Video Available: Inaugural Symposium on AI in Higher Education

The University Librarian's Symposium Series launched on November 10, 2025, with an inaugural program addressing the theme for the 2025-2026 academic year: Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education. Registration for the symposium, AI in Teaching and Learning at Rutgers: A New Chapter in Higher Education, reached capacity within hours of the event announcement. The symposium, which took place in the Archibald S. Alexander Library in New Brunswick, was recorded to ensure broad access to the presentations and discussions.

Watch the full event video on YouTube. 

Consuella Askew, vice president for university libraries and university librarian, delivered welcoming remarks and spoke about the impetus for the University Librarian's Symposium Series: to engage the entire Rutgers community on timely topics in higher education.

"Rutgers University Libraries are the intellectual hub of the university," Askew said. "We have an important role in the learning, teaching, research, and publishing activities of this institution. We are the place of discovery, access to vast knowledge, the impetus for inspiration, innovation, and exploration. So, it makes perfect sense for the Libraries to be the convener of important conversations like the one we are having today."

Michele Norin, senior vice president and chief information officer for the university, spoke about artificial intelligence, both through a broader lens and in terms of the issues AI presents in higher education, and about the AI landscape and vision for the future at Rutgers. She discussed the need for training and frameworks, asking, "How do you balance the need to innovate with careful, responsible adoption?"

Lauren Goodlad, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature in the School of Arts and Sciences and chair of Critical AI at Rutgers, gave the keynote, "Teaching Critical AI Literacies: A New Frontier in Higher Education." She stressed that while AI encompasses many things, it has primarily become a marketing term for generative AI, a specific subset of AI that is less than a decade old. Understanding generative AI as a probabilistic technology designed to optimize for plausible predictions and being aware of the kinds of results the technology yields is essential to determining whether, how, and to what extent one should use it.

"The outputs of Gen AI are plausible but not necessarily true or appropriate," Goodlad said. "They may be false toxic. They may amplify common stereotypes or misconceptions of the kind one frequently finds on websites like Reddit. Like an old-fashioned bell curve, the underlying language models in systems like chat GPT focus on the popular and probable, or they would not work."

Stephen Burley, University Professor and Henry Rutgers Chair in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Interim Director of the Rutgers Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Collaboratory, spoke about AI and data science initiatives at Rutgers.

Tracie Marcella Addy, the founding director of the Rutgers Institute for Teaching, Innovation, and Inclusive Pedagogy, presented along with her colleague, Crystal Quillen, assistant director of teaching and learning scholarship. They gave an overview of a program that offers Rutgers University-New Brunswick instructors opportunities to further their learning journeys in teaching with generative artificial intelligence.

Rick Anderson, director of emerging technologies, and Suparna Sinha, Ph.D, instructional designer, both at Rutgers University Online Education Services, presented about the various kinds of support their unit offers, available workshops and professional development opportunities related to AI, and collaborations with units and departments across Rutgers.

Ines Rauschenbach, associate teaching professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, discussed the use of AI in the classroom. "AI seems to be this sort of forbidden fruit that students are secretly using," she said, adding that her goal has been "to openly use it and talk about it and make them really use it in an ethical and responsible manner." In one example she provided, she had asked her students to prompt AI to summarize topics discussed in class (requiring them to be present for discussions) and fact-check the AI-generated references.

A panel of Rutgers librarians shared their perspectives on AI in information literacy instruction and research. The librarians included Katie Elson Anderson, reference and instruction librarian at Paul Robeson Library; Leslin Charles, instructional design librarian and liaison to the Graduate School of Education at James Dickson Carr Library; Francesca Giannetti, digital humanities librarian at Alexander Library; and Mei Ling Lo, science research librarian at the Library of Science and Medicine.

As a way of providing context for the discussion, Giannetti said that librarians are often invited by Rutgers professors to teach, typically within a single class period, how to perform research. "One of the things that I try to make a case for is why students should feel motivated and excited to explore a plurality of voices on a given topic, as opposed to the one answer that generative AI tools typically give us." She added that the process of information seeking helps students "notice their own evolving thinking and learning," and that this process "matters more than getting from A to Z in the quickest manner possible."

The audience had multiple opportunities to ask questions of the presenters during the event, and the symposium concluded with a recap and interactive session with attendees.

The second symposium in the series will address AI in research and be held on March 10. Follow the Libraries on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter) for details and registration to be announced.