Fall at the CAT: Reading Groups, an AI Panel, & our new Assistant Director!

[Hobbs, Megan]

One of the ironies of leading a teaching center is that it leaves little time to be in the classroom with students. But every two years I manage to carve out enough time to teach and advise a group of first-semester, first-year students. As I prepared to meet my students on Tuesday, I was equal parts excited and anxious. Like many of you, I read essays all summer about artificial intelligence and the existential threat it poses to higher education. While essays like these have been around since ChatGPT was released in November of 2022, their tone has grown increasingly despondent. We spent the 2023-2024 academic year working with many of you to think deeply about AI and its implications for our classrooms. Yet, as I've shared in a number of recent podcast interviews, the questions we raised then seem no closer to resolution. If anything, the number, scale, and existential import of the questions has only grown. So while the CAT took some time off from AI-related programming last year, we've planned our fall to lean back in with intention. As always, we'll prioritize pedagogical inquiry in these conversations, welcoming contributions from faculty with varied perspectives. The highlight of our fall programming will be a panel event on Friday, September 19, where faculty and students will share their experiences with AI. The event will be led by Dr. Karen Spira, who joined us this summer as Assistant Director. I’m eager for you to get to know Karen, and equally eager to hear directly from students—a perspective we plan to feature more often in our programming. I also encourage you to join one (or both!) of our fall reading groups to help ground your thinking about these issues in evidence-informed theories of student learning and behavior. The first, written by two experts on academic integrity in higher education, helps us apply that research to the new questions raised by AI. The second, written by a developmental psychologist and former middle school teacher, helps us understand the science of motivation—perhaps our best hope for convincing students to make smart choices that support their development and growth. Finally, you’ve likely seen an email from the Office of the Provost urging you to complete a survey about AI use (subject line: “Help Shape AI’s Future at Wake Forest”). Please take a few minutes to complete it before it closes. Your feedback will help us better understand how to support you. In a few hours, I'll be talking with my students about artificial intelligence for the first time. They've been asked to read these two essays and watch these two videos. I'm also asking them to keep all the work they do throughout the semester (notes, essays, exams) in a single, hard-copy "commonplace book." I have no idea if any of this will work. But I'm glad I'll be engaging them in the conversation, and that I'll have so many opportunities to talk with you all about what I've learned!  -Betsy After earning her B.A. from Brown University in Comparative Literature and Hispanic Studies, Karen spent five years as a bilingual elementary school teacher in the Los Angeles public schools, then completed a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2013, she joined the faculty of Guilford College as a Spanish professor, where she has led in experiential learning, faculty-led study abroad, and collaborative learning for the past 12 years. Karen will lead her first CAT workshop, Real Talk about AI on Campus: a Student-Faculty Dialogue on September 19th. Scroll down for registration info. LEARN MORE Throughout 2025, media outlets such as the New York Times and the New Yorker have published tell-all accounts of college students who outsource reading and writing assignments to AI, as well as professors who use AI tools to create course materials and grade student work. These provocative articles, while informative, stoke distrust between students and instructors. It is time to have a different kind of conversation about AI, one that centers our reality at Wake Forest and is driven by curiosity and a desire to understand our students’ experiences as pioneers in an educational landscape being remade by generative AI. REGISTER The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI In these days of an ever-expanding internet, generative AI, and term paper mills, students may find it too easy and tempting to cheat, and teachers may think they can’t keep up. What’s needed, and what Tricia Bertram Gallant and David A. Rettinger offer in this timely book, is a new approach—one that works with the realities of the twenty-first century, not just to protect academic integrity but also to maximize opportunities for students to learn. - The University of Oklahoma Press Wednesdays, 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM 9/17; 9/24 & 10/1  REGISTER   10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People Imagine a world in which Gen Xers, millennials, and boomers interact with young people in ways that leave them feeling inspired, enthusiastic, and ready to contribute—rather than disengaged, outraged, or overwhelmed. That world may be closer than you think. In this book based on cutting edge research, psychologist David Yeager explains how to stop fearing young people’s brains and hormones and start harnessing them. - Simon & Schuster Tuesdays, 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM 9/9; 9/16; 9/30; 10/7; 10/21 & 10/28 REGISTER Throughout Spring and Summer 2025, CAT Assistant Provost and Executive Director Betsy Barre joined the hosts of the Take It or Leave It podcast and Wake Forest's own Deacs.AI podcast to discuss hot-button topics and challenges facing Higher Education. LISTEN Advancing passionate, reflective, and evidence-informed teaching that prepares all students to live examined, purposeful lives.