FALL/WINTER 2025 | 11 BECOMING ‘AI READY’ With its new “AI Readiness” initiative, Lehigh embraces an AI future—where students will both learn about and with AI, and do it ethically. No recent issue has roiled education more than artificial intelligence (AI). Especially since the rise of generative AI three years ago, educators have struggled to determine how and whether to allow AI into the classroom, and how it might be taught and used for learning. Even as academics have wrung their hands, however, the business world has had no such compunctions. Across the world, companies have embraced AI with both hands, integrating new tools into their workflows to improve innovation and efficiency. Higher education has come to an inflection point. If universities continue to vacillate on allowing AI into the curriculum, they risk leaving students behind in preparing for the world they’ll soon enter. Recognizing that fact, Lehigh has been on the forefront of embracing AI as a force reshaping not only what students learn, but also how the university teaches. Starting in early 2023, the university announced resources and tools to help faculty members integrate AI into their classrooms. In October, the university announced a new “AI Readiness” initiative to prepare students for an AI-driven future. The new initiative takes a campus-wide, multidisciplinary approach to AI to prepare every student, regardless of major, to use its tools. From faculty experimenting with AI tutors and other classroom supports to AI trainings that provide students with the knowledge and skills needed for the working world, Lehigh is embedding AI into every facet of academic life, positioning Lehigh as a leader in AI education and research. According to Nathan Urban, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, the goal is threefold: to teach about AI, to teach with AI and to teach ethical use of AI. “If we care deeply about the education of our students, and there is a tool that can help facilitate that, we need to figure out how best to use it,” he says. While today’s specific tools may be obsolete soon, he notes, the key is to teach students to be curious about how such technologies work and how they might shape the future of industries students will enter after Lehigh. “They’ll be expected to use it and will be competing against people who know how to use it—and so we want to teach them how to use AI tools effectively, while also teaching them to use them ethically.” That means knowing when and how to use AI the right way so that it supports learning rather than replacing it, he says. He borrows an analogy from journalist Kevin Roose between “weightlifting,” in which AI can be used as a tool to strengthen students’ minds, and “forklifting,” in which it can be used to replace some tasks to provide greater capabilities. “If you are trying to accomplish a job of moving heavy things in a warehouse, a forklift is a very useful tool,” Urban says. “But if you take that forklift to the gym to lift weights, you’ve defeated the purpose of working out. So the question of whether it should be used or not depends on the purpose of the activity.” Nathan Urban
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