Miguel Molina Cordero, a first-year Smith College student, walks into his Physics class every week, sits down at a desk, and opens his computer to do his classwork. He completes it on an AI-powered learning platform.
Smith College has joined in on a trend sweeping higher education across the U.S., using AI Chatbots and AI programs as a part of class curricula, specifically in STEM courses.
The use of ChatGPT and generative AI has been met with much debate and fear in the context of academia. However, in the past two years, universities across the country have begun to utilize AI in their pedagogy as it has become increasingly intertwined in the job market.
Smith started to use a platform provided in the summer of 2025 by the University of Massachusetts called the GenAI Collaborative Playground. One feature of the collaborative playground is premium access to ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek and other major programs. Professors can also create their own bot by inputting a textbook or other source material, thereby “training” it so that students can ask it questions about the material without outside datasets. Professors opt in to the program and decide which features students in their classes have access to.
The AI Playground is completely powered by a hydroelectric dam in Holyoke on the Connecticut River, through the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC). In June of 2025, Governor Maura Healy announced a $31 million investment into MGHPCC’s AI technology. In their release of this information, the institution said it would allow public and private higher education institutions access to the AI infrastructure, which Smith is utilizing.
Christophe Golé, Professor of Mathematical Sciences, implemented the AI program as a part of his Calculus III and Advanced Calculus classes in the fall of 2025. “Professor Vasu and I designed a project that was impossible to solve manually, encouraging students to use tools like Desmos, Mathematica and AI to explore potential solutions,” Golé said. “Additionally, I’ve trained a custom tutor for my course.”
Golé represented Smith at a recent conference in DC called the Action Collaborative on Education and Workforce Trajectories in Tech. This was in association with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Twenty representatives from higher education institutions discussed the impact of AI across education and, according to Golé, Smith was the only liberal arts college present.
“While we are still in an exploratory phase, I believe it is essential to investigate both the advantages and drawbacks of AI in education,” Golé said. “As the professional landscape shifts, we owe it to our students to provide a safe environment for experimentation.”
The use of AI chatbots as an accessory to learning is being implemented into various classes at Smith, including Golé’s calculus classes, but also Math 153 – Intro to Discrete Math, Physics 115 – Quantitative Approaches, and BIO 132 – Molecules, Cells & Systems. Bio 132 is taught by Professor Michael Barresi, who implemented the Smith Gen AI program into his intro biology class, research lab, and upper-level Developmental Biology class.
“In the case of Intro Bio 132, I wanted to create an AI tutor for which students could interact and ask questions,” Barresi said. “I approved of the kinds of ways that it would behave. I want it to ask the student questions for clarification and even probe whether or not they understand this given thing.”
For Barresi’s Bio 132 class, there are two different “chats” that students can ask questions to: one that has been trained on the syllabus, and another that has been trained on the textbook.
Barresi presented the program to his Bio 132 students on the first day of class, and he encouraged them to use it if they had any questions about the syllabus or the class content. When first-year Bio 132 student Maimuna Bah asked the bot if it could explain what it was, it responded with: “Hi! I’m your BIO132 AI tutor. I’m here to help you learn introductory biology by coaching you through concepts using our course text. I can explain ideas in clear, student-friendly ways.” The bot continued, “I won’t just hand you answers– I’ll help you build understanding with explanations, examples, analogies, and practice questions, then give feedback on your thinking.”
Bah said that she has never used the bot to ask questions about class material. Another student in the class, first-year Anna Lupien, has also never engaged with the bot.
“I feel that it’s really unnecessary to have an AI model teach the syllabus– that should be the job of the professor to engage with the students,” Lupien said. “I don’t think that using AI as a resource to study, even if it’s just fed on the textbook, [provides] the most accurate information.”
Lupien also added that she has a “moral stance” against the use of AI. “At Smith College, among my friends and the people that I’ve talked to, there’s a general consensus against AI,” she said.
It was not said in the course description for Physics 115, or Biology 132, that AI would be a part of the curriculum. In fact, many STEM students were not made aware of the new AI use. It is also not widely known by non-STEM students and faculty. Timothy Recuber, sociology professor, was very surprised to hear about this development.
“The ways that we’ve been teaching have been working”, said Recuber. “The old ways– small class sizes, discussions, face to face, community building, all that stuff is the argument for Smith, and to a certain extent, all liberal arts colleges.” Recuber also added, “There’s no problem that this solves. There are problems that it creates.”
As of 2026, there “is no universal policy on the use of generative AI in the completion of coursework,”as said on the Smith College website. It states that using AI “to help clarify concepts and produce study aids is not necessarily a violation of the Academic Integrity Statement”, but “any time you are using AI in a way that is substituting for the “thinking work” that you should be doing for a course, you should stop and check with your professor about how you are using AI.”
Although Smith is implementing this AI into certain classes, it is unclear how it will develop.
“AI is here to stay; it is likely the most impactful technological development I will see in my lifetime,” Professor Golé said. Physics student Miguel Molina Cordero does not share this opinion. “Get rid of it, please,” he said. “I don’t know anybody who’s benefiting from this platform.”
Amazing article Amanda!!! Love that pairing of ending quotes haha.