We were delighted to receive a robust set of applications (representing 11 countries, 119 institutions/organizations, and an array of disciplines), and the strength of the applications made the selection process extremely difficult. Ultimately, we selected applications that raised research topics in line with the goals of the research seminar and that paired well with other applications to facilitate the formation of multi-institutional research cohorts. Our acceptance rate was 17%. 

Breana Bayraktar is an educational developer at the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning at George Mason University (Virginia, USA) where she leads faculty development initiatives focused on assessment and feedback, ethical AI integration, alternative grading practices, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Her research examines instructor feedback literacy, practitioner inquiry into GenAI in teaching and learning, and the ways institutional culture, relational dynamics, and instructor beliefs shape assessment and learning.

Through her participation in the CEL research seminar, she is interested in exploring how students, faculty, and staff develop critical GenAI literacy, with particular attention to the decision-making processes that shape when and how GenAI is used as a collaborative partner in learning. She looks forward to exploring how professional development can foster more reflective, ethical, and intentional engagement with GenAI, emphasizing the cultivation of agency, discernment, and meaningful collaboration within evolving socio-technical contexts.

Jason Beasley – Western Michigan University – United States

Jason Beasley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Western Michigan University. His primary research interest for this seminar centers on assessment design and the integration of GenAI into experiential and engaged learning activities. He is particularly interested in how to maintain higher education as a value-added proposition by equipping students with practical, transferable skills that serve them well after graduation. He is also curious about the viability of asynchronous course formats in an AI-saturated environment, and whether (and how) they can be meaningfully preserved or reimagined to maintain rigor, engagement, and learning outcomes.

Mary Beth Benbenek – University of Cambridge – United Kingdom

Mary Beth Benbenek is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Cambridge. She is also a Tutor and Bye-Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, one of Cambridge’s thirty-one colleges, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her work explores how academics develop as university teachers, how students develop their epistemic beliefs, and the purpose of higher education in general.

She is interested in exploring higher education learning in the age of GenAI, as it foregrounds fundamental questions about the purpose of higher education. The emergence of GenAI demands that we ask, with some urgency, what we owe our students in ensuring that their intellectual capacities are genuinely developed rather than inadvertently displaced. It also prompts us to consider what it might mean for students to deepen their understanding and expand their possibilities for thinking, acting, and becoming under conditions of AI mediation.

Lisa Berry – University of California Santa Barbara – United States

Lisa Berry is the Director of UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Innovative Teaching, Learning and Research (CITRAL) in the Office of Teaching and Learning. CITRAL’s programming and grants support evidence-based teaching, curriculum design, educational technologies, assessment and teaching evaluation.

Her primary interest for the research seminar is to develop frameworks that can aid departments and faculty in decision-making about how, why and when to use GenAI in their own work and with students. These frameworks will need to be structured to enable disciplinary-specific AI Literacy that respects the signature pedagogies of diverse fields. This will involve asking what tools, skills and ways of thinking/practicing will be transferable to lifelong learning across disciplines and professional contexts. With the rapidly changing GenAI landscape, I believe that developing AI decision-making frameworks that explicitly recognize human values, reflect evidence-based pedagogies, and encourage transparency/dialogue between faculty and students, is paramount.

Alexander Eden – University of Minnesota Rochester – United States

Alexander Eden is an incoming Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Minnesota Rochester, beginning in Fall 2026. His work centers on biology education and the scholarship of teaching and learning. His primary research interests include student experiences in biology, cultural wealth and belonging, and inclusive approaches to teaching that support meaningful learning.

In the context of this seminar, he is particularly interested in exploring how generative AI can be acknowledged and integrated in the classroom in ways that preserve strong, evidence-based pedagogical practices rather than replace them. He is also interested in how culture, identity, and prior educational experiences may shape the ways students understand, trust, and use GenAI, especially across diverse institutional and student contexts.

Robyn Edwards – Western Michigan University – United States

Robyn Edwards is an Assistant Professor of TESOL in the College of Education and Human Development at Western Michigan University. Her work focuses on preparing educators to support multilingual learners through evidence-based, humanizing pedagogies across K–12 and higher education contexts. Her research examines the role of generative artificial intelligence in language education, with particular attention to how AI can support or hinder learning, teacher decision-making, and student agency. She is especially interested in AI literacy development, ethical and pedagogical integration of GenAI, and the design of AI-infused and AI-resistant learning experiences.

Her current projects include exploring AI-powered tools, such as translation earbuds and conversational AI, to support newcomer multilingual learners. Through this seminar, she aims to contribute to multi-institutional research that clarifies what constitutes meaningful learning and engagement in the age of GenAI.

Suzanne Ehrlich – University of North Florida – United States

Suzanne Ehrlich is an Associate Professor and Program Director of the Instructional Technology, Training and Development master’s program at the University of North Florida (UNF). Her work positions Generative AI (GenAI) as a collaborative cognitive partner, not merely a productivity tool, to advance AI readiness for the future workforce. She leverages the students-as-partners (SaP) framework through a design thinking and innovation lens, fostering inclusive ecosystems where students become active agents in co-designing human-AI systems. Through her SOTL approach, Suzanne collaborates with students and community stakeholders to develop co-intelligence solutions through innovation challenges.

Her research, grounded in Universal Design for Learning (UDL), investigates GenAI as an emancipatory technology to reduce structural barriers, enhance access, and advance learner voice and agency. She specifically examine Relational Intelligence’s (RQ) role in developing interpersonal skills, ensuring our workforce is adaptable, ethical, and ready to design “to the edges” to build robust talent pipelines.

Daniel Ernst – Texas Woman’s University – United States

Daniel Ernst is Interim Chief AI Strategist and Assistant Professor of English at Texas Woman’s University. His research examines how artificial intelligence is reshaping writing, rhetoric, and education. He has published in popular outlets such as The Conversation and the Dallas Morning News, and his work has been featured on NPR’s The Academic Minute and the Texas Standard. His peer-reviewed scholarship appears in the Journal of Writing Assessment, focusing on AI and writing pedagogy. He speaks nationally on AI and the future of teaching and learning and was named to the 2026 class of Dallas Innovates AI 75, recognizing leading voices shaping the AI landscape in the Dallas–Fort Worth region.

Subhadra Ganguli – Penn State University Lehigh Valley – United States

Subhadra Ganguli is an Assistant Professor of Business at Penn State University Lehigh Valley. Her primary research interests are: human – AI collaboration through prompt engineering in the areas of business, economics and finance; human – AI collaboration for small and medium scale businesses through community partnerships developed through classroom teaching. She is also open to exploring new research themes and collaboration within the broad scope of learning and teaching with AI.

Ed Gehringer – North Carolina State University – United States

Ed Gehringer is a Professor of Computer Science at North Carolina State University. He has been involved in Teaching and Learning research for two decades, and has made nearly 200 presentations at Teaching and Learning conferences and workshops. He was lead organizer of the Workshop on Computer Architecture Education for 25 years. He has pioneered assignments that require the use of generative AI in designing and implementing software applications.

Monia Haselhorst – Colorado Mountain College – United States

Monia Haselhorst is Professor of Ecosystem Science and Stewardship and co-coordinator of the Office of Teaching and Learning (OTL) at Colorado Mountain College, a rural, open-access, Hispanic Serving and Minority Serving institution in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. She holds a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Wyoming, with a research background in population genetics and high-elevation plant ecophysiology. In her OTL role, she designs experiential faculty professional development, including GenAI literacy workshops where faculty engage with AI tools as learners before designing classroom applications.

Her research interest for this seminar centers on how faculty develop critical GenAI literacy through sustained professional learning, and how that developmental process shapes the way they scaffold students’ GenAI use in discipline-specific contexts, particularly at institutions where faculty capacity is stretched and students’ access to technology varies significantly.

Trent Kays – Augusta University – United States

Trent Kays , PhD, is Assistant Professor and Director of Professional Writing and Rhetoric in the Department of English and World Languages at Augusta University, where he teaches courses in first-year writing, professional writing, and digital rhetoric. His research is focused on rhetorical theory, critical AI studies, and digital media, and he examines how AI systems shape discourse practices and intellectual labor.

Trent is co-editing Teaching Authentic Thinking in the Age of AI: Theory, Pedagogy, and Practice and developing a book manuscript on digital rhetorical practices in platform-mediated environments. His work on critical AI literacy explores how students develop confidence in their own intellectual judgment while navigating AI-mediated learning contexts. For this seminar, Trent’s research interests center on assessment practices and authentic learning: how students learn to trust their self-knowledge while developing critical frameworks for evaluating AI outputs, and how educators foster genuine expertise development in AI-rich educational environments.

Kriss Kemp-Graham – East Texas A&M University – United States

Kriss Kemp-Graham is a Professor of Educational Leadership at East Texas A&M University, where she also serves as Faculty on Special Assignment in the College of Education and Human Services Dean’s Office. In this role, she is charged with developing shared research courses across three distinct disciplines, with artificial intelligence as a foundational component of each. A former PK–12 practitioner with experience as a principal, vice principal, and central office administrator in Newark Public Schools, she brings a rich practitioner-scholar perspective to her faculty work.

Dr. Kemp-Graham’s primary research interests center on equity and belonging in higher education, educational leadership preparation, and innovative pedagogy for applied statistics in doctoral education. Her current scholarly focus on the intersections of storytelling, AI, and engaged learning positions her well for multi-institutional inquiry into rethinking engaged learning in the age of GenAI.

Djuddah Leijen – University of Tartu – Estonia

Djuddah Leijen is Associate Professor of English, head of the Centre for Academic Writing and Communication at the University of Tartu in Estonia and affiliated researcher at Malmö University, Sweden. His research interests span, writing process research (cognitive processes), writing pedagogy, self-regulations, technology and digital tools, in cross-cultural, cross linguistic, and institutional contexts.

Jeff Loats – Metropolitan State University of Denver – United States

Jeff Loats works at MSU Denver where he is the the Executive Director of the Center for Teaching, Learning and Design and Professor of Physics. I lead a center with a large instructional designer group, an instructional accessibility team, and traditional faculty development staff and services. I have two primary research interests in the area of GenAI and higher education. First, how can GenAI tools be integrated into instructor work without compromising student trust and perceptions of higher education and without contributing to the “adjunct-ification” of higher ed. Second, what does effective engaged learning look like when GenAI tools are ubiquitous, low cost, and marketed using “cheating as a service” language.

Travis Maynard – Elon University – United States

Travis Maynard is a faculty member in the Professional Writing and Rhetoric program at Elon University. His teaching and scholarship treat writing as remix, with generative AI functioning as a large-scale remix system that accelerates how texts are assembled, adapted, and circulated. His recent research examines how alumni use AI in professional writing contexts, with particular attention to how experienced users employ it rhetorically rather than just for drafting. He is especially interested in AI as a collaborator and how writers develop more deliberate ways of working with and against its outputs. Building on that work, he develops pedagogical approaches that help students engage AI more deliberately, including practices of prompting, revision, and critical evaluation.

E’lise Nissen – Medical University of South Carolina – United States

E’lise Nissen, MS  serves as Director of AI in Education and Scholarship at the Medical University of South Carolina’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning and Chair of MUSC’s AI Education Committee, where she leads institutional efforts to advance responsible AI integration across healthcare education.

Her research for this seminar centers on a dual priority within assessment design: assuring human competency while developing effective human-AI collaboration skills. In healthcare education contexts, she is examining two interconnected questions — how educators can cultivate students’ trust in their own self-knowledge even as they explore their trust in GenAI, and how students learn to assess GenAI outputs as they develop along a novice-to-expert trajectory. She is particularly interested in how these capacities must develop together, and what that means for assessment design in programs where graduate readiness has direct patient care implications.

Tom Ritchie – University of Warwick – United Kingdom

Tom Ritchie is a Reader and Director of Student Experience in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick, UK, and is currently completing a Fulbright Scholar placement at Elon University (2025-26). He is also Founder and Co-Lead of the Centre for Belonging in Education, Chair of Warwick’s Education for Sustainable Development Action Group, and hosts the AI Ethics Now podcast (14,000+ listeners across 110+ countries), alongside teaching about AI ethics.

Tom’s research interests for this seminar focus on the intersection of GenAI, student belonging, and equitable learning design in STEM higher education. He is particularly interested in how GenAI tools might support or undermine authentic student engagement, the implications for assessment design that prioritises learning over gatekeeping, and the development of critical AI literacy frameworks that empower rather than exclude students from diverse backgrounds.

Nora K. Rivera – Texas Tech University – United States

Nora K. Rivera is an Assistant Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University. She studies translation, cultural rhetorics, writing, technical communication, cross-cultural user experience, and emerging technologies. Her interests in generative AI (GenAI) technologies focus on critical engagement with GenAI tools for translation, language access, and user experience design in academic and professional contexts.

Rivera explores how GenAI can both support and challenge multilingual learners, highlighting the importance of developing approaches that address the unique needs and strengths of students who use multiple languages in academic and professional settings. She currently collaborates with an Indigenous NGO in Mexico in a project that aims to develop guidelines for partnering with Indigenous organizations to develop GenAI audio tools for language identification and preservation. Rivera is the author of The Rhetorical Mediator: Understanding Agency in Indigenous Translation and Interpretation through Indigenous Approaches to UX (2024).

Harry West – University of the West of England – United Kingdom

Harry West is a Senior Lecturer and academic Programme Leader for BSc(hons) Geography based in the School of Architecture & Environment at the University of the West of England (UK). His background is in physical geography and environmental management, but he has a long-standing interest in pedagogic research and the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education.

He is interested in the research topic assessment of learning and outputs in an age of GenAI-supported engaged learning, particularly questions that explore how students learn to critically use and assess GenAI outputs as they develop from novice learners to disciplinary experts, how trust in self-knowledge is cultivated alongside GenAI, and how GenAI might support self-assessment, feedback, inclusive assessment and assessment for and as learning.

Nadya Yakovchuk – University of Surrey – United Kingdom

Nadya Yakovchuk is a Lecturer in Academic Writing at the University of Surrey, UK. She is the academic lead for the Writing Development Programme offered to doctoral students through the Surrey Doctoral College. Nadya holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Warwick, UK, and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is also the co-convenor of the ‘Doctoral Education’ Special Interest Group of the British Association of Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes.

Nadya’s research interests lie in understanding doctoral students’ specific needs in relation to their awareness and use of GenAI, in order to support the development of their critical GenAI literacy skills. She is particularly interested in exploring various factors they need to consider when making decisions about using GenAI as a collaborative partner at different stages of their doctoral lifecycle, especially in relation to their development as effective academic writers.

Dawn Zimmerer – Hinds Community College – United States

Dawn Zimmerer is an academic librarian, speaker, and program builder focused on helping higher education make thoughtful, practical use of AI. She develops courses, workshops, and presentations that support librarians, faculty, and campus communities in using AI with competence, curiosity, and care. Her work centers AI literacy, ethical and secure use, research support, and the role of libraries as trusted partners in teaching, learning, and innovation.

Known for a grounded and engaging style, Dawn connects strategy to practice and helps audiences move past both panic and hype toward informed, usable approaches to emerging technology. She is especially interested in how libraries can serve as campus hubs for AI learning, experimentation, and support, and her work reflects a commitment to access, inclusion, honesty, and service.