This May, alarm about AI’s effects on education seemed to be everywhere in the national media–with recent pieces including New York Magazine’s “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College,” the New York Times’ “The Professors Are Using ChatGPT, and Some Students Aren’t Happy About It” and episodes on high profile podcasts including the Ezra Klein Show and Wired Magazine’s Uncanny Valley.
As we conclude a second full year of generative AI in the classroom we may be seeing a resurgence of national attention to this topic, but the conversations on campus have been ongoing. In this newsletter we’ve documented PWR instructors’ engagement with generative AI through grants, courses, panels, philosophical contextualizations, classroom reflections, and September Sessions panels.
In an age characterized by information overload, it can be hard to keep track of the many contributions our colleagues are making to this urgent conversation. What follows is a quick overview of some of the many places where, just this spring, PWR lecturers have brought their experience with GenAI to a wider Stanford audience.
CTL organized a “Teaching with AI Community Share-out,” and PWR’s Dr. Norah Fahim, Dr. Mutallip Anwar, and Dr. Harriett Jernigan all participated in panels with lecturers from departments across campus.
Dr. Jernigan took part in the “AI Futures: Building Safe and Responsible Generative AI,” which was held at the Black Community Services Center.
GRACE: Global Review of AI Community Ethics, a student run journal under the guidance of Dr. Jernigan and Dr. Ruth Starkman, released its third issue in April of 2025.
Dr. Fahim participated in a panel sponsored by the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, entitled “Critical Thinking in the Age of AI: Reading, Writing, and Rewriting in Classrooms and Research” that included speakers from a range of different departments.
PWR friends, keep your eyes open for invitations to reflect on your experiences this past year with writing and GenAI. Have you talked to students explicitly about GenAI in your classroom? Have students brought ideas/questions up? We hope to facilitate formal and information conversations in the coming months where we can learn from each other's experiences and tinker with fresh ideas for the new academic year.
