CIA leads exploration of AI in art and design, higher education

Throughout the 2024–25 academic year, a team of Cleveland Institute of Art faculty participated in the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ inaugural Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum. The year-long, fully online institute aimed to help colleges and universities respond effectively to the challenges and opportunities artificial intelligence (AI) presents for courses and curricula.

By participating, the CIA contingent hoped to develop an action plan that keeps sustained focus on AI-related matters at the College. Importantly, they hoped to talk to peer institutions about what’s working and what’s not. But, something was missing.

“[CIA was] the only stand-alone art and design school in the AAC&U institute,” says Kari Weaver, director of CIA’s Jane B. Nord Center for Teaching + Learning, who subsequently reached out to the Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design (AICAD) in an effort to build those missing connections.

“I spoke with Deborah Obalil, executive director of AICAD, and we talked about starting cross-institutional conversations amongst AICAD schools about AI. We want conversations with our peers ... and [CIA is] going to lead the AICAD conversations.”

Leading the conversation—literally—is where CIA wants to be when it comes to AI. President + CEO Kathryn Heidemann believes it’s imperative that CIA be at the forefront. 

“CIA has been an innovator for almost 143 years, and innovation often happens amid disruption of the status quo,” Heidemann says. “When it comes to AI, we can choose to get ahead of it or get run over by it—and in our case, we have the opportunity to be trailblazers in AI integration and to do so ethically, responsibly and in line with our institutional values.”

“I think we’re taking leadership in the critical exploration of [AI],” Weaver adds. “That’s my aim, and that’s part of where the committee was really landing, too. I feel like we’re distinguishing ourselves as critical thought leaders.”

Implementing AI initiatives

The “committee” to which Weaver refers is CIA’s AI in Creative Practice Committee, which includes faculty members Jimmy Kuehnle (Sculpture + Expanded Media), Scott Ligon (Foundation), Suzie McGinness ’07 (Illustration), Jason Tilk ’97 (Industrial Design) and herself (Liberal Arts). Together, they represent each of the College’s five academic divisions—and it was this team that participated in the AAC&U institute.

“I really was curious about what other institutions and faculty had to say,” says Kuehnle of his AAC&U Institute experience. “I was surprised. In my bubble, I thought everyone was knowing about these things. It was interesting to see a lot of other schools were in the not even-trying-it phase.”

CIA’s AI committee spent much of its first year working to better understand students’ perspectives on AI. It’s a nuanced topic, to be sure, but students have primarily voiced concerns over infringement upon artistic ownership and environmental impact, the latter referring to increased demand for electricity to power computations and greater water consumption to keep machines cool. Students grapple with their environmental concerns regardless of whether it’s assistive AI, which is largely used to support people, or generative AI, which produces new content. 

Students have also expressed they felt AI in the professional world is unavoidable and wondered how to retain their artistic identity while being prepared for practical expectations in the job market.

“One of the things I heard a lot about was wanting to make sure we uphold the expertise, craftsmanship and rigor of critical knowledge and creative practices,” says Weaver of feedback she received from a Liberal Arts class that spent spring semester researching AI. “Even if not explicitly about AI, they’re worried about having community, having ethical labor practices and supporting intellectualism.”

With those concerns in mind, CIA approved an institutional philosophy regarding AI this past spring semester. The philosophy—cultivated over the course of a year by 11 faculty and staff members on the College’s Teaching + Learning Committee—doesn’t endorse AI itself but instead endorses learning and innovation around AI.

“We have a responsibility to do everything we can to advance digital literacy and future-proof both our curriculum and our operations so that students—and the College—don’t get left behind amid technological disruption,” Heidemann says. “Doing so is to embrace CIA’s institutional values of Accessibility, Responsibility and Excellence.”

Another of CIA’s forward-thinking approaches involves three new Jane B. Nord Center for Teaching + Learning faculty fellows who will focus on AI and emerging technologies during the 2025–26 academic year. Photography faculty member Charles Lee will focus on AI and Blackness; Liberal Arts adjunct faculty Troy Neptune will help with the AICAD cross-institutional conversations; and Foundation adjunct faculty Cullen Houser will continue to collect student perspectives.

In addition, starting in fall semester, students will gain more direction on how AI can be used in the classroom with the introduction of AI-specific syllabus statements.  

“Faculty have ultimate agency. They can say, ‘we’re not using it in the creation, editing, testing of anything in this class—and this is why.’ Or, ‘you can use it for this, and you have to provide these prompts,’” Weaver says. 

“[AI syllabus statements] should have a major impact on students, and it forces all faculty to look at it, examine it and take a stance on it.” 

Focusing on future AI leadership

Kuehnle believes that CIA is poised to lead on AI in part because of the design process inherent to the College and the creatives who work and study there:  “I think CIA should embrace a position of leadership in the art and design world—and in education. We need to be embracing new technologies in a way that allows us to have a voice in how they’re used and how the next generation uses them.

“We’re an institute of higher education. We should have open inquiry, we should know things and we should experiment with new things, he continues. “Part of our mission is the creation of new knowledge, not just the dissemination of knowledge. Otherwise, you stagnate.” 

With an eye on the future, Heidemann recently enrolled in the Managing AI Systems graduate certificate program at Carnegie Mellon University, which is home to U.S. News & World Report’s No. 1 ranked AI program. The year-long program focuses on design-centered, systems-minded, ethical and responsible AI integration to drive organizational change.

Already, though, Heidemann understands that CIA will figure prominently in influencing how the world interacts with AI. “In the age of AI, the role of artists and designers—and their uniquely human-centered skills in creativity and complex problem-solving—are more crucial than ever.” 

Weaver agrees that CIA is positioned to lead on AI because of art and design’s focus on the human experience.

“This is an opportunity to really focus on what it is that humans do very uniquely. You’re thinking about what this technology is capable of doing—but what it’s not capable of doing, that’s uniquely human,” she says. “I think creative industries are poised to help us navigate this era of greater access and use of AI because we are focused on those human experiences. It’s made me really think about what a creative education could be in broader ways at this exact period of time. People are seeking a deeply human experience.”

Photo caption: Kari Weaver, director of CIA’s Jane B. Nord Center for Teaching + Learning, conducts a focus group with students who used artificial intelligence tools in the Experiments for Electronic Arts course taught by Sculpture + Expanded Media professor Jimmy Kuehnle.