Penn College classes include creative use of AI

As Pennsylvania College of Technology prepares to offer minors in artificial intelligence this fall, faculty across campus incorporated the technology in courses throughout the 2025-26 academic year, reflecting AI’s expanding role in the workforce.

“The hallmark of Penn College is preparing industry-ready graduates with a distinctive applied technology education. Central to that mission is remaining abreast of the needs of industry. Integrating responsible and creative use of AI tools in our classes, no matter the subject area, is certainly addressing the demands of our evolving workforce,” said Andrea M. Campbell, assistant dean of curriculum & instruction and leader of the college’s AI committee.

According to Deloitte’s State of AI Report for 2026, companies have broadened workforce access to AI by 50% in one year, growing from less than 40% to about 60% of workers equipped with sanctioned AI tools.

“I believe that students looking to enter any industry, whether it’s healthcare, construction or information technology, will interact with artificial intelligence systems,” said Rick Crossen, assistant professor of computer information technology. “By building an understanding of these systems’ technical interworkings and the potential ethical implications that come along with their use, students can learn to most effectively utilize them in their future careers.”

Crossen teaches Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, a core course for the two new minors: artificial intelligence in industry & society and artificial intelligence foundations & applications.

“I teach students about both the limitations of these systems as well as potential biases AI systems contain,” Crossen said. “Without a foundation of understanding, students often take the responses of generative AI tools as absolute truth.”

Various projects helped Crossen’s students build that foundation. Assignments included using different generative AI tools to compare outputs, creating local large language models to equate performance and usability with cloud-hosted LLMs, investigating ways AI models are trained and developing tests to verify specific training approaches, and researching and using several prompt engineering frameworks to devise a security policy for an organization.

He also had students develop false-positive and false-negative tests for AI checker software – programs that identify AI-generated content. The tests explored the practical and ethical limitations of the software.

Like Crossen, Summer L. Bukeavich, associate professor of business administration/management & marketing, helped create the new AI minors. She also teaches AI in Business & Society, a requirement for the minor in artificial intelligence in industry & society.

“AI is not just a tool for productivity hacks. There are so many real downstream consequences, both good and bad, to using AI,” Bukeavich said. “I want students to see the macro view and understand the context behind this wildly fast-changing technology, comparing it to previous tech revolutions and crafting plans for how they’re going to manage all the changes it’s going to bring to their lives, both work and personal.”

In her AI in Business & Society course, Bukeavich’s students examined the intersection of AI and human resource management. The project required them to evaluate simulated resumes for a specific position and then write prompts for AI to assess the same resumes. They then compared AI’s findings with their own appraisal.

Bukeavich also created chatbots to engage students in conversations about topics. Students chatted with the AI tool to determine the kind of bias she told the chatbots to demonstrate.

“We as faculty are well-positioned to help students understand the benefits and drawbacks of these new technologies as they relate to our fields, but we can’t do that if we ignore AI wholesale,” Bukeavich said. “If students don’t understand how various industries and/or business functions are evolving due to AI, I think they risk being seen as less qualified candidates in their respective fields.” 

Faculty have embraced AI, regardless of discipline. “‘AI’ doesn’t need to be in the course title for our faculty to incorporate aspects of the technology in their classes and labs,” Campbell said. “We’ve seen inspired use by faculty in courses ranging from IT to electrical and English to math.”

Civil engineering can be added to that mix. In his senior-level course, Geotechnical Engineering, David J. Fedor, associate professor of civil engineering technology, had students employ AI to write Python code to solve problems in prep books for the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam. Python is a programming language used to create software, analyze data and automate tasks. Passing the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam is the first step in the process of becoming a licensed professional engineer.

“They evaluated the results of the ChatGPT Python solution compared to the prep books’ answer keys. Then they reflected on the accuracy and why and where differences originate,” Fedor explained. “They did this for a general STEM problem, a broad civil engineering problem and a geotechnical engineering problem.”

The use of AI not only helped students prepare for a critical exam but also reinforced their critical thinking skills, a key asset in the civil engineering field.

“One of our primary objectives in civil engineering is to teach students to be problem solvers. AI is just another tool they can use to be more efficient problem solvers,” Fedor said. “When the task involves more than just querying AI for a response, they must use critical- and ethical-thinking skills. They begin to understand through the example of AI that they will need to adapt to technological advancements many times in their careers, and they will be able to do that because they learned to be problem solvers.”

Campbell expects faculty integration of AI literacy and responsible use to expand in 2026-27, benefiting more students.

“Our faculty have proven to be uniquely positioned to develop practical learning experiences – both in the classroom and lab – enabling students to apply AI in creative, meaningful ways,” she said. “We are excited to see even wider adoption of this approach in the coming academic year.”

For more on how Penn College is built for the AI economy, including academic and Workforce Development programs that lead to AI-empowering career pathways, visit www.pct.edu/ai.

For information about Penn College, a national leader in applied technology education, email the Admissions Office or call toll-free 800-367-9222.