As AI continues to evolve, each of the five colleges at SEMO has had to adapt to new technology entering the lives of their students and faculty.
College of STEM
Lucas Kirschman, associate dean of the College of STEM, described AI as a “double-edged sword” for STEM education.
“On one hand, it can really enhance capabilities and understanding,” Kirschman said, in reference to teaching.
In biology and environmental sciences, he said students can use AI to create figures from data while focusing on understanding the “ideas behind the figure”, rather than only learning the buttons necessary to navigate a program.
Kirschman also uses AI in his own research for literature reviews, statistical analysis and experimental designs. He said students can upload scientific papers to AI tools and then ask questions about unfamiliar terms and methods, which helps them understand the research without getting bogged down in technical details.
While AI may change STEM careers, Kirschman believes physical-world work puts down limitations.
“I think the more a job interfaces with the physical realm, the less likely it is to be thrown,” Kirschman said. “Within the fields that still have ground truths, that are still within the world of atoms… There is a bottleneck that, no matter how smart AI gets, it itself cannot do– for example– microbiology... It might be able to do research 500 times faster than a human being can, but the bottleneck is always going to be who is going to interface with the world.”
College of Education, Health and Human Studies
Melissa Odegard, dean of the College of Education, Health and Human Studies, said the college is taking a “balanced approach” to incorporating AI into education.
“A healthy approach is how we utilize AI to help see it as a collaborator, and how students can use it as a tool when they’re doing assignments,” Odegard said. “You don’t want to just say, ‘Okay, let me trust what’s here’. You still have to use the skill of, ‘Let me investigate. Let me follow up. Verify.’”
That approach still requires students to question what AI produces. Odegard said AI helps professionals analyze information, such as identifying themes in counseling sessions or assisting with documentation. However, she emphasizes that AI still needs human oversight.
“Humans make mistakes. Well, so does AI,” Odegard said.
Odegard recognizes the many practical uses for AI within her college and how it can help evolve medical practices.
“I know AI is integrated into some of the EMRs [electronic medical records] to help with documentation and notes. So, for more accuracy, right? So humans make mistakes. Well, so does AI. We know that. But they have to not be afraid to use it, but to use it ethically and responsibly. is important. So training is required,” Odegard said.
Holland College of Arts and Media
Rhonda Weller Stillson, dean of the Holland College of Arts and Media, said the college is working to keep pace with AI while preserving the creative work at the center of its programs.
“We are really trying to do our due diligence and try to study, see what other universities are doing, what the businesses are doing– because we’re trying to train our students to go into these careers,” Weller Stillson said.
Weller Stillson said AI can assist with tasks such as organizing presentations, checking writing and generating ideas, but that students still need to produce their own work.
“I think overall, it’s a balance,” Weller Stillson said. “It’s learning how to utilize it, utilize it properly, so that it’s still your ideas.”
Weller Stillson added that the college must teach students to use AI ethically.
“We have to teach you to utilize it, but to [utilize it] ethically. And to keep the creative– because all of our careers are creative– and keep honoring that creative work,” Weller Stillson said.
Harrison College of Business and Computing
Michelle Brune, interim dean of the Harrison College of Business and Computing, said the college is incorporating AI into coursework to prepare students for how the technology is changing the workplace.
Introductory assignments address the overall understanding of AI, prompt writing and analysis and verification of output. Departments are also developing scenarios that show students how companies are using AI so they can practice applying the technology before entering the real workforce.
Brune said AI is changing jobs instead of eliminating them.
“So it's not really replacing jobs, it's really changing what those jobs are,” Brune said. “And so the tasks that happen in those jobs are different [from] what they used to be.”
Students still need skills beyond knowing how to operate AI tools.
“Soft skills remain critically important,” Bruni said. “AI will be a tool that they use at their jobs, so the more students understand and use AI, the more likely they'll be able to be hired and seen as a valuable resource to a company.”
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences Eric Bain-Selbo said AI will never be able to come up with the same ideas as humans because it just reuses human ideas.
“All AI can do at this point is extract from what has come before. Now, we all kind of extract from what we come forward, right? Because we read books and stuff. But humans do that, right? The danger of turning everything over to AI is that AI will just continually regurgitate everything we've already thought and done in the world. Human beings will come up with new thoughts, new ideas, new ways of seeing the world.”
Bain-Selbo said his college has been negatively impacted by AI, as many students have chosen to rely on it to write essays instead of exhibiting the knowledge in their own words.
“But in humanities and social sciences, you know, writing is really the core of what we do. And for decades, maybe hundreds of years now, the main ways in which students exhibited the knowledge and the skills that they'd been learning were by writing essays. So, AI is particularly disruptive in the humanities and social sciences.
Bain-Selbo has concerns that students are “cognitive offloading” on AI, meaning they are no longer choosing to memorize certain facts or skills and instead choosing to depend on AI for that knowledge.
“We're handing it over to AI. Right? So that's a legitimate concern. I think that everybody in higher education ought to have an opinion about AI, right? At the same time, we also need to prepare students for working in a world in which AI is ubiquitous,” Bain-Selbo said. “It will become more and more influential. It will be a larger and larger part of somebody's work environment in the professional world. So we have an obligation to prepare them for that.
How AI is affecting the job market and hiring process
Many predictors have different expectations about what effect AI will have on the job market. Some expect millions to be lost while others claim the hit so far is smaller than it appears.
Dr. David Yaskewich, professor of economics and department chair of the Department of Accounting, Economics and Finance, explained that because AI allows companies to produce more quickly, it could eliminate some need for additional workers.
“So, if we think of this, if labor productivity is enhanced, a good news story would be that firms could produce more, workers could accomplish more. So, our overall production, our overall income should be higher,” Yaskewich said. “Now, there could be a dark side to that, in the form of opportunities for people. If work hours and the number of workers, if those are reduced, meaning if a firm would not need as many work hours or workers to complete certain tasks, there might be fewer job opportunities available to workers.”
Yaskewich said that because AI is making some tasks easier in the long run, the market may see some elimination of entry-level jobs; however, the Federal Reserve of New York says that over the last several years, unemployment for young people without college degrees remains higher than for young people with them.
“So if we take a close, careful look at the labor market, one story to get out of it would be to stay in school. There seems to be some reduction in your likelihood of becoming unemployed if you have a college degree…” Yaskewich said. “AI might take some routine tasks and significantly reduce the time to do those. There is a possibility that some of this data behind me would show that it might be getting tougher for new graduates compared to graduates from college in previous years.”
In November 2022, when ChatGPT launched, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates was 4.0%, for all young workers 7.1% and for all American workers 3.4%.
In June this year, the unemployment rate for recent graduates (aged 22-27) was 5.7%, compared with 7.2% for all young workers (age 22-27) and 4.1% for all workers.
“It looks like there might be some small to modest impacts on the overall aggregate labor market of AI,” Yaskewich said. “Now, for individuals, there might be bigger impacts, but in terms of the overall economy, I'd say small to modest on the labor market.”
Yaskewich said it is too early to make definite predictions about AI's long-term impact on the job market, but students can do some things in college to increase their chances of getting a job.
“I think some of those learning opportunities might be harder to find, and there might be some expectation on employers that college graduates have maybe more experience before getting their first full-time job out of college,” Yaskewich. “I think that would make internships and other experiences more valuable before graduation, where employers are kind of going to expect more from graduates.”
Yaskewich predicted that the jobs most likely to be replaced by AI are time-intensive but don’t require a lot of skill.
“I don't want to pinpoint certain ones because I don't want to make certain majors feel bad or whatnot. But I would think if there's like entry-level programming for computers, like software programming, that's something where AI could probably do that fairly well. Now, there are advanced programming measures that it might struggle with, so software programming might be one,” Yaskewich said. “Writing summaries for clients at financial service companies or other sales companies unrelated to finance. You know, pretty easy to draft a letter if you have AI. Even if you don't have AI, it might not be that hard. But it's without automation, it'd be somewhat time-intensive.”
Assistant vice president for economic and workforce development Dan Presson said that, of all the employers he has worked with at Career Services, the main field they are looking to use AI to replace human work is in online customer service.
“Customer service either online or by phone, and I think that's going to be an area where you do see a major hit,” Presson said. “Using AI, especially whenever it comes to answering multiple phone lines at the same time, doing those types of tasks.”
AI is not only replacing certain jobs, but it is also becoming a major player in the hiring process.
Presson said many employers use AI to choose applications during the hiring process, and when recent graduates also use AI to write their resumes and cover letters, it causes applications to look similar and less likely to be selected.
“Actually, in a lot of cases, AI is being used by their applicant tracking system to help them zero in on the right candidates. Then on the other side, you've got job seekers that are using AI to put together their application content, and so you've got AI-written cover letters, AI-generated resumes, and sometimes it's just not good, and it's not marketing the skill set,” Presson said. “An AI system cannot know what you did in your job, and so you just have kind of an interesting situation where if you built your resume using Claude, but the applicant tracking system is using ChatGPT. The AI systems might not know how each other writes resume documents, and so there might be some discord there.”
Presson said that by using AI to write resumes and cover letters, job seekers are submitting non-personalized and very generic applications that don’t utilize strategic differentiation.
“It's such a weird thing because it's like there will be changes, but I don't foresee it completely eliminating things. Yeah, you know, because now you have this entire generation that is actively seeking it out and working against it, and especially when it comes to graphics and it comes to all of these things.” Presson said.
