This academic year, The Arts and Sciences Advisory Council for Students (ASACS) has met regularly to host conversations between students, faculty members, and Dean Harris on issues related to AI. We sat down with two ASACS members, Lucy Nowicki and Priya Khaira, to discuss the work that ASACS has been doing as well as their own opinions on AI.
Tell me about yourselves.
Lucy: So, I'm Lucy. I'm a senior. I’m majoring in psychology and philosophy. Other than The Arts and Sciences Advisory Council for Students (ASACS), I play the piccolo in the marching band. I'm a part of TRIO Student Support Services. I'm a first-generation student. Other than that, I also do concert band and I research childhood development.
Priya: I'm Priya. I'm a senior. And other than ASACS, I'm also a research fellow at the Jackson School studying the security of health data in different environments. Right now, my research is focusing on physical health wearables like watches and smart rings. I'm also an undergraduate instructor with the FIG program, so I'm teaching during the fall quarter.
Tell me about how ASACS came to devote its meetings to AI this fall?
Lucy: The first ASACS meeting of the year was in early October 2025. The goal was to meet one another and Dean Harris and determine what topics we wanted to talk about this year. AI definitely came up. Everyone's thinking about it. Since then, we've had four different faculty members in the College of Arts & Sciences present on how their departments are handling AI. In 2026 we will be inviting more faculty and staff join us for talks relating to marketing and communication. We’re hoping to bring together individuals at a higher department level who may be able to help with a top-down communication plan that gives clarity to different departments and facilitates a larger message about AI.
In well ways do you both utilize AI in your professional life?
Lucy: I use AI. I always use ChatGPT. So I give it prompts. But the biggest way it helps me is with writing emails, particularly outreach emails. It helps me develop a professional, formal tone when reaching out to potential speakers and guests for ASACS meetings.
Priya: I'm usually really wary about using it, just because I come from a privacy background, so it makes me nervous. And that's why I've tried to stick with only using ChatGPT, because I feel like the more platforms you engage with, the more places your data's being stored. I sometimes use it to help with research. For instance, if I’m researching a topic, I might ask ChatGPT what related papers it can find on that topic. I usually don't like to use it when writing, because I feel like it takes away from that innate skill.
What do you feel are some of the biggest AI issues that you see coming up in the classroom?
Priya: I think a topic that keeps getting brought up is the idea that students are losing academic skills because of AI. That this deficit of skills is showing up in the classroom in students’ work and even in class conversations. I do think AI is becoming more of a crutch for students. Some students think if they use ChatGPT they don’t need to study. Even in the FIG class I teach, we had a project where the students had to make posters. One of the students asked me if they could Canva AI to make a poster template. I was like, it's just putting colors together. Like, I'm positive you guys can do it. Relying on AI for really small things can lead us to distrust ourselves and our own abilities. The more we offload onto AI, the more skills we lose because we’re not using them as much.
What do you wish faculty members knew about the student perspective on AI?
Lucy: There are some faculty who appreciate aspects of AI and allow it to be integrated into the classroom in ways that aren’t academic dishonesty. But then there are also faculty who have complete zero-tolerance policies. This worries me because AI is relevant, it’s going to stay, and it can be used in helpful, good ways. So for those faculty members with zero-tolerance policies, I wish they would have a more thoughtful approach to how AI could be used. Be open to the conversation. Honestly, I think this openness would actually help stop inappropriate use of AI in the classroom.
Priya: I would also just say that it depends on the type of work being assigned. The idea of “busywork” came up in a recent ASACS meeting. Some homework assigned in classes is genuinely super repetitive and not helpful. When I come across work like that, it’s hard for me not to want to offload it to AI. But I agree with Lucy, it shouldn’t be this draconian approach. There should be more rapport between students and faculty. Right now, AI is kind of the elephant in the room. It needs to be addressed and integrated in a way where students are still learning.
How do you feel about current AI policies in the classroom?
Lucy: That’s been one of the goals of the ASACS meetings–gathering professors from different departments and asking them directly what guidance they’ve received on AI. Some have received guidance, others haven’t heard anything. So it's not consistent. At the same time, I don’t think there can be a campus-wide policy because each department is so different.
Priya: I agree it's very decentralized. And every single class is different. In an ASACS meeting we heard from a sociology professor who talks directly with his class about the nuances of using AI. I think it would be great to have more of these conversations in classrooms. That’s probably the first step to improving policies.
Any closing thoughts?
Lucy: I actually made a survey asking students what they think about AI, how they use it, how much they use it. I haven't shared the results yet, because I only had 80 responses. But at the end of the survey, there was an open-ended question that asked participants to share any other thoughts they had. And of the 80 respondents, over a third wrote that they really dislike AI and think it’s terrible. The fact that over a third of these students were passionate enough about disliking AI that they had more to say really surprised me. This is why students need to be included in the dialogue about AI, especially if and when policies are created.
Priya: I think there's no getting away from AI now, because it's basically the next wave of everything. But I think it's really important that we understand what we stand to lose when we use these services more and more, and the impacts AI has on the environment. I'm still super wary of it. I try not to use it unless I actually have to. And I just think that if we can be open about talking about it as a tool, not as a replacement, I think we'd be on a better course.