Iona University President: AI is transforming our world, challenging us to reaffirm our commitment as educators
A letter to the Iona University community from President Seamus Carey, Ph.D.
For millennia, philosophers have wrestled with questions of knowledge: What is it? What can we know? What is knowledge for? How do we learn? How do we teach?
These questions defy definitive answers. The limits of human reason and the shifting tides of human experience force us to return to them repeatedly. Each time we do, we deepen our understanding of knowledge, but sometimes events force us to reexamine how we approach our inquiry into it. Right now, the explosion of generative artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming our world and what it means to teach, learn, work, and live.
In other words, the rise of AI challenges us to recognize the core motives of our mission as a University and our vocations as educators. More importantly, it gives us the opportunity to reaffirm both and help students navigate new realities.
I can think of nothing more exciting—albeit sometimes worrying—for Iona to be grappling with as we close out a terrific year and look forward to the years ahead. Every domain and discipline, as every business and industry, will feel its impact. We will need to address the challenges and opportunities it will present in how and what we teach, and reexamine why we teach it.
Students are moving into a world where their relation to knowledge will be fundamentally different. This new world does not change Iona’s mission, or its need, to prepare students to make a living and to create a life of meaning. It does, however, force us to reflect on how we can most effectively meet those goals going forward. As we continue and even grow our leadership in Catholic education, our shared purpose assumes more significance each year.
Over my years in higher education, I have been party to countless conversations about innovation and strategic priorities in several institutions. Such discussions often look past the most important inputs to answering the questions they implicitly pose: the good work that is done week in and week out by the faculty and staff that are the true stewards of the mission that the innovation and strategy are meant to serve.
So, as I think about AI and what it means for Iona, I look to the dedicated faculty we have on campus, who bring to their work particular expertise complemented by a broad commitment to delivering a transformative education to our students. I look also to the resources our librarians and other staff supply to support this faculty and to assist student journeys. And I know the best thing we can do to meet the AI moment is invest in the imagination I see all around me by making an institutional commitment to providing the resources, tools, and, importantly, the space—both literal and metaphorical—to discover the innovations and priorities that will shape Iona’s present and determine its future.
I am honored to announce today, in advance of a formal announcement to follow, the creation of The Gabelli Center for Teaching & Learning at Iona University, made possible by the generosity of Marc Gabelli, his mother, Elaine Madonna Gabelli, and the EMG Madonna Foundation.
The Gabelli Center will be a catalyst for educational growth in people, pedagogy and programs. It will be the keystone of an ongoing institutional commitment to faculty development and academic excellence and distinctiveness in the service of student success.
Leveraging Iona’s integrated Library and Information Technology (IT) structure, the Gabelli Center will begin by launching a new initiative – AI@Iona – as its first focus. This will allow us to build upon the energy of the AI workshops sponsored by Provost Tricia Mulligan, Ph.D., as well as on the numerous faculty-led explorations of AI tools and themes that have already taken root across disciplines.
Teaching and learning are always works in progress. That reality will inform the Gabelli Center’s development as we take incremental, iterative steps to establish a nimble, flexible, and lasting resource for our community. Librarians have already begun learning new technologies, and are now available to offer guidance and consultation on a number of AI tools. They will be monitoring and assessing others as they become available.
Beginning this fall, the Gabelli Center will sponsor a number of annual Presidential Fellowships to fund research and inquiry into major pedagogical themes, with associated grants to additional faculty. More news will be forthcoming on these key components of our plan in the coming weeks.
Even as we focus on digital technologies and peer into the proliferating screens that deliver them, we will continue to embrace—and prioritize—the traditional bulwarks of Iona’s, indeed all, teaching and learning: human relationships and face-to-face exchange. This means we recognize the importance of physical spaces that invite patterns of interaction that foster the advancement of conversations and ideas.
To create these patterns, we will give the Gabelli Center for Teaching & Learning a permanent home on the second floor of Ryan Library, in the area now occupied by the Advising Center, which will move over the summer to the Library’s ground floor. For the time being, the interim location for the Gabelli Center will be a dedicated area on the ground floor of the Library.
The great 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant shaped much of his thinking around three questions: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope for? The Gabelli Center for Teaching & Learning will support Iona faculty as we set out to ask these questions anew for ourselves and our students.
So much work has already been accomplished in building the foundations of the Gabelli Center. In addition to Marc, Elaine and the EMG Madonna Foundation, I want to thank Provost Mulligan for her leadership in moving this initiative forward; Joanne Steele and IT for providing technological support; the Library staff for sharing their knowledge of the different AI programs; Facilities for being so responsive; and Jim Mustich for providing a fresh perspective as we begin this project. Our hope is that it will grow by finding the best ways to support faculty in what they have always done so well: inspire student learning.
Our mission has never been more important. Thank you for believing in it.
Sincerely,
Seamus Carey, Ph.D.
President, Iona University