On a recent Tuesday morning, students in the political science class “AI, You, and Now: The Stories That Win” were buzzing about artificial intelligence. Professors William Acree and Betsy Sinclair had invited them to have a frank discussion about when and how they use it, and there was no shortage of opinions. 

One student shared that he loves AI and uses it up to 30 times an hour outside of class. Another said it helps her interpret readings and outline essays, but that she also uses it to find the best St. Louis restaurants. There were concerns, too. A senior admitted she feels guilty when she pastes her class readings into an AI chatbot like ChatGPT, asking it to identify the five most important points, but believes she must use it because everyone else is. 

That perception isn’t far off. An October 2025 survey by WashU’s student newspaper showed about two-thirds of WashU students use AI chatbots like ChatGPT, yet about the same number think students would learn more without them. At WashU, some scholars are using AI to fuel groundbreaking computational research, such as chemist Zach Zheng and biologist Keith Hengen. Others, including political scientist Christopher Lucas, study AI itself, examining its impact and bias. 

In the classroom, however, there is more ambivalence. 

“Faculty are facing the challenge of finding ways to incorporate AI that don’t entail having students offload their thinking and writing to it,” said Erin McGlothlin, vice dean of undergraduate affairs and the Gloria M. Goldstein Professor of Holocaust Studies. 

Acree, a professor of Spanish and vice dean of interdisciplinary initiatives and innovation, agrees that the challenge is significant and sees it as central to WashU’s mission. “As a university, we take on the big questions in moments that matter most,” he said. “The place of AI in our classrooms, in how we think about learning, and in our research poses many such questions, and we have to meet the moment, taking them all on with urgency.”

Learning to work with AI 

In their course, Acree and Sinclair ask students to complete weekly assignments two different ways — once on their own and once using AI — and compare the results. They also have students use WashU’s secure AI platform to build personalized chatbots trained on their own writing, including past papers, resumes, and creative work. The platform emerged from the +AI initiative, a university-wide effort co-led by Sinclair to integrate artificial intelligence into teaching, learning, and research in a thoughtful and responsible way. That same focus on rethinking how AI shapes teaching is reflected across Arts & Sciences, where 36 faculty members have been selected for the inaugural AI Curriculum Corps, a university-wide initiative supporting the integration of AI into teaching and learning. 

“Prompt engineering matters a lot,” said Sinclair, WashU’s assistant vice provost for digital transformation and the Thomas F. Eagleton University Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science. “It’s not just the documents that students upload; they also have to make their instructions sound like them. It’s an iterative process that can be pretty generic until they add ongoing interactions with the bot. ”

Protecting critical skills 

Kasey Grady, a senior lecturer in college writing and chair of the Arts & Sciences curriculum committee, has seen firsthand how AI is reshaping student writing. Inspired by the NBA playoffs, she created a bracket-style competition in which AI-generated sentences compete against student-written ones. Here’s how it works: A student shares an essay draft with the class; then, one group generates a first sentence using AI, while another writes their own. The class debates which one is better and votes. 

The AI writing is often competent but bland. In response, Grady encourages students to take risks. “The exercise helps students see they can trust their own skills,” she said. “People lean on AI because they don’t think they’re good enough. But what makes readers keep going is often something unique and unexpected.” 

Grady allows limited AI use for proofreading if students disclose and cite it; otherwise, she treats it as plagiarism. Still, she believes students must learn to navigate the tools effectively. “Once students go into the workforce, they are going to be asked to use AI in their jobs,” she said. “If they don’t learn how to use it well, they will be at a disadvantage.”

The evolving role of teaching 

Mijeong “Mimi” Kim, a teaching professor of Korean language, sees artificial intelligence as reshaping not just assignments but the fundamental role of the professor.

“My students today are true digital natives,” she said. “They want on-demand learning.” 

To meet that demand, Korean language faculty in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures used part of a $10,000 award from WashU Libraries to hire two computer science students to build AI conversation partners that provide students with flexible, low-stakes language practice. Kim also assigns exercises in which students use AI in Korean for tasks like planning trips and generating images, revising their prompts to see how small language changes shape the results. 

Kim believes her students understand the risks of overreliance, but she emphasizes that the greater challenge lies with instructors: As dispensing information becomes less central, faculty must focus on mentoring, countering disinformation, designing innovative curricula, and fostering community. 

While Kim embraces AI as a tool for empowerment, Uluğ Kuzuoğlu, an associate professor of history, has been more cautious. Viewing the issue through a historian’s lens, he remains attentive to the ways new technologies can reshape our relationship to the past. He considered asking students to simulate conversations with historical figures using ChatGPT, but ultimately decided against it, concerned about the accuracy of the generated portrayals. 

“It sounded cool at first,” he said, “but when I really thought about pedagogy and what students would get out of it, I thought it might just be using AI for the sake of using AI.

Even so, he believes it’s up to him, not the technology, to adapt his teaching as AI becomes more commonplace. 

Kuzuoğlu teaches “Artificial Intelligence: The Mind and the Machine” and studies the history of computation, data, and AI in China. His core teaching goals remain unchanged: students must grasp readings, reflect on them, and develop their own interpretations. To achieve that in a world where AI can handle many tasks, he has shifted toward discussion and group work, fostering a vibrant intellectual community where students test ideas and collaborate. 

“AI has been challenging me and forcing me to change the way I teach,” Kuzuoğlu said. “Throughout history, skills have been lost and never returned. This is a moment to rethink what education means if some skills we value today become obsolete.”

Expanding possibilities 

In physics, AI is transforming not just how students work but what they can explore. Alex Chen, an assistant professor of physics, and Li Yang, the Albert Gordon Hill Professor of Physics, are offering “Artificial Intelligence in Modern Physics Research,” a National Science Foundation-funded summer program in which students apply AI and machine learning to advanced research problems. 

“Students used to spend a lot of time learning to do complex calculations. Now, AI can do much of that,” Chen said. “What matters now is being able to say something intelligent about physics with the numbers they have found. Ultimately, AI is a tool that may empower us to do things that we only used to dream about. But it goes another way: AI also helps us find new problems to work on.” 

Since the development of the Arts & Sciences Strategic Plan in 2021, school leaders have been partnering with faculty to identify the intellectual capacities and interpersonal skills embedded in Arts & Sciences undergraduate courses. The initiative, called Literacies for Life and Career, helps students identify, articulate, and reflect on the 11 core skills they develop through their education, including integrative thinking, ethical reasoning, and applied problem-solving. These skills go beyond discipline-specific knowledge to prepare students for lifelong success in a rapidly changing world. 

“To be able to navigate contexts shaped by AI and to use AI tools proficiently and effectively, students will need to cultivate cognitive abilities that overreliance on AI frequently degrades,” McGlothlin said. “The skills emphasized by Literacies for Life and Career will be more crucial than ever to students’ success in the workplace and in their personal lives.”