Elon University President Connie Book sat down with Elon News Network to discuss Elon’s new developments regarding AI and the 2024 election.
This interview was edited for clarity.
Recently, Elon released its ElonGPT program where students can use this to ask questions about advising or whatever they need. Why is it important for Elon to work with these new tech developments to help students?
I had a great time this summer working on what we emailed out to students yesterday, and that is a student guide to AI. We came upon this kind of accidentally. We had worked very hard last year to work across higher ed to say, ‘Hey, we need to be deciding, as universities, what are we going to be teaching students about this important new technology that’s going to impact their life, your personal life, as well as your professional life.’ And in that work, we develop tenants, for example, we think it’s really important that students bring human values to the use of AI. You know that we have a commitment to honesty — it’s in our honor code — so we should definitely fact check AI. Is it being honest?
While AI can tell you what’s out there — it can synthesize it, it can prompt you, it can provide great structure — it still can’t bring you to it. So you as a student need to add yourself, your humanness, into the content of AI, and that if you’re using it, you need to be sure you understand what the professor’s guidelines are, and then to notate it, just like you would notate a source.
What would you say to students, or maybe to professors who are kind of hesitant to use it and have seen that negative side and don’t necessarily want to take advantage of it?
I think there is often fear around new technology adoption. When I was in college, I studied my PhD’s around new technology adoption, so I used to document fears, and there’s always a fear of things changing, but people are afraid generally, right? ‘I understand this, and I don’t yet understand this. And we give this guidance in the guide, and I think it’s really good guidance to play with it, to take it out, play with it a little bit. … Play with the prompts. Try the different software that’s out there because they each do unique things so learn how to prompt it. Play with it.
I just asked it the other day. We’re thinking of naming something a center, and I was like, ‘Center is such a bore.’ It’s like, we have centers. What else could we call it? So I asked it to give me, ‘What’s some other words for center,’ you know, so just play with it and challenge yourself to play and get more comfortable with it..
Do you encourage students to explore new fields that they may not be familiar with or specialize in, but could benefit them in the long run?
We actually are celebrating 30 years of our core curriculum, and one of the ways that that core curriculum is so powerful is we have several courses that are interdisciplinary. For example, all of our study abroad is largely interdisciplinary. So it’s faculty who co-teach together from two different departments. You might have someone from religion and someone from history teaching a course abroad, on the formation of different religions or looking at war or the Holocaust, and those are powerful moments of learning when you have those two different disciplines working together. All of our students are engaged in it because they’re in the core curriculum.
At a lot of colleges, the core are classes you think, ‘I’m just gonna get done with that.’ But at Elon, often, when I’m talking to a student, they will say, ‘Oh, I loved it and it’s a course in their core. I really love that class.’ And one of the best things that we do at Elon is we have a capstone in the core, so that is interdisciplinary too, and it brings students back together when they’re juniors and seniors. So that there is this phenomenon that happens when you’re in your major, that sometimes you’re in a classroom only with communications majors, but the Core Capstone, it’ll be, oh, there’s a Comm major, there’s a math major, business, finance. That’s the kind of value added experience that Elon brings to the study of different disciplines. And why us focusing on STEM and getting that strength as an institution is as important as having a strength in writing.
Our first years are coming to campus very soon. Are there any specific resources you would like to highlight for them that you think will positively impact their first year, things they can look forward to or might not know about?
Well, this is an election year, so when students are arriving, most of these students and a lot of our sophomores, this will be their first — even our juniors — first election. They’re voting as adults. I do think the first time you cast your vote in an election, it’s a really powerful moment to realize, ‘Oh, full citizenship, I’m casting my vote.’ I asked the committee last year to prepare our campus for the election. So I will be talking — and Dr. Dooley will be talking — to the class of 2028 about civic engagement. And as we all know, it’s been really challenging, polarizing, and there’s a lot of emotion in that. So, how do I have a healthy conversation with someone I disagree with and this can get very intimate, particularly if they’re your roommate. Just imagine your first year student, you have a brand new roommate and that you disagree about things. So how do you navigate that as an adult? We’re having some dialog work that we’re doing, we’re bringing in some speakers and people with expertise in elections. There’s a faculty member from Duke that is using AI to help with conversations around elections, and he’s coming to demo his app and get us involved in that.
And then Elon will operate a polling center on South Campus, which will be open to the public. It’s an early voting polling center, so it opens up the second week of October, and it runs through the Friday before the election, through November. So it’s basically a three week period that even students that can come in register to vote and vote, all in 15 minutes. But before you come in and cast your vote, you need to prepare yourself to vote. So part of our work on campus will be informing about elections, some of the critical issues conversations, we’ll have some debate, watch parties and really work to have a bipartisan effort that welcomes students, whether you’re liberal, conservative, anywhere on the map of spectrum of politics to really be active citizens.
And would you say that students at Elon are willing to engage in those conversations? Have you seen some hesitancy?
I think it’s not just at Elon, but I think nationwide, people are nervous about participating in those conversations, and that can cause as many challenges for our country as being up close and divided. It’s no better to be pulled in the corners and divided. So we want to create a safe space to practice, right? And so set ground rules and say, ‘OK, these are the kind of conversations we’re going to have.’ And have students sign up for these small dialogs that allow them to practice that skill set.
We did it our last few years, and I’ve been in conversations around really difficult topics, such as gun ownership, that are typically divisive for people. These are topics that people have a lot of passion about, so being able to listen, seeking to understand. And as Dr. Dooley points out, most of our learning happens when we’re listening — not talking — leveraging that listening and compassion, and the ability to respectfully disagree.
Where is Elon in the process of breaking ground on the HealthEU building?
This is probably one of the most transformative projects of my career, and we’ve been, out on the road fundraising. We’ve set a goal of raising $25 million for the project, and we’ve raised just about 10 million for it. So I’ll be busy this year continuing to raise funds for that project. It really seeks a transformation of our campus. Creating a facility that brings together so many components of well being. We finished the design this summer, they’re doing construction documents now, I would anticipate you’ll start seeing dirt movements before November, and the scheduled opening is spring of 26.
I’m looking forward to the ability to make clear that learning to take care of yourself is as important part of your college education as a discipline like, getting an A in a finance class. When you graduate from Elon, our hope is that you have learned habits and skill sets in the same way you’ve learned a curriculum. Whether that’s nutrition, mental health and well-being, relationships. We’ll also have exercise science and the counseling services over in that building, as well as a whole host of new classes that are being offered now. We have one on financial literacy, we have another about social media and well-being that we’ve rolled out. All of these one hour classes really are designed to give students lifelong learning.