12 | LEHIGH ALUMNI BULLETIN In that regard, Lehigh has followed a decentralized approach, providing tools to faculty and students to integrate AI into the curriculum, but ultimately leaving it up to the individual how to adopt them. The end result is neither to ban nor to celebrate AI, but to experiment with it to assess its effects on learning, understanding where it benefits and where it harms student learning. “We’re not assuming that any particular use case is a good one,” Urban says. “We want to assess whether it is aiding learning or impairing learning, and be able to adapt our usage moving forward.” From Classrooms to Careers Along with the administration’s push to seed AI around campus, Lehigh’s Center for Career and Professional Development (CCPD) has performed a survey of dozens of employers—many of them Fortune 100 or 500 companies—to best determine the skills they are looking for in graduates. “AI has transformed how work gets done in almost every industry, and what we’re hearing from our employer partners is that AI isn’t necessarily replacing jobs, but it’s reshaping positions,” says Lori Kennedy, senior director of CCPD, who led the survey. Among the many examples they found, engineers are using AI to prototype ideas; legal and compliance teams are using it to review documents; and scientific writers are using it to generate literature reviews and first drafts. “That means AI has become a baseline expectation, not a bonus or ‘nice to have’ skill,” Kennedy says. One employer said they “expect new hires to be using AI tools by their third day on the job.” For graduates, that means at a minimum arriving with fluency in using large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Claude, engineering effective prompts and critically evaluating AI output. Depending on the industry, however, certain employers might look for proficiency in specialized AI tools as well, such as TensorFlow or PyTorch for developing deep learning models, or Jasper or Parse.ly for creating communications and marketing content. That doesn’t necessarily mean knowing how to code or understanding the back-end of AI software, so much as being able to effectively use AI interfaces. “It was refreshing to hear that AI is for everyone,” Kennedy says. “You don’t have to be a computer scientist—they are just looking for people who want to use AI tools with curiosity.” Just as importantly, Kennedy says, employers stressed the importance of ethical awareness. “They want graduates who understand bias, privacy concerns and data sensitivities, and who can articulate when to use AI and when not to,” she says. “They are still emphasizing critical thinking and human judgment.” For Lehigh students hitting the job market, that means being able to explain in interviews how they’ve used AI tools in coursework, projects and internships in ways that demonstrate that fluency and ethical judgment. Kennedy recommends students start experimenting with AI early in their college careers, and stay updated as tools evolve; at the same time, she adds, students must always engage in AI with an attitude of developing their expertise in their field, not substituting it or taking shortcuts. “As multiple employers emphasized, you must understand your field deeply before AI can add value,” she says. In order to aid in that development, CCPD has unveiled a new suite of LinkedIn Learning pathways, curating thousands of videos and online classes on LinkedIn’s platform and packaging them into courses for beginners through advanced learners to develop their AI proficiency. Upon completion, she says, LinkedIn will develop a certification it will post right on a student’s profile that can serve as an independent verification of their knowledge and skills. Those aren’t the only tools provided to students. Lehigh also provides a central hub called Data Camp where students can take trainings in specific AI tools and receive certifications as well. In addition, Lehigh has recently partnered with the Google AI for Education Accelerator, which offers access to Google’s suite of AI tools beyond Gemini, and free access to Coursera courses about use of generative AI tools, prompt engineering and data science that also provide certificates students can include on their resume. Faculty at the Front Lines It’s not only students that Lehigh is preparing for an AI future, however, but also faculty. According to Dominic Packer, vice provost for educational innovation and assessment, more faculty members than ever are experimenting with AI in their classes. That includes a group of 35 faculty who are currently developing AI tutors—chatbots specially trained on course material including syllabus, slides and readings—to provide students with extra help outside of class. “They’re essentially available for the first line of questions for students, if they want to work through a problem set not in the textbook or help them study for tests or exams,” Packer says. “Students are reportedly finding them quite helpful in specific instances, though they are not without their glitches.” Other faculty are using AI to create simulations—for example, in a medical context presenting as a patient with a set of symptoms to help students learn to diagnose ailments. Some are encouraging students to Dominic Packer Lori Kennedy
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