Prompted: Liberal Arts in the Age of AI

Early-Careerists Are Overwhelmed

Episode 5 of Prompted: Liberal Arts in the Age of AI shifts the mic to those who will inherit the world most shaped by artificial intelligence: emerging scholars and young professionals. The conversation features Adam Plowman, Dacey Redman, Taheer Alibhai, Alex Johnson, and Chloe Yonkus—graduate students and rising professionals from Calvin University's Masters of Media and Strategic Communication. You'll appreciate the tone of realism, skepticism, and sometimes unease that distinguishes this episode from other conversations in this same series. These Gen Z and young millennial voices reflect on what it means to come of age in an era where AI has always been in the background, and now suddenly surges to the forefront. They name concerns about authenticity, surveillance, employability, and the speed at which expectations are shifting around them. Yet they also point toward the forms of agency, ethical courage, and community support they believe will matter most as they step into leadership. This episode offers a candid look at how those closest to the future—by age and by vocation—are feeling their way through the promises and pressures of AI. It’s an honest, grounded check-in with the generation poised to shape the next chapter of the liberal arts. The rough cut for this podcast was edited by Riley Johnston, and the production was funded by the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship.

What Kind of World Do We Want to Live in?

Episode 4 of Prompted: Liberal Arts in the Age of AI brings together a rich variety of perspectives: ESL instructor Sara Vander Bie, graphic design professor Christopher Fox, chaplain Mary Hulst, and dean Kyle Small. Each one works daily with students who cross cultural, linguistic, or generational boundaries—and each one is wrestling with what AI means for the life we wish for and the world we seek. Together, they explore how AI tools both connect and complicate relationships among learners who bring different life experiences, worldviews, and communication practices into the classroom. What changes when a first‑generation student, an international student, and a returning adult learner all use AI in distinct ways? How does design education shift when visual cultures collide? What spiritual, relational, and ethical questions surface when technology mediates how we listen to one another? This conversation takes seriously the idea that the liberal arts can help us not just use AI, but live with one another while using it. It’s a hopeful, grounded look at how intercultural and intergenerational wisdom might guide us toward forms of learning that honor the full complexity of human community. The rough cut for this podcast was edited by Riley Johnston, produced by Craig Mattson and funded by the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship.

Can Learning Go Slow When Tech Goes Fast?

In a world where everything is speeding up—information, expectations, distractions—how do we learn well? In Episode 3 of Prompted: Liberal Arts in the Age of AI, a theologian, a communication scholar, and a computer scientist--Sam Ha, Katie Day Good, and Fernando Santos--explore the tensions between unavoidable acceleration and indispensable friction. Together they unpack why meaningful education can’t just keep pace with technological speed, and why moments of pause, difficulty, and resistance are often the very conditions that allow students to grow. From classroom practice to digital culture to the shaping of long-term habits of mind, this episode asks what it takes to cultivate learners who can think critically, slow down wisely, and engage the world with care. For anyone navigating today’s rapid-learning environments—students, teachers, technologists—this conversation offers grounded insight into how we might recover the conditions for learning that actually lasts. The rough cut for this production was edited by Riley Johnston, produced by Craig Mattson, and funded by the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship.

Do Students Need to Recall Anything?

Prompted: Liberal Arts in the Age of AI returns for Episode 2 with a conversation about the sometimes unsettling invitations of Generative AI for liberal arts educators. Drawing on the insights of a technologist, a media specialist, a supply-chain professor, and an adult-learning administrator--Ken Arnold, Katie Day Good, Philip Johnson, and Abbie Lipsker—this episode explores fresh ideas for tech-free "Walden Zones" on campus, right next to tech-saturate innovation spaces. The conversationalists don't agree on everything, especially when it comes to the role of memory in learning. They do agree on the need for virtue formation and explore different ways that virtue can be explored in philosophical courses and put in practice in professional programs. This may be the most optimistic of Prompted's conversations, as the conversationalists treat AI not as a threat, so much as an occasion for exploring new forms of learning. Whether you’re an educator, a student, or simply someone wondering how to prepare people for a dynamic future, this episode offers a grounded re‑visioning of what the liberal arts can do. The podcast was edited by Riley Johnston, produced by Craig Mattson, and funded by the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship.

Early Findings from Our Experiments with AI

Episode 1 brings together voices from across Calvin University to explore how AI is reshaping creativity, learning, and institutional life. What role should friction and difficulty play in learning? Art historian Craig Hanson, Calvin vice president Sarah Visser, double‑major (Entrepreneurship & Computer Science) undergraduate Pauline Lu, and documentary filmmaker Sam Smartt join host Craig Mattson for a lively, inquisitive conversation about what it means to teach, learn, imagine, and produce in an age of intelligent tools. The discussants reflect on curiosity, craft, discernment, and the shifting texture of human creativity. The episode is edited by Riley Johnston, produced by Craig Mattson, and funded by the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship.