It has been nearly three years since ChatGPT became readily accessible to the public to use. In the wake of artificial intelligence’s (AI) implementation in higher education, President Anne Harris’s Office has convened a campus-wide committee tasked with a one year charge to explore methods of approaching AI that are consistent across campus and with the institution’s mission and values.
Led by Andi Tracy, associate dean of the College and associate professor of psychology and Kaitlin Wilcox, deputy chief information officer in Information Technology Service (ITS), the committee was initiated last spring and had their introductory meeting in May. They have only met twice so far, but will meet bi-weekly moving forward.
The charge, ordered by the President’s Office, aims to “identify and document areas of interest and concern regarding the uses of AI at Grinnell College, whether by students, faculty or staff.” These members will then identify potential practical and ethical issues related to the use of AI at Grinnell while ensuring any possible regulation matches the College’s mission and values. As a committee, they are seeking to “suggest a governance structure to oversee the development and evolution of AI use at the College.”
There are currently 12 members of the group, composed of faculty, staff and one student representative. They are in the process of acquiring an additional student member.
Tracy said that the committee is exploring a variety of concerns surrounding AI policy, including equity and access issues, machine training biases, ethics around training of the models and where training data comes from, data privacy and security, environmental sustainability and balance.
“People are finding things that they are finding useful in their areas and adopting them, and we want to make sure that there’s some consistency to that across campus,” said Tracy.
“We want to provide spaces where we can find ways to support equitable access,” Tracy said. “If we determine that there are AI tools that people need to do their work, how do we ensure equitable access to them? I don’t have an answer to that, but that’s, but it’s a big question,” she said.
“This isn’t a group that has decision-making authority or policy-making authority. It is exploring and then recommending out to the rest of campus. And so the reason we have all of these different representatives on the committee is so people can bring in different perspectives and expertise,” Tracy said.
Tracy said that as different on campus resources pilot and provide new AI resources, the committee is interested in hearing student feedback beyond the representatives to think about and evaluate what is being used and how it is being used. Currently, Student Health and Wellness (SHAW) and the Center for Careers, Life and Service are implementing free AI platforms to support their programming offerings.
In an email sent to the student body on Aug. 5, SHAW announced their partnership with Wayhaven, an AI wellbeing coach that streamlines information to students to explore on campus wellbeing initiatives, resources, and programs.
According to the email, Wayhaven keeps all conversational information between user and system, and no external parties are involved unless the model flags potential risk of harm to self or others, which will then alert Campus Safety and SHAW to reach out for support.
Beth Perlman, dean for health and wellness, said that Wayhaven is designed to be an educational tool that provides a space for internal reflection and support around stress management and coping strategies.
“At SHAW, we were noticing more students interacting with AI. Specifically, I can speak to my work, I’ve seen more students use Chat GPT around their wellness related needs,” she said.
Perlman said that she and other SHAW staff said that after approaching its use as a platform at the college level through a critical lens, they were impressed with Wayhaven’s clinical safeguarding practices. “Unfortunately, with many AI programs like Chat GPT, they lack standardized regulation, and so we wanted to provide that safer, more evidence based option for students to be able to utilize,” she said.
According to Perlman, since the beginning of September, there have been around 600 engagements with Wayhaven. Compared to other resources SHAW has offered, this represents a higher level of engagement.
“AI is new for all of us. There are very reasonable conversations we need to have as a culture around the normalization of AI in our culture,” Perlman said. “We’re wanting to be responsive to the trends, knowing that it is the reality that a lot of college students, including Grinnellians, are using AI. I think it’s our responsibility at SHAW to find out how we make sure that you’re doing that in a safe and effective way.”
Perlman mentioned that one of the concerns students have brought up is approaching platforms like Wayhaven with mindfulness regarding sustainability efforts.
“I think it is valid to have reasonable anxieties about AI, and we should be having those discussions. Wayhaven is new to us, new to our students, and it is helpful to have a critical lens of any resource that we’re using,” Perlman said.
“It’s just getting started. It’s been less than three years since there have been these publicly available LLMs [large language models] … Things have changed in terms of what people are asking or inputting into the tool and what they’re doing with it is totally different, not totally different, but [there are] pretty significant changes,” Tracy said.
Contributed reporting by Ivan Marev.
