By Cole Hiller, Linley Mueller, and McKenzie Snellgrove
As artificial intelligence becomes more visible as a part of college life, Centre students are navigating a complicated question: how do we prepare for a future that includes AI? The rise of generative AI in our daily lives and its usage on campus has raised concerns about this technology’s use on campus from both faculty and students. In the fall of 2025, CCAS, Committee on Curriculum and Academic Standards, started working on a new policy to address the use of AI in response to both student and faculty concerns. Many students disliked the lack of consistency and clarity of AI policy between different classes. Additionally, faculty grew concerned that, despite AI becoming a larger and larger issue, it was still unaddressed in many ways. As a result we now have the new ABCD AI policy, from A, not allowing any AI, to D, purposefully integrating AI into the structure of the course. This new AI policy is set to expire at the end of this year, requiring faculty to evaluate its success with students.
Therefore, we set out to understand how Centre students are seeing this policy in action in their classes, as well as what they think about the policy at large. Student perspectives suggest that there may not be one single answer for these questions. Many students said that they rarely encounter AI in their classes; others described courses that have directly integrated AI use. Centre’s new AI guidelines have brought some consistency to those expectations, but individual professors and courses continue to approach this technology in different ways. Several students described AI use as discouraged or prohibited in their humanities courses. For these students, the concern is not simply about academic integrity, but of the possibility that reliance on AI could interfere with the development of independent thought and learning. For these students, avoiding AI is not necessarily about dismissing technology altogether–it’s about making sure students don’t lose the opportunity to grow and learn for themselves. One student said “I think there’s something really powerful and beautiful about learning with your own brain—AI takes away from that.”
On the other hand, students also described encountering courses in which AI is directly incorporated into an assignment. One music student, for example, described a course in which students are meant to use AI to generate music and then critically evaluate the result. Rather than accepting the production, students are asked to consider whether the output qualifies as “good” music and whether humans can produce music more effectively. Still, many students questioned this approach in our interviews, with another music student saying “There have been some instances where [my professors] will require you to buy AI or use AI on an assignment, when that’s not something I want to do.” For this student, and others like them, distrust of AI can be very personal and being required to use it in their classes can feel obligatory.
Still, other students see more legitimate applications for AI. Some students said research, data collection, and analysis are areas where AI could streamline work without necessarily replacing the underlying point of learning. However, in one interview with a computer science major, they told us that while AI was being integrated into the structure of the class, they felt it detracted from their learning. In their words, “I feel like I’m not learning how to do the work I need to be doing. This is the first year it’s not been done by hand, so while I think it’s great to learn about artificial intelligence, I don’t think the way we’re using it is conducive to our learning.” Since many students in our interviews referred to computer science as an area where AI could be integrated successfully, it was surprising to find that this integration of AI was still an area of concern. This student also raised similar concerns to many other students about faculty use of AI: “I have classes where the professor’s slides, the homework, the quizzes, the descriptions for everything are done in AI, which is frustrating because it feels like we’re paying a lot of money to be taught by Claude [AI].” This question of double standards for faculty vs student AI usage was raised by most of the students we interviewed, so it will be interesting to see how the policy changes to address these concerns.
To find out where this policy came from, we interviewed the previous chair of the CCAS, Dr. Harney. Last year, many people approached Harney concerned about academic integrity cases surrounding AI. When Harney talked to SGA leadership to get the student perspective, they said that most students “just didn’t know what’s going on” because of the lack of consistency in policy. Therefore, the committee identified the primary need was clarity. While they couldn’t fix this issue over summer, there was value in starting by establishing a policy. Harney expressed that “a bunch of faculty got really concerned and were sharing with me that they felt that, at least for some students, there was this real danger of a kind of a distrust growing that they hadn’t really seen before,” so faculty wanted to demonstrate they were talking about the issue. They also wanted to make sure students were involved in the process.
What the committee ended up deciding on was the ABCD plan that every professor has added to their syllabi. Harney told us that originally there was no C policy, but it was added to provide additional clarity and options. (It’s worth noting that, in our interviews, we found that there are still students who are confused.) In an interview with the current head of CCAS, Dr. Goff, she informed us the committee is collecting data on the most used policies to see how professors use them in practice. Professors were encouraged to provide reasoning for the policy they decided on with their students. The goal of the policy was not to influence any changes to curriculum, but to give faculty a shared vocabulary for discussing AI usage. Harney emphasized that “faculty autonomy still exists and we trust faculty to make decisions.”
When asked about the future of the policy, both Dr. Goff and Dr. Harney told us that it is specifically designed to expire at the end of this school year. Dr. Goff told us, “we know this isn’t perfect, we need a place to start so we can have something to respond to and make it better over time.” Harney said, “if we were going up with something that was longer lasting, we would definitely want student voices in it.” They both made it clear the policy will change and be reevaluated to see how it’s working with faculty and students. Harney explained that, in researching other college’s policies, the faculty liked the framing of the Grinnell Art History program’s policy which included expectations for both faculty and students. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the more longer lasting policy has something like that. So it’s not just a case of what must students do, but what must faculty do?
So, for example, if a faculty member is using AI to construct material for that day’s stuff, you have to tell the students. You have to, I think.”
Student interviews further emphasized faculty expectations as they wanted to know how these conversations about AI translate to faculty and administration. Harney says that “basically everybody, I think, agrees—certainly the faculty all agree—we don’t want people using it as a shortcut. I think what happens in the larger scale conversations is that we get a little bit lost.” While Harney is skeptical of AI, he’s aware of the varying opinions and on the whole he finds the faculty wants to do the best thing for their classrooms and students. For the administration he commented that they were very supportive of this AI policy and “very much wanted the faculty to drive it.”
Harney clarified, however, that the AI policy that President Moreland sent out at the beginning of the semester is “an entirely different beast from the 4 policy thing that the faculty passed in the spring…I think that that is an attempt by the administration to get ahead of things.” What Harney is referring to is an email Moreland sent out to students with a link to the Artificial Intelligence Acceptable Use Policy, which “outlines Centre’s approach to AI adoption.” We want to clarify that we are specifically investigating the CCAS AI policy, which was made for students and faculty. Still, the fact that this distinction had to be made suggests that many are confused as to the administration and faculty stance on AI usage at Centre.
It was in this part of the interview with Harney that we were able to gain some insight on some of the tensions present on campus between the administration and faculty. While faculty are in charge of their classes and curriculum, the administration has control over most other aspects of student life, which can sometimes get awkward when faculty and the administration disagree. For example, Harney and Goff mentioned that the faculty retreat this year was focused on AI, an administrative decision. It’s still unclear why the administration decided to focus this retreat specifically on AI, but we can see that there are clearly many people with differing opinions on this issue. While the faculty are mainly concerned with teaching their students in a way that they feel accurately prepares them for the world beyond Centre, the administration has to juggle a lot more expectations—not only students, but student families, alumni, faculty, board members, and trustees.
Many professors were reluctant to comment on the effectiveness of the policy, stating it is too early to tell. On the other hand, students did not have that reservation and while some may not be one hundred percent happy, they think it is a good first step. This sentiment is also shared among several professors such as Dr. Hartmann, chair of the IST department, who thinks that while it is a work in progress it is a good first step and has been done thoughtfully. Similarly, Dr. Osanloo, chair of English, Creative Writing, and Film, stated, “I’m glad that Centre has an AI policy, because you can’t put your head in the sand and ignore it.” While it is clear that Centre’s current policy needs work, they are still managing to keep up with the changes in the world by starting conversations about the issue rather than pretending it doesn’t exist.
In this vein, several students recognized that completely avoiding AI may not be realistic and it will even be a part of their professional lives after graduation. Therefore, the college has a responsibility to help students understand how to use it responsibly. This AI policy could be a step in this direction, encouraging awareness among both faculty and students. Others argued that Centre should establish boundaries and observe how current policies affect students before making further changes. The tension here reflects a broader challenge for liberal arts education. Centre students are preparing for a world in which AI will continue to influence them. The student perspective suggests that this conversation is far from settled as professors continue to develop their own approaches to encounter AI in different disciplines. The campus community will have to continue looking into the detriments of AI use to determine what responsible use looks like as well as what kinds of learning should be untouched by this technology.
If you have thoughts/opinions email: AICommittee@centre.edu