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F&M is committed to fostering human-centered AI innovation through its signature interdisciplinary approach that asks how these tools can be used ethically, responsibly, and sustainably in service to a more just and human future.

ANDREW RICH, PRESIDENT

“AI is reshaping how we learn, work, and lead. At F&M, our students learn not only how to use powerful technologies, but how to question them, guide them, and apply them responsibly to prepare for leadership in an ever-changing world.”


The pace of change is accelerating across industries, sectors, and cultures. With generative AI and other cutting-edge technological innovations poised to handle many entry-level duties, top-tier employers are increasingly seeking college graduates with the versatile skills and perspectives fostered by a liberal arts degree. 

At F&M, we meet this shift by framing AI as a tool for inquiry, teaching you to navigate its complexities with an ethical and responsible lens. As you explore the technology’s potential, you will become technically proficient while sharpening the high-level critical thinking, ethical judgment, and creative problem-solving skills that are more important than ever. This is the F&M advantage: mastering the tools of the future while cultivating the timeless humanist perspectives that will set you apart.

An AI Certificate to Prepare World-Ready Leaders

Certificates are supplemental educational pathways you can pursue that are not tied to your major or minor. The Artificial Intelligence and the Liberal Arts certificate introduces a distinct approach to examine AI through a blended lens of humanistic inquiry and technical proficiency. With coursework that spans the sciences and humanities, the curriculum simultaneously explores the technology, its history, and its societal implications. This foundation culminates in real-world, hands-on experiences, such as internships or research projects.

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Jason "Willie" Wilson, assistant professor of computer science

“Our AI and the Liberal Arts certificate empowers students to ask the hard, timely questions about AI.”

“Asking these questions requires combining a practical, hands-on understanding of the technology with the skills to critically analyze the implications for people, the way we learn, and the way our society functions.”

AI Across the Curriculum

AI has been taught and researched at F&M for over a decade. Just as technology never stands still, our curriculum adapts alongside the rapid pace of innovation. Balancing established, hallmark topics with rotating special-interest studies, F&M courses range from AI theory and algorithms to applications in biology, human-computer interaction, and child development. Faculty research — including projects funded by the National Science Foundation — spans the evolution of the field, from pioneering symbolic logic to novel deep-learning algorithms. F&M’s computer science department has spearheaded cutting-edge research into AI’s role in the classroom and led an initiative to develop an AI ethics curriculum for courses across the College.

Explore a sampling of recent courses that bridge the gap between technical mastery and humanistic inquiry — many of which are staples of the new Artificial Intelligence and the Liberal Arts certificate.

  • Artificial Intelligence and You (Religious Studies)
  • Intro to Bioinformatics (Bioinformatics)
  • Minds, Machines, and Morals (Cognitive Science; Moral Psychology)
  • Introduction to Data Science (Data Science)
  • Introduction to Machine Learning (Computer Science)
  • Sociology of AI (Sociology)
  • Teaching and Learning Machine Ethics (Computer Science)

Explore course catalog

 

Physics

Computer Science and AI at F&M

How do you study computer science through a liberal arts lens? Discover how F&M faculty and students are meeting technical innovation with ethical judgment, critical thinking, wisdom, and proficiency.

Explore Computer Science and AI »

SUNITA KRAMER ’88, PROVOST

“We are both thoughtful and strategic about how we implement AI tools on our campus — all while emphasizing the human-centered skills that AI cannot replace.”

“At F&M, we are leading conversations about the responsible and ethical use of AI and how we can partner with the technology to make sure that our students are aware of it, know how to responsibly use it, and benefit from it while growing in a learning environment where we are creating new knowledge.”

Faculty Workshop: “Beyond Abstinence Only: What Our Students Need to Learn About AI”

Associate Professor of Sociology Caroline Faulkner and Senior Instructional Designer Kelly Miller offered a four-part workshop for faculty to help them guide students navigating AI for a wide variety of academic purposes. The series, “Beyond Abstinence Only: What Our Students Need to Learn About AI,” focused on topics such as AI hype, AI literacy frameworks and cognitive concerns, the ethical components of AI literacy, and a look at future opportunities and challenges of AI.

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Students Help Build an AI Ethics Curriculum

“Teaching and Learning Machine Ethics,” a course led by Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jason “Willie” Wilson, did more than explore the basic fundamentals of AI. It prepared students to teach machine ethics. The course’s students were separated into groups and paired with a faculty mentor to create curricular material to be used in future courses across campus. Along the way, students learned fundamentals of computer science, AI, ethics and pedagogy.

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Student Startup Promotes Responsible AI Use

Hoping to harness the power of AI to help students learn, recent F&M grads Kirin Sawasdikosol ’24 and Dilrabo Kodirova ’25 developed a software startup, UniMind. The software gives professors more control over whether and how AI is used by students. Faculty set parameters on the use of AI to complete assignments; the software warns students if they violate those guidelines, and alerts professors to the presence of AI-generated text.

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Minds vs. Models

The course “Minds, Machines, and Morals” led by Josh Rottman, Associate Professor of Psychology & Scientific and Philosophical Studies of Mind, examines the boundary between artificial modeling and the human mind. Students explore if deep neural network architectures could have the capacity for rationality and common sense, use experimental prompts to test the cognitive limits of Large Language Models (LLM) such as ChatGPT, and discuss how LLM architectures are fundamentally unable to recapitulate humanlike intelligence.

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Detecting Wildlife in Trail Camera Images

In a partnership with the Lancaster Nature Conservancy, Daniel Ardia, associate dean of the faculty and Charles A. Dana Professor of Biology, is using AI to automate wildlife detection in trail camera images. By integrating AI-based software into their research workflow, the team can automatically differentiate between animals and humans in trail camera images, saving hundreds of hours of manual labor. The team is now retraining the AI models to identify specific species, providing a more detailed and efficient look at local wildlife populations.

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AI’s Humanitarian Frontier

Fronefield Crawford, Charles A. Dana Professor of Physics and Astronomy, and Tim Bechtel, Senior Teaching Professor of Geosciences and director of F&M Science Outreach, are working with students to leverage AI to detect surface landmines and tripwires in mine-contaminated areas. Crawford and Bechtel serve on a NATO-sponsored international research coalition with partners in Italy and Ukraine. Together, they are engineering specialized robots and sensors designed to autonomously demine war-torn regions.

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Faculty Voices and AI

“As AI and automation increasingly take on routine tasks, business professionals will engage in analysis, strategic advising, and other high-impact projects earlier in their careers.”

“In the classroom, these technologies allow my students to focus more on developing the critical thinking, data interpretation, and communication skills they need to succeed in these endeavors.” — Harlow Loch, Assistant Professor of Accounting

“Students are navigating a world (and a job market) increasingly saturated with AI and part of our work as educators is to help young people think through the issues in rich and nuanced ways.”

— Erik Anderson, Associate Professor of English

“AI can help students master difficult concepts by providing endless practice problems and patient, encouraging feedback.”

“It also helps me make my class more inclusive and engaging since I can generate scenarios that are relevant to my students' lived experience while also targeting the concepts we are learning in class.” — Emily Jensen, Assistant Professor of Computer Science

AI Resources for the F&M Community

We offer a growing set of resources designed to support research, learning, and collaborative discovery in the age of AI. These include: 

Powering Innovation: Inside F&M’s Campus Supercomputer

Imagine 1,600 computer processors combining power toward one task. This is the engine driving innovation at F&M. Called a High-Performance Computing (HPC) cluster, this elite shared resource accelerates discovery, empowers large-scale research, and fuels the collaborative spirit that defines the F&M experience.

Explore the HPC Cluster »

CARRIE RAMPP, VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER

“F&M has always been well ahead of the curve when it comes to providing technology infrastructure that supports any and all forms of teaching, learning and research that can benefit from advanced technology resources.”

“At a time when our educational mission is more important than ever, we feel particularly able to facilitate opportunities for students and faculty to not only learn and experiment with AI technologies but to use them for real research and to even participate in the development of nextgen AI best practices and even nextgen tools in the rapidly evolving world of AI.”