As AI continues to transform the workforce, the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences is evolving alongside it – preparing students to use emerging technologies responsibly while preserving the critical thinking skills that lie at the heart of the humanities.
The college recently convened the Human-Centered Futures Council, a volunteer advisory group that reviews new and revised curriculum for the college's Tech for Humanity initiative before course proposals go through the official university approval process.
Carlos Evia, associate dean of strategic initiatives and chief technology officer for the college, said the initiative is designed to help students understand the opportunities and responsibilities that come with emerging technologies through diverse curriculum options that "aim to equip students from any major with the practical skills and ethical frameworks needed to work responsibly and effectively with technology."
"Students in the Tech for Humanity minor, as well as those taking Tech for Humanity-designated courses in their majors, learn to engage critically with AI tools, digital platforms, and emerging technologies in ways that prioritize human needs and well-being," Evia said.
Several college professors explain how they are weaving the use of AI into their courses, while also encouraging students to develop their own voices and learning goals.
Building AI into the curriculum
Steve Hankey, associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in the School of Public and International Affairs, is helping weave AI throughout the school's undergraduate curriculum. The plan includes revising two courses – Systems Thinking for Public Policy and Intro to Urban Analytics – while developing a new course, AI for Policymakers.
"We think that it is important for everyone to learn how this new tool will impact society," Hankey said. "There are so many different ways this will occur. Our goal is to design a curriculum that can be proactive in engaging with these changes, while still being grounded in a liberal arts education."
Hankey is also experimenting with AI in his own teaching. In his analytical courses, he asks students to document how they use AI while writing technical memos, explain how they refined AI-generated output, and identify where the technology was helpful and where additional work was needed.
"The workforce is already heavily engaged in using these tools," Hankey said. "From my perspective, we owe it to our students to prepare them for the way these tools can be used in effective and ethical ways as well as to understand their limitations to be prepared to challenge outputs of these tools when appropriate."
Exploring what AI reveals about being human
For Matthew Vollmer, professor in the Department of English, generative AI isn't just a tool, but an opportunity to revisit questions central to what it means to be human.
"I remain, as ever, curious," Vollmer said. "AI is only a crisis to manage if you insist on seeing it that way. I prefer to use its existence as an occasion to return to the basics: What is a word? A thought? A mind? A person? How can you tell?"
Vollmer is designing a course for the initiative, AI, Creativity, and the Art of Being Human, that will be offered in fall 2026. As he developed the course, he asked Claude, an AI large language model, to help him build his curriculum around the question, "How do we verify consciousness?"
One assignment for the course asks students to write an operating manual for their own consciousness as if they were preparing it for upload.
"I probably wouldn't ever have come up with that had I not been thinking about and interacting with robots who can write," Vollmer said.
While Vollmer said he isn't a fan of "policing" AI usage because it "breeds a climate of suspicion," he hopes students will think critically about their own voices and the value of human expression.
"The machine's trick is that it can sound like a human," Vollmer said. "It's a pretty good mimic. And sometimes it's impossible to know whether prose has been generated by a machine or a human. But maybe the point – and this has always been the point, though now it's maybe more urgent – is to prove that you have a voice worth using."
Jen Mooney, senior instructor and director of the the Technical and Scientific Communication Program in the Department of English, said helping students develop their voice includes setting clear expectations.
"To use AI ethically (in the classroom context), students need to be taught to use it as an assistant or an aid or a peer reviewer who can help them generate ideas, perfect an outline, point out areas where they need more details or evidence," Mooney said. "They need to learn how to engage with it, to perform some back-and-forth questioning or analysis, to question its output."
Balancing curiosity and critique
David Hicks, professor of history and social science education in the School of Education, approaches AI through what he describes as "technocuriosity." He developed the framework for the idea with Amy Allen, associate professor of history and social science education, in their new book “Teaching History with Chatty Geeps: A Technocurious Approach to using Generative AI in the Classroom.”
"By technocurious, we mean an approach that holds curiosity and critique together," Hicks said. "It asks educators and students to experiment with generative AI while remaining attentive to evidence, ethics, equity, student learning, and the limits of the technology."
During a week-long workshop this summer at Virginia Tech, both Hicks and Allen coached public school history teachers on ways that they can use AI in their classrooms.
Hicks asks students to be transparent about their AI use by documenting what tools they used, how they used them, and how AI shaped their thinking.
"I ask whether AI use supports the learning goal," Hicks said. "If the goal is brainstorming, question refinement, feedback, or exploring multiple perspectives, AI can be somewhat useful. If the goal is for students to demonstrate their own understanding, make an evidence-based claim, or engage deeply with a source, then AI use has to be carefully bounded."
He said AI has not completely changed the assignments he gives students because most are built around "process, reflection, and explanation."
"AI has pushed me to clarify what I value most in student work," he said. "If a task can be completed well by a chatbot with little human judgment, then I need to rethink it."