Hunter College’s School of Education convened a landmark conference on November 7 that drew faculty, staff, and administrators to examine the use of artificial intelligence in education.
“Don’t AI Alone” was organized by a group of faculty members from across CUNY. Dean of Academic Innovation and Outcomes Robert Domanski, Chief of Staff to the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Mari Wantanabe-Rose, and Distinguished Lecturer and Director of Programs in Computer Science Education Edgar Troudt took the lead at Hunter.
For Troudt, integrating AI into education is a personal and professional mission. A CUNY “lifer,” he attended Queens to better understand College as an undergraduate and earned his PhD in computer science from the Graduate Center — writing on using AI models to help English-language learners. He assumed his position at Hunter after the retirement of Mike Zamansky — coincidently, his high school computer science teacher.
The conference traces its origin to a May conference that the “Don’t AI Alone” group organized here.
“It was 50 people on a rainy Friday, around the time of final exams,” Troudt recalled. “People showed up because they’re passionate about the subject.”
Troudt pitched the idea of a CUNY-wide conference to Klara and Larry Silverstein Education Dean Julie Gorlewski, to “show how much energy and how many projects” exist across the university.
The November 7 event, held at Hunter’s Roosevelt House Institute for Public Policy, featured 12 sessions and panels.
Troudt highlighted an insight from a senior New York State policy adviser: Educators spent too much time forbidding students’ use of social media and failed to teach them how to use it responsibly. AI presents a similar choice.
“Do we want to tell people this is bad, and let them use it anyway, irresponsibly?” Troudt asked. “Or do we want to get ahead of the curve and say, ‘Here are the guardrails; here are the things that are ethical and honest. Let’s work together to find a way of using this positively to benefit your education.’”
At various sessions:
- Hunter faculty presented the summer program Camp AI.
- Borough of Manhattan Community College students gave their take on the instructions they need from faculty regarding the ethical use of AI.
- Librarians from three CUNY colleges discussed their AI projects.
- CUNY Central’s Computing Integrated Teacher Education team, with Hunter Education Professor Rhonda Bondie, applied models for positive technology education to AI.
A keynote panel, moderated by Gorlewski, included Hunter Dean of Arts and Sciences Erica Chito-Childs, CUNY Graduate Center President Joshua Brumberg, Bronx Community College Provost Louis Montenegro, and senior leaders from the state education department and the CUNY Central office.
“This is a key moment for us to embrace AI,” Chito-Childs said. “It’s so important to get in front of this.”
The urgency is apparent in Troudt’s program, which trains teachers for the new Computer Science and Digital Fluency license. The program, once a small secondary certification for teachers, has seen a dramatic shift.
This year, for the first time, the entering class is almost all students who have bachelor’s degrees in computer science, because Generative AI has disrupted the dynamics of entry-level jobs in the tech industry.
“Folks are graduating with sophisticated backgrounds, but they can’t find entry-level jobs,” Troudt said. “With the shift of employment in the tech industry, graduates are choosing to move into teaching, where their expertise is going to be invaluable in training the next generation of ethical technologists.”
