Critical AI Discussions

Hear from faculty, staff, and higher education leaders as they discuss AI from a critical lens. What has AI promised and has it delivered? How can we use AI intelligently and ethically in higher education?

Industry Leaders

Hear from top industry leaders and pioneers who are leveraging generative AI. These experts will share their knowledge and innovative ideas, so don’t miss this chance to learn from the best in their respective fields.

Building Connections

Connect with your peers, share knowledge, and discover how others are approaching generative AI. Engage with colleagues from diverse backgrounds and experiences to expand your AI knowledge.

Join the conversation on May 15th

Registration is now closed.

Schedule of events

All sessions will be held in the MacDonald Commons

8:00 – 8:30am

Breakfast (sponsored by Workday)

8:30 – 9:30am

AI and the Future of Higher Education: Exploring Campus-Wide Opportunities

Kevin Clarke, Associate Director, Research Advisory Services, EAB

Full Description

Kevin Clarke, Associate Director, Research Advisory Services, EAB
From reshaping curriculum to hyper-personalizing student support services, AI’s footprint in higher education is growing fast. This session will address the trends and transformative opportunities for AI in higher education. Participants will explore strategies to boost administrative efficiency, and how to best prepare faculty, staff, and students for the future of teaching, learning, and work.

9:30 – 10:30am

Panel Discussion: Is AI a threat or an opportunity (or both?) for teaching and research in the liberal arts?

James Baish, Song Chen, Susan Falciani Maldonado, Kelly Stedem, Katherine Furlong (facilitator)

10:30 – 10:45am

Break
Coffee and conversation ☕

10:45 – 11:45pm

Generative AI in Learning & Scholarly Communications: a conversation

Emily Singley, Vice President, North American Library Relations, Elsevier
Ben Hoover (facilitator)

Full Description

Emily Singley, Vice President, North American Library Relations, Elsevier
Ben Hoover (facilitator)
Following an overview of current developments in AI for learning & scholarly communications, Ben will facilitate a conversation with our faculty and staff, with a strong emphasis on the educational goals of our undergraduate curriculum. Key discussion points to explore include the future of evolving GenAI use in scholarly search and research, and how we, as educators, are adapting information literacy instruction to changing student and faculty behaviors. This is an opportunity for faculty and staff to give direct feedback to those creating AI tools for scholarship.

11:45 – 12:45pm

Lunch (sponsored by Gravyty)

12:45 – 1:45pm

Case Studies of Sociodemographic Biases by Artificial Intelligence Models

Shomir Wilson, Associate Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State

Full Description

Shomir Wilson, Associate Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State
Contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) models are trained upon large collections of data from the internet. These models inherit their capabilities from the training data, but they also inherit biases toward and against attributes of the human population. I will present three case studies by my lab to measure AI models’ biases surrounding sociodemographic attributes, showing significant disparities in how these models process words about people. I will conclude with big-picture questions about how our AI task models intersect with biases and a possible approach for moving beyond case studies to explore the space of AI biases.

1:45 – 2:00pm

Break
Coffee and conversation ☕

2:00 – 3:00pm

What is Bucknell doing with AI?

Amy Baker, Becca Haupt, Rita Liu

Full Description

Rita Liu, Ph.D, Director of Institutional Research
Using Generative AI to Support Qualitative Research
Join us as we share our evolving journey of incorporating generative AI into our Institutional Research and Analytics workflows. We’ll walk through the practical steps we’ve taken—from designing effective prompts and coding qualitative data to validating outputs and building trust in the results. This session will highlight how AI has enhanced our analytical capacity and offer key takeaways and insights we’ve gathered along the way.

Becca Haupt, Associate Dean of Admissions, Campus Visits & Communications
Using Generative AI for Recruiting, Outreach, and Communication
CollegeVine is a college search tool for students and an AI recruitment tool for enrollment managers. Bucknell’s AI Recruiter “Ray” creates personalized communication touchpoints for prospective students using chat, email, phone and print during every step of the college search process. In less than three months since our launch date, Ray has engaged in over 15,000 custom chat conversations with prospective students and sent over 11,000 emails to over 5,000 prospective students on the CollegeVine platform.

Amy Baker, Director, Annual Giving, Marketing & Participation
Using Generative AI for Alumni Philanthropic Engagement
Bucknell joined the inaugural cohort of Givzey’s Version2 Innovation Partnership Program to develop the first of its kind, Virtual Engagement Officer (VEO). Lauren, Bucknell’s VEO was introduced to engage with Bucknell alumni to help accelerate our efforts to support students, faculty and the entire Bucknell community.

3:00pm

Reception (sponsored by AWS)

Meet our speakers and contributors

The symposium will bring together experts from industry and academia to discuss AI in higher education.

James Baish
Presidential Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Amy Baker
Director, Annual Giving, Marketing & Participation

Song Chen
Associate Professor of Chinese History

Kevin Clarke
Associate Director, Research Advisory Services at EAB

Amy Downs
Executive Assistant to the Vice President for Library & Information Technology

Katherine Furlong
Dean of Library Services

Becca Haupt Aldredge
Associate Dean of Admissions, Campus Visits & Communications

Kevork Horissian
Associate Vice President, Chief Analytics Officer

Brandon Karcher
Manager, Instructional Technology

Rita Liu
Director, Institutional Research

Susan Falciani Maldonado
University Archivist & Director, Special Collections

Kelly McConville
Director, Dominguez Center for Data Science

Stephen O’Hara
Associate Vice President of Information Technology

Emily Singley
Vice President, North American Library Relations at Elsevier

Kelly Stedem
Assistant Professor of Political Science

Shomir Wilson
Associate Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State

Critical AI Discussions

Industry Leaders

Building Connections

Join the conversation on May 15th

Schedule of events

Meet our speakers and contributors

Attending the symposium

MacDonald Commons

Travel and lodging

Bucknell AI Symposium

Contact