Dear Center for Academic Innovation Community,
University of Michigan faculty are shaping what artificial intelligence can make possible for teaching and learning. Across disciplines, they are bringing creativity, expertise, and a spirit of experimentation to one of education’s most exciting opportunities: using AI to help more people realize their full potential.
Their leadership reflects a university that takes AI’s role in education seriously and is committed to advancing it thoughtfully. By developing new approaches, testing their impact, and sharing what they learn, U-M faculty are helping define how AI can deepen understanding, strengthen human capabilities, and support learners throughout their lives. What excites me most is the opportunity to build on that work together.
The Center for Academic Innovation’s AI Futures keynote series is designed to support that ambition by bringing leading educators and researchers into conversation with the Michigan community. Last month, we kicked off the AI Futures series by welcoming Kelly Miller of Harvard University, who shared compelling research on AI tutors in undergraduate physics courses. Her data showed that students using an AI tutor demonstrated significantly greater learning gains than peers in a traditional classroom setting.
Those findings offer an encouraging starting point for faculty to consider what might be possible in their own teaching. They also invite deeper questions: Are these findings replicable across disciplines and other student populations? How can AI help all students work through unfamiliar concepts? What kinds of feedback encourage them to reconsider an assumption or try a different approach? How can these experiences strengthen their confidence and independent judgment? How do we distinguish between AI that helps students complete a task and AI that helps them develop understanding they can use independently?
These are questions our faculty are well-positioned to explore. The answers will draw on disciplinary expertise, an understanding of how people learn, and a willingness to test ideas alongside students. It is exciting to see educators bring those strengths to the development of AI-supported learning experiences.
On Nov. 17, we will continue that conversation with our next AI Futures keynote, Taking Teaching with AI Seriously: Socratic Tutors as AI Pedagogy, by Julie Schell, assistant vice provost of academic technology at the University of Texas at Austin. Through her work developing UT Sage, a platform that enables instructors to create Socratic AI tutors tailored to their courses, Julie is helping faculty across disciplines turn pedagogical ideas into new opportunities for student learning. Her keynote will explore how educators are designing these tools to encourage reflection, deepen understanding, and support critical thinking.
Julie brings a broad, interdisciplinary perspective to questions that warrant serious and open conversation. AI’s place in education can inspire enthusiasm, uncertainty, and strong disagreement. Bringing faculty together to examine evidence and learn from one another helps us move forward with purpose and recognize where this technology can make a positive contribution to learning.
I encourage you to join us on Nov. 17 from 1–2 p.m. in the Michigan Union’s Rogel Ballroom. Whether you are already experimenting with AI in your teaching, considering its potential, or struggling to separate hype from practical application, your perspective belongs in this conversation. I hope you leave with a new idea, a useful question, or a connection with a colleague that helps advance your work.
The center is focused on ways to help faculty take that next step. A question raised during a keynote, a challenge observed in a classroom, or an idea developed with a colleague can become the foundation for a project that improves how students learn. Our role is to help faculty develop those ideas, put them into practice, and learn from the results.
Our AI Implementation Call for Proposals provides one opportunity to do so. Faculty can propose projects that explore more personalized learning experiences, richer feedback, stronger critical thinking, or new approaches to building essential skills. We are also organizing peer-led discussions on AI’s role in education as part of our ongoing GenAI Faculty Forum series. These discussions are led by faculty who are engaged with the center on active AI projects, creating space to ask questions and learn from each other.
Michigan can contribute by developing approaches others can learn from and build on—and by being candid about what works, for whom, and under what conditions. That requires faculty expertise, student perspectives, and a willingness to revise our assumptions as evidence develops.
I invite you to join an upcoming conversation or bring us a question from your teaching that we might explore together.
Go blue!
James DeVaney
Associate Vice Provost for Academic Innovation
Founding Executive Director of the Center for Academic Innovation