Vermont’s colleges and universities are rolling out plans for how to responsibly bring artificial intelligence into their classrooms.
Bennington College launched its Center for Artificial Intelligence this March to help create curricula that address AI for roughly 650 undergraduates. The center is a hub for experimentation with the technology, said founder Darcy Otto.
“Not just who it helps, who it serves, but also what it costs, and ultimately, how it works,” he said.
Bennington College is among many institutions in the state juggling their duty to prepare students for a shifting workforce while preserving pre-AI standards for teaching and learning.
A cohort of Champlain College faculty is already integrating AI into select courses with a grant from the Argosy Foundation. The fellows will recommend the circumstances AI is appropriate for, and which are less appropriate, said Marie Segares, an associate professor in the Robert P. Stiller School of Business.
“One of the important things is making sure students have the skills they need to enter the workforce, but also, one of those skills now is perceiving of AI as a coworker,” Segares said.
Twenty-eight percent of workers with at least a bachelor’s degree used AI for at least some of their work in 2025, compared to 20% a year earlier, according to the Pew Research Center.
Champlain College is also among the first three institutions collaborating with Anthropic to offer school-wide access to its AI chatbot, Claude Pro.
But for many Bennington College students, AI’s descent onto campus is worrying. Some are resistant to the Center for AI out of concern that the technology threatens fields like the arts, said Andy Farrell, a senior and student representative on the center’s advisory board.
“Students are experiencing AI and the boom of AI right before they go out into the workforce, where AI is having a really huge impact. So I think it comes from both fear of, ‘How is this going to affect my life?’ And anger about the fact that it inevitably will,” Farrell said.
The uncertain impact of AI on the job market is weighing on students in Vermont and the nation.
Forty-two percent of students have given at least a fair amount of thought to changing their area of study because of AI, according to an April Gallup poll. About 7 in 10 students in technology and vocational studies have considered making a switch, compared to a third of students in fields like health care.
“The question is, how would we teach students when and where to use AI and when to lay off?”Darcy Otto, founder of Bennington College's Center for Artificial Intelligence
Cheating with AI remains a concern for instructors and students, but campus experts are optimistic that greater literacy will mean less policing of students by administrations.
“Students don't know when and where to use AI, what its weaknesses are, what its strengths are,” said Otto, from Bennington College. “The question is, how would we teach students when and where to use AI and when to lay off?”
At Middlebury College, answers are brewing in the Office of Digital Learning. Its eight fellows offer guidance to instructors on embracing new technology in class, said Amy Collier, associate provost for digital learning at Middlebury.
“Surveillance and guardrails, I think, create this distrustful relationship between faculty and students, where the assumption is that, ‘Unless I put these guardrails in place, and unless I surveil my students, they're going to cheat,’” she said.
Instructors' expectations need to be clear if they usher AI into the classroom, Segares said. Otherwise, students are left guessing whether they are violating a rule.
An AI task force at the University of Vermont is looking to teach AI basics to all incoming students, said Kellie Campbell, leader of the task force. Its inaugural, $200,000 AI Innovation Fund will kickstart 20 projects using the technology this spring.
At Bennington College, where Farrell is urging their peers to explore AI, time is of the essence.
“Education on the topic of AI, no matter what sort of moral stance you take on it, is really, really important right now,” Farrell said. “We want our students to be engaged really critically with this thing that they are going to have to contend with for the rest of their lives.”
