In summer 2026, I participated in two initiatives at Wesleyan University on AI and education.
One focused on political science: along with Lindsay Dolan and Hari Ramesh, I helped organize a series of weekly lunch workshops for members of the Wesleyan Government Department to discuss AI’s relationship to learning and teaching in the Government major.
Below are the outputs from this process, which were affirmed by the broader department at the beginning of the Fall 2026 semester.
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Core Competencies of a Government Major, describing what mastery looks like, our pedagogical approach, and AI considerations regarding each,
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A Government Department Statement on AI, outlining our values, expectations, commitments, and current thinking,
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A Syllabus Template to support integration of the goals and values outlined in the prior two documents into our course syllabi, and
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A Student AI Statement that might be used both by professors (to more clearly articulate which uses are appropriate or inappropriate for an assignment or course) and by students (to aid disclosure and transparency of use)
We are pleased to share these documents with our students, our Wesleyan colleagues, and fellow political scientists. We look forward to collecting input, especially from students, and revisiting these outputs as things evolve. Please reach out if you have thoughts or would like to know more about our process.
The second focused on data science and statistics: In addition, I participated in a “Generative AI and Data Analytics: Implications for data science curriculum and pedagogy” workshop hosted at Wesleyan University’s Hazel Quantitative Analysis Center that convened statistics and data science educators from a wide range of liberal arts schools and disciplines to share current lessons and experimentation. Our shared reflection on what we know about how AI is affecting education and what educators can do is available in this paper.