was a pandemic. Before it was a recession. Before it was mobile computing, terrorism, the World Wide Web, the computer war, segregation, lectures, writing.

Disruptions to everyday life. Disruptions to our social interactions and relationships, Disruptions to communication and education. The world’s history is replete with disruptions, as will our future be.

But disruption is a necessary discomfort for change. For progress. For making the world a more just and humane place.

But what is required of us in the eye of this great disruption is to face our fears and embrace our disquietude. To be critical of the situation and creative in our approach. To retain the just of our traditions and norms while seeking the humane in the possibilities and opportunities. To seek the veritas of the problem and the caritas of the solution.

We have faced disruptions. AI is just one disruption currently enveloping us. A new campus restructuring, workload changes and uncertain democracy increasing instability is due to climate change. All of these are currently enveloping us.

The saying “May you live in interesting times” is neither a blessing nor a curse: it is a promise. Because all times are interesting. All contain disruptions. Some lesser, some greater; some individualistic, some collectivistic.

Over the course of this academic year, we are asking you and our administration to have serious, honest, and innovative discussions about how DU Does AI. We have the CTE Forums to give you all space safe from administrative eyes to share your questions, concerns, feelings, opinions, ideas, and more.

We ask Interim Provost MaryAnn Janosik and Associate Provost Kathleen Odell to work with the faculty and staff to develop policies on how we should and could use AI in our work, as well as how we would respond to our students when they inevitably do so. Their support of this workshop is an indication that they are willing to have those conversations.

We ask you to consider your own personal stance on AI in your work and how it impacts you as a teacher, a researcher, a scholar, an artist, a practitioner, a writer, and more. As a communications scholar and teacher, I am thinking about having to spend less time teaching how to write and more time on teaching how to read, how to listen, how to watch, how to engage.

Just as the invention and diffusion of writing and books meant the reduced need to teach memorization and recitation, I believe advances in generative AI suggest a shift in literacies that we as educators need to teach. And, yes, that means I need to engage in more learning myself to develop those approaches. But if I don’t like learning, then I’m really in the wrong profession.

At the same time, I recognize that such learning will only be possible if I have the support of my peers and employers, the President, the Provost and the Board of Trustees. While we need to be willing to undertake such learning to handle AI’s disruption to Higher Ed, we need institutional support to do so. Thus, I call on all of my fellow faculty to advocate for yourselves and your colleagues to secure such support.

This workshop is just a first step of collective action to address this disruption, and I hope it won’t be the last.

Human civilization has lasted some 10,000 years based on how it encounters disruptions. We got this…as long as we remember the most important thing: our work aims to make the world a more just and humane place.

I am cautiously optimistic about AI and higher education because of all of us.

Thank you and good luck in the upcoming academic year.