Interview with Lori Looney about the AI Symposium
Learning more about an intriguing conference coming up in October...
In October, I will have the honor and privilege to be the keynote speaker for AI and the Liberal Arts Symposium at Connecticut College. There’s so many reasons I’m excited about it and personally, my ties to liberal arts are long and varied. I’ve been teaching history, literature, cultural studies for nearly decades, I’ve given liberal art-based public talks (for instance, this one on culture, commons, and creativity with vampires and the Hulk), and have write scholarly work in this area as well.
In talking with one of the conference organizers, I thought it would be a good opportunity to share with folks what they are up to and hope to achieve. I sat down with Lori Looney, Research and Data Librarian at Connecticut College to learn more about the conference, its goals, and who should consider attending and presenting (The CFP is open until August 1!).
Lance Eaton: Please share a bit about yourself and how you go into this?
Lori Looney: I'm the research and data librarian at Connecticut College. I fell into playing with AI about two and a half years ago like many of us did. Shortly after ChatGPT came out we had a campus conversation to discuss the impact of AI and I was asked to participate. I didn't really know anything about AI at the time but I learned very quickly as our team does a lot with helping support faculty in their teaching. Naturally AI fell into that so our team has been hosting a lot of the AI workshops on campus for the last few years.
Lance Eaton: What inspired the creation of AI and the Liberal Arts Symposium?
Lori Looney: The symposium is part of a larger project that we launched last year at Connecticut College, which is called AI@Conn. It's a three-year initiative and its purpose is to bring AI into the heart of our liberal arts mission. We're doing that through research, workshops, and most importantly, campuswide conversations about AI. From the beginning, we didn't want to just incorporate AI for the sake of incorporating AI. What we really wanted to do was ask what AI means for how we teach, how we learn, and even how we think. We're hoping that the symposium will give us a space to bring together a wide range of voices who are actively thinking about AI and wrestling with those questions.
Lance Eaton: What has surprised you most in the organizing of this event and speaking with others around AI and its role in liberal arts education?
Lori Looney: What really surprised me most is how open and interested people are once we start talking about AI and they realize I'm not just talking about ChatGPT and coding per se. I’ve had great conversations with students, with faculty across disciplines, with colleagues, with people who didn't necessarily think of themselves as “AI people” or “AI adopters”. Once we started having discussions about creativity and knowledge and the future of education, I demonstrated a few things for them, and something seemed to click for them. It gave them a way to start thinking about and imagining how they might use AI in their teaching and learning.
For me, that's been really energizing and exciting just to see that light bulb go off. I actually had a faculty member come to an AI interest group a few months ago who hadn't yet participated in anything that we'd offered. She said, "I realized I can't be an ostrich with my head in the sand any longer." I said, "I really wish we could have that printed on a t-shirt." because I thought that was such a great way to say, I'm not an AI fan, but I'm willing to learn. I appreciated that because I think AI acceptance and/or adoption is hard for faculty because it's both having something new to learn and also teaching students how to use it.
Lance Eaton: How do you see that intersection liberal arts and AI?
Lori Looney: The liberal arts are uniquely positioned to explore the humanistic dimensions of technology. And it's not just about using the AI tools in teaching. It's about asking how AI shapes and is shaped by the societies that we live in. That could mean from a liberal arts perspective critiquing algorithmic bias. It could mean rethinking authorship in the age of generative text or exploring how AI redefines the boundaries of self itself.
Lance Eaton: That leads well into my next question, why is it important for liberal arts institutions or institutions that have a strong liberal arts identity to have this role in shaping that kind of where AI shows up?
Lori Looney: Yes, I think it's incredibly important because we have something meaningful to offer to the conversation. Liberal arts institutions aren't just tech consumers. We're communities that care very deeply about equity and ethics and creativity and imagination. If we leave AI development especially to the engineers and the corporations alone, then we risk missing the educational and the philosophical work that absolutely needs to happen around it.
Lance Eaton: What are the types of experiences and session formats that participants at this conference can expect? Will it feel like a traditional academic conference or something different or some mixture of different things?
Lori Looney: We're definitely aiming for something more flexible and experimental than your traditional academic conference. I mean definitely there will be papers and panels but we're also hoping for and inviting things like active workshops, roundtables, lightning talks and more creative sessions where people can actually explore and try new things. We want the event to feel open and collaborative and really grounded in the realities of what is happening in classrooms and campus environments. Our guiding idea for this symposium is to really come curious and hopefully leave inspired.
Lance Eaton: “Come curious and leave inspired”--that’s a tagline I wish a lot more conferences had. In a lot of my experiences, conferences can be filled with information drops and doing the things that we know aren’t ideal for learning and meaningful engagement. But I digress. AI sas been for more than 2.5 years and there has been many rich discussions in higher ed. What are the particular ethical tensions you hope will be surfaced and wrestled with during this event? Is there any emphasis or different take or different consideration that this conference will address compared to other previous events? you hope out of this versus maybe some of the things that have gone on already?
Lori Looney: Yes, absolutely. We're hoping to explore as many of the tensions as we can that people want to bring to the table. One that is especially important on our campus has been the environmental costs of AI. We've had some really robust discussions about that. Also, what AI means for student learning and the assessment of that learning? I know that has been a huge one that has gone, back and forth. Then also what we could potentially lose when we start automating parts of human connection. For us, these are not abstract questions. We're finding that they're already showing up in classrooms and campus conversations and even some of our AI policies. What we're hoping is that the symposium will be a space where we can discuss these things in a thoughtful, honest and hopefully respectful manner.
Lance Eaton: Can you share a bit more about a specific issue your campus is navigating?
Lori Looney: For us it really is the environmental question. We have faculty on campus who feel very strongly that AI should not be engaged with at all because of the environmental impact. Then we have people on the opposite side of that who are saying yes, but AI can actually help with the environmental problem. We've actually had some great talks happen on campus about it with both sides participating and while I can't say that they came to an agreement I think that it's opened up the conversation. It's really helpful for our students to hear the faculty have those conversations because our students are grappling with it themselves. We want to model responsible, ethical, and respectful conversation around these topics.
Lance Eaton: Certainly! Ok so, who do you hope shows up? Who's attending this? But also, who do you think might not see themselves as invited but should feel like they're part of the conversation?
Lori Looney: We definitely hope to get faculty, students, and staff across, all disciplines and from all over. That would be fantastic. But we would be especially happy to see people who don't see themselves as AI folks. And if somebody's reading this and they're thinking, "Yeah, that's me." … if you are teaching a first year seminar or you're running a campus program or you're advising students, then you are already part of the AI conversation whether you realize it or not. The symposium will be a space for those people. Honestly they quite often have the most grounded and thoughtful insights and we would really like to hear those points of view.
Lance Eaton: Thank you. What kind of proposals are you hoping to receive? What would excite you most when reading submissions? (Check out the CFP here–deadline August 1)
Lori Looney: We really hope we get a wide range of pedagogical experiments, creative projects, critical reflections or new research. What would really excite us the most would be to see submissions that cross boundaries, either between disciplines or between roles, say faculty-student collaborations, or between critique and practice. We're especially interested in work that models what it means to think both liberally and expansively about AI.
Lance Eaton: We've hit upon this a little bit, but what is the experience that you're hoping attendees have upon attending and participating, when they're walking away? What’s the thing they're carrying with them?
Lori Looney: I really hope that attendees feel both provoked and supported. Provoked, in the best way, by ideas that challenge their assumptions of AI and what it might mean for teaching and learning. And supported because they're walking away with practical tools or possibly new collaborators or new inspiration that they can bring back to their own work. We're really hoping to build a community that can think rigorously, act ethically and teach creatively in this new AI world.
Lance Eaton: I like that. I love that! Are you for presenters other than just faculty. Is that fair to say?
Lori Looney: Yes.
Lance Eaton: What would you say to somebody in the higher ed space whether it's a faculty, staff, or student who's curious about AI but they're not really sure if they have something to add to the conversation? What would your advice, guidance, or insight be for someone on the fence about whether to submit or not?
Lori Looney: I've actually had this conversation a few times already. My answer is that you absolutely definitely do have something to contribute! If you have ever talked to students about how knowledge is created, or how power works, or how we communicate something, then you are already engaging with the questions that are central to understanding AI and using it in higher education and in life in general. For some of those people, I think their fear is that they're not a technical expert. They think they don't know enough. I think we all feel that way to some level. And of course as soon as you think you are somewhat proficient, it changes so you have to learn more. You don't need to be a tech expert. You don't need to be a coder to bring something valuable to this symposium. We really want to hear what you have to say and add to the conversation.
Lance Eaton: For a student reading this, what might be some ideas or thoughts about how they might approach putting in a proposal or attending?
Lori Looney: We’d especially love to see student proposals! We want to hear what they think about using AI in teaching and learning and even beyond. That is such valuable information and they need to be part of that entire conversation. So yes, please do submit a proposal.
Lance Eaton: And then how do you see the outcomes of this symposium extending beyond the three days? What's the larger arc that you're imagining with this as part of that conversation?
Lori Looney: The symposium is just one part of a longer journey for us. It's connected to new courses and summer research and campus workshops that are already happening at Connecticut College as part of our AI@Conn initiative. Our hope for the symposium is that it will spark collaborations and possibly new course ideas, publications or institutional strategies that will ripple outward beyond the three-day events. We don't want to just keep the conversation around AI going. We want to help shape the future of liberal arts education within the AI spectrum.
Lance Eaton: What's something that I didn't ask that you'd still want to share with folks?
Lori Looney: Good question. It's our inaugural symposium, so we're learning as we go, but we really do want to invite everyone to participate. If you have any sort of interest in AI , or even if you don't, we want this to be a conversation for everyone because we're all trying to figure it out. Also, we’re absolutely thrilled that you will be our keynote speaker for this symposium! Your innovative work at the intersection of AI and education perfectly embodies the spirit of this event, and we couldn’t be more excited to have you inspire our community.
Learn more about the AI and the Liberal Arts Symposium, and consider putting in a proposal for the Call For Proposals.
The Update Space
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EDUCAUSE Online Program: Teaching with AI. Virtual. Facilitating sessions: ongoing
Teaching Professor Online Conference: Ready, Set, Teach. Virtual. July 22-24, 2025.
AI and the Liberal Arts Symposium, Connecticut College. October 17-19, 2025
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