Miami’s ‘AI in the Majors’ initiative to begin integration

The “AI in the Majors” initiative at Miami University will integrate artificial intelligence (AI) teachings into 13 departments this fall. Additionally, two new minors, courses and a degree centered around AI will be available for students to gain AI capabilities catered to their field of study.

New courses such as ENG 224: Professional Writing With Artificial Intelligence and CCA 223: Creating With Artificial Intelligence will be offered, according to Miami University Programs . A new major in artificial intelligence, a deep learning and artificial intelligence minor and an artificial intelligence for business minor will also be offered.

The 13 departments involved in the initiative, including accountancy, writing and chemistry, participated in a faculty development program in spring 2026. This fall 15 more departments will follow suit, including biology, finance and nursing.

AI is increasingly prevalent in higher education. In 2026, 65% of students in the United States and Canada reported using AI in their learning, which is up from 35% in 2024, according to the Digital Education Council AI in Higher Education Global Survey 2026.

Ellen Yezierski is the director of the Center for Teaching Excellence and a professor of chemistry at Miami who facilitates and helps lead the initiative. She said the initiative allows faculty in each department to research how AI is used in their profession, decide what competencies students need, then map curricula to support those learning outcomes. To her, the first wave of faculty development was a success.

“It is so much easier looking ahead to fall knowing that we had tremendous success with our colleagues last semester,” Yezierski said. “If you give people the right structure and space, they can do amazing things.”

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Heidi McKee, professor of English and AI provost fellow at Miami, has studied AI in writing since 2016, and helps support AI teaching and learning. McKee said the initiative is part of Miami’s broader mission to prepare students to be leaders in their fields.

“If we want to help students be prepared, it’s really important that they’re able to critically analyze and consider how to work with AIand how not to work with AI,” McKee said.

Charlotte Hudson graduated from Miami in 2026 and is an editorial events associate at Becker’s Healthcare. Hudson said she uses AI to tailor writing to a specific audience or locate emails, but she said nothing AI does is complete without a human editor.

“You’re making sure that writing does sound human because AI becomes unethical if you’re submitting something entirely written in AI,” Hudson said. “In any publication, you have to make sure that you are the last check.”

Hudson said her first interaction with AI in the classroom was in an interactive business communications class with McKee her senior year, when she was tasked with writing a business report entirely with AI.

“I never had a teacher tell me to actually use AI before,” Hudson said. “It totally just wrote the report for me, but did it have that tone of voice that I could capture as a writer? I didn’t think so.”

Miami’s core academic AI principles that guide the initiative are “shared wisdom, practical wisdom, student-centered purpose, continuous learning, creative integration and transparency,” according to Miami’s AI in teaching website.

Yezierski said Miami’s approach is unique because it leans into the diversity of needs in each discipline, while other universities move to create one universal course for all students to learn AI competencies. Miami does, however, offer an AI fundamentals course that allows students to learn to use core AI concepts for free.

The initiative relies on faculty in each department to integrate learning practices that teach students AI competencies related to their chosen field. Yezierski said instructors have hosted workshops to learn how to use a custom AI model called the Classroom Activity Builder, which builds classroom activities based on concept development and collaborative learning. The model is not currently available on Miami’s website.

The way students are taught to utilize AI will vary in each department. Yezierski said the chemistry department has discussed the possibility of custom AI tutor bots to help students understand class concepts so that ultimately they can use it for purposes such as finding references, understanding research literature, and data analysis and visualization.

McKee said one way AI can be useful in writing is to check grammar, punctuation and spelling, but rather than change it to something different, provide explanations of why the changes should be made.

“That helps to have a wonderful editor without giving it free reign to take over your text,” McKee said.

Not everyone at Miami shares the same optimistic outlook about AI, however. Quin Ahler, a junior political science and anthropology major and speaker of the senate for Associated Student Government, said students have approached him with concerns about AI’s environmental effects.

An increase in AI data centers powered by fossil fuels has generated environmental concerns due to carbon emissions and a massive use of electricity, according to MIT. Data centers use up to 5 million gallons of water per day is also needed to cool the hardware, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, which can disrupt local water supplies.

Ahler said Miami developed a computer cluster that is fueled by solar energy and cooled by geothermal energy as part of the university’s larger effort to be a proponent of sustainability.

“Miami really is at the cutting edge for sustainability,” Ahler said. “I’m really excited how Miami is using sustainable practices to teach and at the same time preparing students for a future of education with AI.”

Ahler said ASG’s role in the initiative should be to garner student input, but many students are reluctant to share their thoughts and ideas. He said a student can submit concerns on the ASG website, which are discussed at public weekly senate meetings held on Tuesdays.

While AI in the Majors looks to sustainably enhance AI education at Miami, the Faculty Alliance of Miami (FAM) has spoken out against it.

Theresa Kulbaga, professor of English at Miami and president of FAM, said she is worried that it could undermine students’ abilities to read, write and critically think. She said she has seen inaccurate AI-outsourced work and patterns of syntax that lack a human voice.

“I worry very much about the outsourcing of work,” Kulbaga said. “What is lost when a student doesn’t do that work and misses out on the learning experience is in part about the struggle of having to do it?”

Kulbaga said she is also worried about the job security of faculty at Miami. She said FAM requested in recent contract negotiations that their jobs won’t be replaced by AI, that they won’t use AI to evaluate or monitor them and that they are notified prior to any planned use of AI instruction. Kulbaga said the university refused to guarantee those safeguards.

Ahler said he has used AI to study and provide additional context to learning materials, but students who use it to complete assignments for them can harm their learning.

McKee said it’s important to recognize that people have always tried to find short cuts to learning in school systems. AI has made assignment completion easier, but students need to learn how to use it for learning purposes.

“For some people, AI makes writing easier, but I also think it makes writing harder because you have to [pay] careful attention to editing, voice and style,” McKee said. “I love helping students navigate that.”

While some professors choose to embrace AI in the classroom, others, such as Kulbaga, remain concerned.

“As a profession, I don’t think we’ve landed on a consensus yet about how to use it ethically and appropriately in teaching,” Kulbaga said. “Until we have research [and] ideas around that, I tend to be cautious about using it.”

clarkelt@miamioh.edu