Meeting the AI Moment: How Western Is Preparing Students for What Comes Next

Since the public release of tools like ChatGPT in late 2022, the pace of change has been swift. Some surveys suggest that as many as 90 percent of college students are using tools like ChatGPT and Gemini to help them with their coursework, reshaping how they write, research, and navigate academic life.

It’s a reality that the leaders at Western Colorado University are meeting head-on, as they work to understand and integrate the technology into classrooms thoughtfully, ensuring students graduate prepared to use these paradigm-shifting tools responsibly and effectively.

Associate Professor Jen DeBoer, a faculty member in the School of Business, was tapped to be Western’s first AI Faculty Fellow and tasked with exploring the opportunities and perils that students and educators are sure to encounter as they enter the age of AI adoption.

Already, some faculty members are using AI in sophisticated ways to develop personalized lesson plans, innovate course design, and automate tasks in ways that allow them to spend more time with their students.

In her own courses, DeBoer uses AI to create custom case studies and simulations that would have been difficult to design at scale before. At the same time, she’s careful to recognize the risks. Overuse of AI can erode many of the skills people spend years developing, like writing, problem-solving, and critical thinking.

When students rely on it to produce work rather than engage with content, they risk missing the opportunity to develop those skills, DeBoer said. And when they present work produced by AI as their own, they cross a serious ethical line.

Still, she said, students are integrating AI tools into their education without any hesitation. “I’m trying to encourage students regularly to be more mindful about how and when to use AI. It can definitely improve their learning,” DeBoer said. “But if it’s used inappropriately, it can be detrimental.”

Several students who attended a discussion about the use of GenAI at Western were well aware of the risks inherent in an overreliance on AI. But they could also see its potential to bring work up to a certain level of proficiency.

For his part, Brenden Jones, who’s in his second year studying business administration at Western’s School of Business and produces music in his spare time, sees the people around him use AI openly, sometimes to their detriment. So he chose something different.

“I, personally, don’t use it to do my assignments. I use it to create study guides for tests and things like that. So I don’t really think that it erodes my critical thinking skills,” he said. “I’m using it more as a tool in my toolbox, rather than as a crutch.”

Now that students are using AI in their coursework, DeBoer knows there’s really no going back to a time when ChatGPT couldn’t draft and revise papers or synthesize complicated research. So she wants Western to move forward into the future with eyes wide open.

There’s real potential in the near future for the best work to be produced by the students who can afford the most advanced AI, she says, exacerbating existing inequality. At the same time, she believes AI proficiency will soon be an expectation, instead of an advantage in many professions, and students who graduate without that proficiency may find themselves playing catch-up.

For Western, the challenge is to integrate AI in a way that prepares students for an AI-shaped future without sacrificing the skills in critical thinking, creativity, and judgment that make a liberal arts education so valuable.

“I’m excited about the potential,” DeBoer said. “I think the combination of us being a liberal arts and a rural institution, if we could pull a little bit more AI expertise into that, sprinkled throughout different departments, we’d be innovative, we’d be creative, and I think that would really serve our students well.”