Last spring, something strange happened at my job at the Writing Center.
A student came in seeking feedback on her essays about Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). When I went into my normal tutoring routine, however – reading her words out loud, scrutinizing her argument, looking for all the common writing stumbles – I was astonished at how little I found. Her argument was sound, her flow was excellent, and her voice kept both power and depth of analysis. “This is GREAT!” I told her. “You should be a writing center tutor!”
It was only halfway through the session she timidly admitted AI had written the paper.
Even today, I still think about how casually she came to the Writing Center with an AI-generated essay. She was a student in the School of Professional Studies (SPS), a mostly-graduate program focused on technical training and career readiness. And she was doing exactly what her professor expected of the class.
This student is not an exception. Now, Clark frequently gives students, faculty and staff chances to invest time and money into GenAI and integrate it into their workflow. Many GenAI-focused workshops and career events can be found throughout the semester; $50,000 dollars funded grants at Clark supporting AI-themed research projects; and both Bachelors and Masters degrees are available in “applied” Artificial Intelligence.
For this article, I sat down for an interview with Provost John Magee. “From a certain perspective, AI is now an available tool,” he told me. “And all [jobs] require people to make use of available tools.” He explained how he does not want Clark graduates to get rejected from jobs because they “go in and say, ‘well, I’ve never used an AI tool and I don’t want to, I never thought about it.’”
Magee thinks GenAI is one of the biggest disruptions in modern history – maybe even exceeding the widespread adoption of the internet, or smartphones.
University Employees and AI
According to Magee, there is high demand among staff to integrate GenAI into their workflow. According to Clark’s AI policy, the university encourages it within “admissions, finance, financial aid, employment, advancement, evaluation, and other key processes.”
Further, whenever Clark has had an AI training session so far it fills up quickly – usually with a waitlist as well. Magee is confident that every academic or administrative department takes part: “I think in every department, every program, we have a desire,” he said.
These sessions have an impact. After Ali Kaplan, an administrator in the School of Climate, Environment, and Society went to one this summer, she started using GenAI to create flyers for departmental events. This prompted complaints from students – they were quick to highlight the irony of someone at the School of “environment” using such an environmentally harmful product as GenAI.
Kaplan now only uses GenAI for internal communications. “I’m excited about the possible uses of AI to make my job easier, however due to students’ legitimate concerns… I am selective about how I use it,” she said.
The AI policy, for its part, also discourages using AI as the “sole basis” for “decisions that materially affect individuals or University operations.”
Meanwhile, faculty attitudes on GenAI are a mixed bag. According to Magee, there are “some departments that are much more engaged and some departments that are trying to manage things more internally.” The only pattern he could find was a common need for guidance on how to communicate rules and expectations to students. “There was a general appreciation for at least the attempt of having a [university-wide] framework,” he went on.
AI in the Classroom
Notably, Clark’s AI policy makes no mention of when students can and cannot use GenAI. Instead, the entirety of this is offloaded to the professors according to a three-tier system: No use, limited use and extensive use.
Magee recognized every case’s unique relationship to GenAI. “There certainly was a desire for some flexibility, not having a one-size-fits-all, having professors still have some autonomy,” he said.
At the same time, he emphasized the need for clear expectations from the students’ perspective. “If students are in four different classes and they’re getting told things in four different ways, even if they’re actually similar pieces of guidance, that will be confusing, right?”
“So we wanted to balance [these two ideas],” he continued.
This policy effectively divides Clark into two “camps.” On one hand, liberal arts professors and most students are (generally) strictly opposed to AI. Most liberal arts classes include a lecture on GenAI and plagiarism, cognitive offloading or another of its negative aspects on the first day of class.
Some professors are scrambling for ways to “AI-proof” their exams and assignments, including making students write essays in-class with paper and pencil, reflect on their experience researching and drafting the paper, or even reference the class’s discussion, or their personal lives, in their argument.
Right across campus, however, the opposite is taking shape. In the Business School, SPS and to a lesser extent the Game Design program, GenAI is not only allowed but encouraged. In one class, students had to write an essay reflecting on a time they had used GenAI in their studies. In many classes, GenAI is mandatory.
Despite this, Magee said he would be “surprised” if he found a purely technical class at Clark. “On a certain level, there should always be some fundamental learning objectives,” he stated.