Deans Divided on AI’s Presence on Campus

Artificial intelligence is rapidly expanding in workplaces and classrooms, raising questions about its impact on jobs, creativity and education. With a growing number of job losses and layoffs blamed on AI – a recent report in Fortune links more than 64,000 layoffs to it – deans at Webster University are both cautious and optimistic as they prepare their schools for a future with AI.

School of Communications Dean Eric Rothenbuhler feels AI could alter the way the communications field works, specifically pointing out that those in animation feel pressured by AI and its abilities. However, he reassures that even with the shortcuts AI provides, there will always be an audience for human creativity.

“The School of Communications is constantly updating curriculum and making sure we understand the new tools when they become available and that we’re teaching those new tools and preparing our students for what’s out there,” Rothenbuhler said.

During Fall Convocation, Business and Technology Interim Dean Carlos Aquino demonstrated the use of NotebookLM, Google’s generative AI program, as a way to introduce Webster to prospective students. Aquino also shared ways that AI has been implemented in business outside of academia.

“We need to embrace AI because as we graduate, people go into the marketplace and, if they have never had experience with AI, they don’t get the jobs,” Aquino said. “What we are trying to do here is educate and prepare the faculty, so they can use AI to be more efficient. Those are tools that can help them perform in the classroom, not replace them.”

College of Science and Health Interim Dean Mary Preuss notes how AI is adjusting jobs in the healthcare industry by speeding up processes and aiding in research. Preuss would like to see AI used in future laboratory practices, as well as to train students to use it for research.

At the School of Education, Interim Dean Stephanie Mahfood acknowledges the use of AI in training educators from Kazakhstan with a comprehensive language program called DeepL to translate materials from English to Russian.

AI was recently used to assist the Department of Dance at the Leigh Gerdine College of Fine Arts.

“We did it for a dance production, where we used AI as a support, like a choreographic partnership,” Dean Paul Steger said.

Steger cites an example from the nonacademic world, when the London Vic theatre company experimented with generative AI, using the technology to establish a live production. The resulting AI, according to Steger, was “racist” and depicted certain people as terrorists.

“We are the root of the problem, and we should root that problem out. We just have to be better, faster, smarter and stronger than that, figure out how to make AI our friend,” Steger said.

Using AI as a tool can help students, but only if the technology is being used ethically.

“We can’t steal another person’s art and call it your own,” Steger said.

Danielle MacCartney, dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, shares how easy academic dishonesty has become with generative AI programs like ChatGPT. Before AI, students had to put in effort to cheat, that there was a research component involved with forms of cheating like plagiarism.

“You didn’t even have to read that. You didn’t have to read what you input or what you output. There’s no thinking involved,” MacCartney said. “If we give all of that away — our ability to reason, to think, to feel, to communicate — then what does that mean for society?”

MacCartney argued that AI does not demonstrate who people are. AI has abilities which threaten the humanities and social sciences, but the technology is not an extension of self expression.

Moreover, the humanities and social sciences revolve around perspectives and uniqueness and AI fails to reflect that. However, MacCartney notes that even with AI, students are equipped with the right tools to overcome the technology in the humanities and social sciences job market.

Whether they consider AI more beneficial or more detrimental, Webster’s academic leaders agree the technology can be a valuable tool when used ethically – and can better prepare students to anticipate the modern job market.