Building a Brave Faculty Culture
Hospitality as Strategy in the Age of AI - How we’re creating space for transformation, not just training
Since introducing the intentional integration of AI in our work at Lipscomb, we are learning that supporting faculty in adopting AI is not simply about teaching them how to use AI tools. Instead, the key to success is reshaping culture. And that starts with hospitality. Today, I would like to delve deeper into the topic of hospitality and its place in creating a brave culture. I talked a bit about this in the post Hospitality and Courage in the Age of AI. In this post, I’ll provide some more specific tactics that can support hospitality as a strategy in the age of AI.
What we’ve discovered is that when hospitality is woven into our academic development efforts, faculty feel seen, valued, and supported. Let’s look at those tactics that have been effective in promoting a spirit of hospitality at Lipscomb. In particular, we have taken intentional steps this year to center hospitality in our AI programming.
During our Fall Opening Faculty Meeting (Flourishing on the Brink of Change), we framed AI not as a threat to tradition but as an opportunity to live out our mission. We explored how Lipscomb’s renewed focus on the value of the liberal arts can support our ethical, intentional use of new tools as we seek to develop students who solve problems with creativity, communicate with agility, and think critically. This kind of welcome and connection with the university’s core mission fosters trust and connection amid uncertainty.
Our distribution of Teaching with AI to all faculty created shared language and curiosity, sparking both formal and informal conversations across departments and colleges. These conversations invited faculty to explore in community not only the how of AI, but also the why of AI. Using a shared text provides a centering framework for understanding and talking about AI.
Through our sessions in the Center for Teaching and Learning, we have built in time for reflection and feedback so that faculty are not passive recipients, but active participants in shaping Lipscomb’s approach. Faculty are empowered to share their voices through these sessions and by providing insights to the AI Standing Committee and to me. I’ve gotten feedback from many faculty members about ways they would like the university to support the use of AI, for both them and their students. Providing faculty with input and opportunity to shape the course of AI implementation is key to success.
It’s important to remember that offering hospitality does not mean making everyone comfortable. Sometimes it involves challenging the established order, as bell hooks (1994) reminds us, “Genuine learning requires that we take the risk of being changed” (p. 21). By welcoming discomfort as a path to growth, we model the kind of courage that transformation requires. And, as leaders, we need to be able to model being comfortable with discomfort, admitting that we don’t have all of the answers, and that we are on this journey of learning with our faculty and students. As a community, we are exploring what the rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence can mean for higher education.
This is our call: to be brave in our leadership, generous in our support, and steadfast in our commitment to faculty as both scholars and whole people. That is how we move from fear to flourishing, not just in our use of AI, but in who we are becoming as a university.
References
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.