Dr. Vanessa D'Amario came to generative AI from physics and computational math, and her concern as a teacher is that students keep doing the thinking themselves. In her view, the discipline to avoid outsourcing that thinking to a machine is now one of the most important things we can ask of them.

In this episode of Season 4 of Behind the Scenes: How Faculty Bring Learning to Life at NSU, which explores how generative AI is changing higher education in practical, ethical, and uniquely human ways, host Dr. Marti Snyder talks with Dr. D'Amario, Assistant Professor in the Department of Decision Sciences at the H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship and one of 25 faculty in the inaugural cohort of the NSF NAIRR AI Education Fellowship. Dr. D'Amario shares how she has given students hands-on experience with generative AI, including a literature review project using open models and a business course where students explore data in SQL notebooks. She also explains why she is rethinking assessments, including presentations and real business problems students care about, and how she stays current by setting aside 30 minutes a day for research and reading. This conversation is a good fit for faculty who are still working out where generative AI belongs in their teaching, their scholarship, or their professional practice.