Featured Publication • The Teaching Professor

Preparing to Teach with AI: Six Faculty Roles for Reimagining Creative Teaching

A practitioner article offering faculty a set of practical roles for bringing AI into the classroom without losing sight of good teaching, academic honesty, and genuine student learning.

Lead author: Dr. Lynn F. Austin • with Lorrie Candiotti, Joe Keller, ChristieLynn Konopka, and Josephine Shaw

The Teaching Professor, Magna Publications • August 4, 2025

About This Article

As generative AI reshapes how students engage with learning and how faculty design for it, many educators find themselves caught between fear-based policy conversations and the practical reality of a changed classroom. This article offers a different starting point: six adaptable faculty roles for integrating AI with purpose, integrity, and a student-centered mindset.

The six roles, the AI mentor, the data literacy facilitator, the AI ethics advocate, the prompt engineer for learning, the curator of AI-enhanced resources, and the human-in-the-loop designer, are not prescriptive checklists. They are flexible teaching lenses that prioritize pedagogy, academic honesty, and genuine student learning over compliance or avoidance.

The article grew from our work across disciplines and reflects a core conviction: AI does not change what great teachers do. It sharpens it. Faculty do not need to become AI experts. They need to prepare with purpose, model ethical engagement, and keep the human dimensions of teaching central.

Read the Article (PDF)

This article was published in The Teaching Professor (Magna Publications), August 2025. It is shared here with the publisher’s permission. The Teaching Professor retains rights to the original publication.