AI-AWARE TEACHING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
SUSAN RAY, PhD
I’m a teacher first. Twenty years in college classrooms, the last three of them teaching with AI, has shown me what the policy debates often miss: the final paper or project was never the point. We need to return our attention to the messy, human work behind it. I help faculty, administrators, and students move from AI anxiety toward AI awareness.Faculty and students may choose not to use AI. None of us can afford to teach, or learn, as though it does not exist.
Selected Publications
The Chronicle of Higher EducationTransparency & Reflection: Navigating Student + AI Work in Higher EducationThe Faculty Retreat From AI Has a Student Cost — Solutions ReviewI Embraced AI in My Community College English Class — EdSurge
ABOUT ME
I've been teaching literature and composition in college classrooms for over two decades, the last thirteen years at Delaware County Community College, outside Philadelphia. In 2026 I received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching and became the college’s first AI Faculty Fellow. When AI arrived in my students’ lives, I didn’t ban it. I built Bridging the AI Gap, a grant-funded pilot that teaches students to use AI transparently, keeping their thinking visible on the page.That pilot became the foundation of everything since: speaking at other campuses, mentoring faculty teams for the AAC&U, an AI-Aware Faculty Fellowship with W. W. Norton, and writing that includes “The Fourth Literacy.” My throughline is simple: help people understand AI well enough to keep their own thinking on the page, at a moment when it has never been easier to hand that work over.
Sample Slide Deck
AI-AWARE TEACHING
Here’s a partial deck from a session I lead on rethinking assessment in the AI era. The full keynote and workshop show faculty how to make student thinking visible, use AI openly, and design assignments that require judgment rather than final products.
