The Presidential Imperative
AI is no longer relegated to tech labs, computer science courses, or futuristic think tanks. At many universities, it is already reshaping how students learn, how faculty teach, and how institutions operate.
Professors, no doubt, are on the front lines of this teaching-and-learning transformation—the focus of this particular blog. But that does not excuse presidents and provosts from playing a key role in co-creating not only the pedagogically possible but the pedagogically probable as well.
The presidential position makes accessible various institutional levers available to precious few. In this case, we have the weighty responsibility of situating our universities on an AI spectrum whose end points might look like this:
Catalyst for strategic advantage —— source of confusion and fear.
This post offers six recommendations to help presidents position their institutions closer to the left side of that spectrum.
1. Set the Vision and the Vocabulary
Presidents set both tone and tempo. When we talk about AI as a teaching ally rather than a threat, crutch, or shortcut, we give faculty permission to explore responsibly.
Other elements of the AI lexicon are equally important. A president’s early messages should:
- Frame AI as a pedagogical opportunity and option, not an administrative mandate.
- Invite faculty to help establish non-negotiable academic guardrails: integrity, creativity, and intellectual fairness.
- Center faculty voices in the conversation, asking questions such as:
- What might AI make possible in your discipline that was previously out of reach?
- How could AI streamline the routine parts of teaching so you can focus more deeply on mentoring and feedback?
- Where might students use AI to strengthen—not shortcut—their own learning?
Strategically, presidents can connect these discussions to pedagogical aims such as student engagement, access, and meaningful learning outcomes. AI should not replace our academic aims; it should help advance them with more insight, intentionality, and care.
2. Fund the First Steps
Faculty adoption doesn’t happen by rhetoric alone. Presidents can make immediate progress by investing in professional development and small pilot projects that encourage exploration without risk.
A few high-impact moves:
- Create an AI Teaching Fellows Program that supports cross-disciplinary teams to redesign courses or assignments.
- Â Provide micro-grants for classroom-based AI pilots with built-in assessment of learning outcomes.
- Sponsor AI-in-Teaching Institutes every semester so faculty can share early results and build confidence.
When faculty see the institution investing in them—not just the technology—they engage more fully and model the mindset we need across the campus.
3. Co-Construct Ethical Guardrails
Presidents should make it clear that AI literacy must evolve alongside academic integrity—not in its shadow and certainly not in its absence. Faculty, who live the daily realities of teaching and learning, are best positioned to ensure that academic innovation moves forward with conscience.
Ethical guidance in this space is not about “finding the middle.” It’s about continually recalibrating between possibility and prudence—between the freedom to explore and the duty to uphold educational standards. The appropriate AI boundary in a psychology lab, for instance, may look different from that in a design studio or a writing seminar. That variation isn’t inconsistency. It’s contextual intelligence: a recognition that each field defines learning, originality, and evidence in its own way.
In psychology, AI might help analyze data or simulate human responses, but ethical lines must be drawn tightly around participant privacy and research validity. In a design studio, by contrast, generative tools may be integral to the creative process; students learn by manipulating them openly and iteratively. In a writing seminar, faculty may emphasize authorship and voice, allowing AI to assist with structure or grammar but not with conceptual framing.
These contrasts remind us that responsible AI use cannot be standardized across the academy. It must be interpreted through each discipline’s values, methods, and learning outcomes. For presidents, the leadership task is not to impose identical rules but to support a governance framework that honors disciplinary nuance while maintaining institutional coherence.
This work is iterative, contextual, and inevitably messy. Ethical practice evolves as understanding deepens, and early guidelines must be elastic enough to stretch with experience. What begins as a caution may, over time, become a best practice—or vice versa. The key is to build a system that is nimble enough to move with the technology it seeks to govern. That is no easy task!
Presidents can begin to build such a system by:
- Dialoguing rather than decreeing. Encourage the cabinet, deans, and academic departments to hold structured conversations about what “responsible AI use” looks like within their disciplines and to share key insights openly across the institution.
- Creating protected spaces for ethical experimentation. Make room for pilot projects where faculty can test AI approaches, analyze outcomes, and refine guidelines without fear of premature judgment or reputational risk.
- Examining what is meant by “academic integrity.” Lead honest conversations about how AI is reshaping long-held understandings of authorship, originality, and evidence. Encourage faculty to explore how the principle of integrity can remain constant even as its expression evolves—demonstrating that ethics, like learning, is a journey shaped by experience, discernment, and evolving understanding.
4. Aim for Progress Not Perfection; Affirm Context not Conformity
Presidents who champion AI in teaching should a) celebrate progress as movement along a spectrum, not as arrival at an endpoint and b) recognize that adoption will vary since disciplines, pedagogies, and professors find their footing at different tempos. Making this variation explicit reinforces that appropriateness, not uniformity, is the higher aim. An art professor who uses generative tools to critique bias in visual media, a psychologist testing AI-assisted transcription for interviews, and a writing instructor guiding students to transform an AI draft into their own voice are all exercising discipline-specific discernment. These examples signal that curiosity and conscience can coexist when context leads the way.
Equally important, celebrate honest lessons learned. When a pilot stalls or a tool disappoints, presidents can model reflective leadership by asking what insight emerged—not what initiative failed. Over time, the culture shifts from “proof of concept” to “proof of learning.” That shift signals an institution led by reflection rather than reaction.
5. Build Systems That Support Ethical Adaptation
Faculty innovation accelerates when experimentation is principled and well-supported. Presidents can use their vantage point to ensure that systems—budgeting, technology, staffing, and shared services—adapt to inquiry rather than constrain it.
That may mean negotiating enterprise licenses that protect privacy while enabling responsible access; funding instructional designers fluent in AI-enhanced learning; or developing shared repositories where syllabi, prompts, and reflections evolve together. Within federations like the Coalition for the Common Good (link), shared services can make these supports scalable across universities while honoring local context.
The aim is not centralization for its own sake. It is to create adaptive infrastructures—strong and malleable enough to reinforce the mission while responding to the ever-evolving dynamics of technology, teaching, and learning.
6. Lead by Learning
Presidents earn credibility in the work of AI integration by modeling the same curiosity and discipline they ask of faculty. When they attend AI workshops, experiment with new tools, or invite instructors to demonstrate classroom applications, they show that leading well requires learning continually.
This stance dissolves the unhelpful divide between “those who lead” and “those who learn.” It affirms that all of us—faculty, staff, administrators, and students—share responsibility for interpreting technology through the lens of our educational mission. The president’s role is not to pronounce conclusions but to sustain inquiry that remains honest, ethical, and alive to context.
AI may streamline routine tasks, but it cannot reproduce discernment, empathy, or vision. Those remain distinctly human capacities—and precisely the ones higher education most needs from its leaders right now.
Closing Reflection
Artificial intelligence is reshaping not only what students can produce but what educators must design—and what presidents must make possible. The task before senior leaders is to keep courage and care in deliberate dialogue by encouraging experimentation guided by the ethical guardrails co-created at your institution.
Presidents who chart this type of movement guide their universities to one of higher education’s most coveted places—the one where innovation serves mission, where technology deepens understanding, and where humanity continues to define the measure of progress.
