Location AIC Forum with breakout sessions in the AIC

Wednesday, May 27^th

8:15 – 9:00       Continental Breakfast and Networking

9:00 – 9:20       Provosts’ Reflections: Bryant University and Rhode Island College

9:20 – 9:40       Overview of the Day: Practice Applications and Learning for Faculty                       

9:50 – 10:50     Breakout Sessions

9:50 – 10:50      (AIC 131)         

Breakout Session 1:  Demonstrations of AI-Supported Tutoring Resources

                        Professor Dave Gannon, Director of Innovation and Technology, Bryant

                        Dr. Carrie Kell, Lecturer and Coordinator of First-Year Writing Curriculum, Bryant

                        Dr. Huan Kuang, Assistant Professor of Finance, Bryant

                        Dr. Mike Roberto, Trustee Professor of Management, Bryant

This session showcases AI‑supported tutoring resources developed for courses across the curriculum, highlighting both how the tools function and how they were intentionally designed. Panelists will provide live demonstrations of tutoring resources created for several general education courses, as well as a senior Business capstone focused on strategic management. Beyond demonstrations, the panel will emphasize the collaborative processes behind resource development. Panelists will discuss how course goals, disciplinary expectations, and student needs informed design choices; how boundaries were established to ensure the tools reinforce rather than replace learning; and how faculty, instructional designers, and technologists worked together to align AI resources with course‑level outcomes. The session offers concrete examples of AI‑enabled academic support in practice, along with transferable insights into the design, iteration, and institutional collaboration required to create tutoring resources that are pedagogically grounded, scalable, and responsive to diverse student populations.

9:50 – 10:50     (AIC 119)

Breakout Session 2:  AI and the Humanities

                        Dr. Matt Duncan, Professor of Philosophy, RIC

                        Dr. Jennifer Horan, Lecturer in History, Literature, and the Arts, Bryant

                        Dr. David Liao, Lecturer in History, Literature, and the Arts, Bryant

                        Dr. David Ramirez, Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies, RIC                 

This panel explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping the humanities by transforming how we read, create, teach, and define our disciplines. Panelists will examine AI’s growing role in mediating complex texts, from summarizing dense theoretical works to supporting new forms of creative and scholarly production, while also questioning what may be lost when engagement is reduced to synopsis or extraction. The discussion will consider how AI complicates traditional practices of close reading, interpretive labor, and theoretical struggle, even as it opens possibilities for access, scale, and experimentation. Attention will also be given to the changing classroom, where AI challenges assumptions about preparation, authorship, and learning, prompting renewed reflection on what it means to study, teach, and value the humanities in an AI-inflected educational landscape.

9:50 – 10:50     (AIC 118)

Breakout Session 3:  Teaching Use Cases Take One: Building and Using AI‑Supported Study Apps in the Classroom

                        Dr. Erim Ergene, Associate Professor of Management, Bryant

                        Dr. Chris Morse, Professor and Chair of Communication and Language Studies, Bryant

                        Professor Michelle Munoz, Associate Director of Instructional Technology, Bryant

                        Professor Ron Washburn, Lecturer, Politics, Law, and Society, Bryant                                               

This panel centers on concrete teaching use cases for AI, illustrated through live demonstrations of study and teaching apps used in real classroom settings. Panelists will show how these tools are built and, more importantly, how they are deployed to support specific learning goals within courses. The session will focus on instructional applications in areas such as writing and programming, highlighting examples of AI‑supported study tools, “vibe‑coding” projects, and simple AI agents designed for student use. Panelists will share how these tools have been integrated into daily teaching practice.

Across demonstrations and discussion, emphasis will be placed on how instructors are using AI to scaffold learning, redesign activities, and rethink what classroom practice looks like when AI is present. The panel aims to offer participants clear, transferable examples of how AI can be used intentionally and effectively in teaching, grounded in actual course experience rather than abstract possibility.

10:50 – 11:00    Break

11:00 – 12:00    Breakout Sessions

11:00 – 12:00    (AIC 131)

Breakout Session 4:  Year One of the Davis Grant: Learning Assistants and Disciplinary

AI Readiness

Dr. Mengqi Deng, Lecturer of Mathematics and Economics, Bryant

Professor Dave Gannon, Director of Innovation and Technology, Bryant

Professor Kaitlyn Hughes, Lecturer of Mathematics and Economics, Bryant

Dr. Allison Kaminaga, Lecturer of Mathematics and Economics, Bryant

Dr. El Rustambekov, Chair and Associate Professor Management, Bryant

Dr. Isil Yaviz, Associate Professor of Management, Bryant

This session brings together faculty participating in the first year of a Davis Educational Foundation grant at Bryant to pursue two related goals: piloting AI‑supported learning assistants in undergraduate courses and examining how AI is reshaping disciplinary expectations and graduate preparation. Panelists will describe how learning assistants were designed and implemented across various General Education classes, the learning challenges they were intended to address, how students were introduced to them, and the boundaries established to ensure the tools support rather than replace core learning. Faculty will share early insights from these pilots, including how student use has informed instructional decisions. Grounded in first‑year grant work, the session connects course‑level experimentation to broader questions of curricular responsibility in an era of AI.

11:00 – 12:00    (AIC 119)

Breakout Session 5:  AI and the Teaching and Assessment of Writing

                        Professor Mary Ann Gallo, Lecturer of Communication and Language Studies, Bryant

Dr. Carrie Kell, Lecturer and Coordinator of First-Year Writing Curriculum, Bryant

                        Dr. Michael Michaud, Professor of English, Chair Writing Board, RIC

This session examines how generative AI is reshaping the teaching of writing and the pedagogical choices faculty now face. Panelists will address varied disciplinary attitudes toward AI from restriction to integration, and discuss how these differences shape expectations for students. The discussion will explore effective instructional strategies, including using AI as a scaffold for drafting and revision, applying Socratic methodologies to interrogate AI-generated text, and flipping the classroom to emphasize process, reflection, and critique. Attention will be given to the importance of clear, transparent guidelines around acceptable AI use, as well as to AI detection systems – their promises, limitations, and risks of misuse. Finally, the session will consider AI’s broader potential to support rhetorical awareness, metacognition, and equitable access in writing instruction while preserving the core values of authorship and learning.

11:00 – 12:00    (AIC 118)

Breakout Session 6:  Teaching Uses Cases II: Creative and Experimental Classroom

Applications of AI

Dr. Gianluca Brero, Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Analytics, Bryant

Dr. Brian Blais, Professor of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Bryant

Professor Maura Dowling, Lecturer of Finance, Bryant

Dr. Soumyadeep Mukherjee, Associate Professor Community and Public Health, RIC

Professor Michelle Munoz, Associate Director of Instructional Technology, Bryant

Dr. Kemal Saatcioglu, Professor Economics and Finance, RIC

Dr. ML Tlachac, Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Analytics, Bryant

This panel highlights a second set of teaching use cases that showcase creative and experimental ways faculty are integrating generative AI into their courses. Panelists will share concrete examples of classroom activities designed to support engagement, exploration, and critical examination of AI’s capabilities and limits.

Examples discussed will include creating custom GPTs for role‑playing exercises, incorporating AI‑generated podcasts as instructional resources, and assigning students to produce AI‑generated recaps. Faculty will also describe assignments in which students test generative AI’s ability to produce modeling code or perform other discipline‑specific tasks.

Across use cases, the emphasis will be on how instructors are designing novel learning activities, encouraging students to evaluate AI critically, and adapting teaching practices based on how these tools perform in real classroom settings, including experiences working with locally run models and the tradeoffs they introduce.

12:00 – 1:00     Lunch

1:00 - 2:30        Student Presentations and Discussion

                        Quinn Arnold ’26, Applied Math & Statistics, Bryant

Nick Goyette ‘29, Digital Marketing, Bryant

                       

2:30 - 4:00        Keynote:  Preparing Graduates for an AI‑Driven Workforce

John Boccuzzi, Jr., President, ISG Research

Drawing on global research at the intersection of technology, business, and AI, our closing keynote speaker examines how roles, skill expectations, and career pathways are evolving – and how colleges and universities can play a defining role in preparing graduates to thrive in this changing landscape.

As President of ISG Research, John Boccuzzi leads a global organization of more than 200 research professionals and works closely with CXO leaders across leading service and software providers. These conversations offer a front‑line view into how organizations are rethinking talent, reimagining work, and integrating AI into everyday practice. In the keynote, he will share insights into what employers increasingly value in graduates, how AI is reshaping professional judgment and collaboration, and where human capability remains essential.

The talk invites higher education leaders and faculty to look beyond immediate tools and technologies toward longer‑term preparation. It challenges institutions to consider how curricula, learning experiences, and institutional priorities can evolve to support adaptability, ethical reasoning, creative problem‑solving, and lifelong learning in an AI‑rich world. As the closing session of the summit, the keynote offers a forward‑looking perspective, connecting the conversations of the past days to the shared responsibility of preparing students not just for their first job, but for meaningful, resilient careers in the age of AI.

4:00 – 5:30       Reception

Join us for a cocktail and hors d’oeuvres reception, offering time to unwind, continue conversations sparked by summit panels, and celebrate the creative energy of the day.