Maryville College AI Initiative sets May 8 summit, explores future possibilities for groundbreaking technology
April 3, 2025
Like the internet and the personal computer before it, Artificial Intelligence (AI) stands to transform higher education, and a dedicated group of faculty and staff members at Maryville College are hard at work to stay in front of those sweeping changes.
While the roots of AI can be traced to the 1950s, it wasn’t until the development of foundational algorithms and programming architecture that it began to expand at an unprecedented rate. In 2023, the biggest higher ed concerns around AI centered on academic integrity and the idea that it could be used by students to gain unfair advantage in classes and on exams.
As AI’s evolution has accelerated, however, higher ed administrators are scrambling to not only include it as potential areas of study in an institution’s core curriculum, but to also make use of it in ways that will strengthen a school’s various divisions and departments. At MC, that effort has been assigned to the Maryville College AI Initiative, which will host the inaugural Maryville College AI Summit on May 8 at the MC Downtown Center. The panel, “Teaching with AI,” is open to area educators who are invited to present their own findings about and techniques for using AI as a teaching tool
“Within a single academic year, the number of new AI tools introduced has been staggering,” said Dr. Chathuri Perera, an assistant professor of mathematics at MC and part of a six-member team from Maryville College taking part in a year-long Institute on AI, Pedagogy and Curriculum, organized by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU). Other members include Dr. Niklas Trzaskowski, director of the MC Career Center; Dr. Doug Sofer, professor of history; Jan Taylor, senior lecturer in the Division of Languages and Literature; Dr. Liz Perry-Sizemore, vice president and dean of the College; and Dr. Heather McMahon, assistant dean for academic success.
“From sophisticated image and video generation platforms to personalized learning applications, the pace of innovation has reshaped how we interact with technology,” Chathuri added. “Whether the capabilities of AI continue to surpass our expectations is still a question, but currently, it is important to understand its potential, especially in the learning environment and career prospects.
“Witnessing the breadth of AI’s applications has underscored the importance of staying informed and adaptable. The ever-evolving landscape of AI tools and their increasing accessibility make it essential for educators and students alike to engage with this technology thoughtfully and responsibly.”
A plan comes together
The six members of Maryville College’s AI task force were assembled last year after Perry-Sizemore applied to the AACU’s institute on behalf of MC. Prior to that overture, however, faculty members and administrators in Academic Affairs had, together and individually, discussed the technology’s ability to reshape the higher education landscape.
“The faculty retreat last fall, also under the leadership of Liz Perry-Sizemore, was about AI,” McMahon said. “We had one of the most renowned experts in the field of AI in higher ed on campus for that event: Dr. Jose Antonio-Bowen. Dr. Perry-Sizemore has made sure from the beginning that the College is moving into the future with AI — and with our liberal arts mission firmly intact.”
The MC AI Initiative is designed to ensure students continue to receive an education based on intellectual relativism bolstered by critical thinking skills, as well as a set of technological skills that empower them to recognize both the strengths and weaknesses of AI when it comes to problem-solving. In other words, Taylor said, the idea is to help students differentiate between situations that might require human input, those that can be solved using AI, or a collaborative approach that combines both.
Last fall, members of the Initiative surveyed the MC student body about its familiarity with and frequency of use of AI. What they found was a cross-section of both experienced users and novices, much like the team members themselves before the initiative was assembled.
Taylor, for example, “had done quite a bit of experimenting and reading before the team was created,” led by intellectual curiosity. Sofer, on the other hand, is a self-described “tech nerd” who jumped on board with the public release of ChatGPT in 2022, when he “made an account and started playing around obsessively,” he said. Today, he’s running a number of Large Language Models, “a type of artificial intelligence that excels at understanding and generating human language, trained on massive datasets to perform various natural language processing tasks like text generation, translation and more” — according to Google’s AI overview.
And like Taylor, McMahon was a novice when it came to AI … but a personal experience was eye-opening, she said.
“My AI experience really started as a mom two years ago, when my (then) 11-year-old used AI to help him justify staying up late,” she said. “When I saw that he was already familiar with this new technology, I knew I had to get busy learning. That helped me get motivated!”
Student concerns, future possibilities
Most students, the study found, “are curious about AI Integration in academics while maintaining ethical standards,” and “frequent AI users tend to have positive outlooks, while infrequent/non-users are more cautious or prefer traditional methods,” according to a summary of the fall survey — compiled, ironically enough, by AI. Students’ primary concerns include academic integrity and potential for cheating; over-reliance on AI leading to diminished critical thinking skills; the impact on future employment opportunities; the accuracy and reliability of AI-generated information; data privacy and consent issues; the environmental impact of AI processing; and the effects on creativity and originality, particularly in the art and design fields.
Those concerns are valid, Trzaskowski pointed out, but because AI is still such a novel tool, companies have yet to fully embrace its potential, define the roles it will be assigned, or even outline the sort of AI competencies they will seek in future employees.
“Every serious organization will have to analyze how AI will affect what they do. Here at the Career Center, we lean on the famous quote that states that “AI will not replace you, but a person using AI will,’” he said. “This quote should be on top of mind for every student regardless of what field they enter. AI’s reach is limitless and will influence every single occupation. I am certain that we are quickly entering the territory of where understanding how to prompt AI and how to use it in your day-to-day activities will be expected of every job candidate, similar to how most organizations expect candidates to understand how to use an email client or access the web.
“If we want positive outcomes for our students and to help them make the transition into the workforce, we must prepare them for a future in which they will interact with AI to perform the work they do.”
By the same token, the College must prepare for the ways the institution as a whole will integrate AI, and not just into the core curriculum as another subject about which to educate students.
“AI presents numerous opportunities to enhance the academic experience at Maryville College, offering benefits to students, faculty, and administrators alike,” Perera said.
The key, Sofer added, is balance: Over-reliance on AI can, in a way, lead users to depend on it as a sort of auxiliary intelligence at the expense of the organ inside their skulls. Bowen made a point about AI at the aforementioned faculty retreat, Sofer added, upon which he’s continued to ruminate.
“He explained how both electronic map systems and car GPSes are both kinds of technologies,” he said. “In the case of the maps, when you study them, you get smarter and understand the world and your own surroundings better. In the case of GPS, though, you become dependent on them; it can basically make you dumber about geography. Bowen then explained that we’re not yet sure to what extent current AI tech is like an atlas or like a GPS.
“As I’ve continued to think about this question and play with the tech, it seems to me that it’s got a lot of potential both to make us smarter and to enfeeble our minds by becoming too reliant on it.”
To ensure such balance, the workgroup recently coined the College’s new AI motto: “Be the Human.” Announced on April Fool’s Day, it’s designed to acknowledge that AI can sometimes generate misleading or unreliable results, and that users should strive to “stay sharp and use your human judgment to separate fact from fiction.”
Building a foundation this academic year for future use of AI at Maryville College, Trzaskowski said, has the potential to do so much more than simply set Scots up for success. As an institution devoted to providing educational leadership to the region it calls home, Maryville College stands to serve as a source of community knowledge and the exchange of ideas about such monumental changes as AI.
Inaugural MC AI Summit
Organizing the summit, he said, is a direct reflection of that mission.
“The summit was our idea to make sure people not only know that we are thinking about AI, but that we also want to offer a forum on this topic going forward,” he said. “While this year we are focusing on teaching AI, next year’s topic could be different. Overall, it is our hope that we have a yearly event that will offer the opportunity to bring together voices on this critical topic, and to help people learn more about AI. This year’s focus on teaching is related to MC’s involvement in the AAC&U’s institute, and because teaching students is really our bread and butter at MC.”
Maryville College’s Inaugural AI Summit will take place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Maryville College Downtown Center. The theme, “Teaching with AI,” is designed to provide a day of insightful discussion and innovative presentations for area elementary, middle and high school teachers, school administrators, postsecondary educators, corporate trainers, instructional designers and others. Lunch will be provided by Blount Partnership, and attendance preference will be given to those who wish to present to the panel their techniques and findings on teaching with AI. Those interested can submit proposals through the AI Summit page on the Maryville College website, and proposals are due by 11:59 p.m. Monday, April 7. After proposals are reviewed, a limited number of seats will be released to the public.