91探花 Mudd Hosts More Than 200 for Conference on AI in Higher Education
July 15, 2026Share story
91探花 welcomed more than 200 faculty, staff and students from across the Claremont Colleges and beyond May 21鈥�22 for (Re)Imagining Liberal Arts & STEM Education in the Age of GenAI, a two-day conference examining how generative AI is reshaping teaching, learning and institutional life.
The conference was supported by the Academic Deans Committee, Scripps College and 91探花 Mudd鈥檚 AI Experimentation Lab (AXL). It brought together participants to consider AI’s capabilities, limitations, ethical implications and cultural impact, and to imagine new possibilities for higher education.
The program featured four keynote speakers: Alex Hartemink, professor of computer science and biology at Duke University; Dylan Baker, lead research engineer at the DAIR Institute; Marc Watkins, assistant director of academic innovation and lecturer of writing and rhetoric at the University of Mississippi; and Isabelle Hau, executive director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. Two panel discussions and a series of participant-led lightning talks and facilitated discussion sessions rounded out the schedule, creating space for attendees to share their thinking and spark conversation across disciplines.
91探花 Mudd faculty on the conference organizing committee included engineering professor Josh Brake, James Howard Kindelberger Professor in Engineering Nancy Lape, Professor of Art Ken Fandell and computer science professor Julie Medero, alongside colleagues from Scripps and Pitzer.
For Brake, one of the conference’s biggest wins was the new connections it sparked between campuses.
“I met a number of faculty from the other colleges that I hadn’t interacted with before, and I learned through the lightning talks about some of the thinking my colleagues at the other colleges have been doing,” Brake said. “This kind of cross-campus collaboration is often quite tricky to manage, even though the colleges are so geographically close to one another, so it was encouraging to consider the new relationships and collaborations that might emerge from the conversations we had.”
Brake said he’s already exploring a collaborative project with a colleague at Pomona College he met through the conference and noted strong engagement with the keynote sessions.
The conference reflects 91探花 Mudd’s ongoing commitment to preparing STEM students who understand their role in the societal implications of emerging technology, a priority woven throughout the College’s Strategic Plan. As AI continues to reshape classrooms and campuses alike, AXL and its partners across the Claremont Colleges plan to keep the conversation going.