Inside the Heated Debate Over AI on College Campuses

Beth Myers is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Technological Innovation and Chief Information Officer at the University of Colorado Denver. After 27 years at the University of Colorado, she now leads AI and digital strategy for an institution she describes as its own small city, one where faculty, students, and staff often land on completely opposite sides of the AI conversation. In this episode, Beth talks with Sara and Dan about what it actually looks like to bring AI into a university with shared governance, where administrators do not get to simply decide and move on. She shares how she models professional disagreement while chairing a committee of people who fundamentally disagree about AI, why engineering and business students are diving in while arts and humanities students hang back, and why one entrepreneurship student built an app prototype in a few hours using AI for the first time. Beth also gets into the early, not especially reassuring research on AI and learning retention, the mental health and loneliness concerns she's watching among students, and her own honest uncertainty about whether the environmental cost of AI will ever pay off. Connect with Beth Myers:   / beth-myers   Follow Sara & Dan: Sara:   / saralynneroberts   Dan:   / danroberts27   Email the show: hello@promptlyspeakingpod.com 00:00 Cold open, AI and complex organizations 00:54 Beth's title and 27 years at CU 01:31 What a vice chancellor actually does 02:11 Why bringing AI to a university is complex 04:11 Losing the ability to have hard conversations 04:31 Who gravitates toward AI, who resists 05:43 Talking to the AI student society 06:36 The computer lab techs' hesitancy 07:23 How heated does it get 09:21 How AI is changing how people learn 11:32 Why students need clearer AI guidelines 11:54 AI and entrepreneurship in students 14:13 The risks of vibe coding without knowing security 15:47 AI literacy and parenting teenagers 17:15 The parental controls Beth actually uses 19:56 AI, loneliness, and student mental health 21:08 Bringing AI into a university's shared governance 23:08 Why the ChatGPT rollout didn't go smoothly 24:10 Required training before getting AI access 26:14 Students who don't want AI in their education 27:22 What early research says about learning and AI 33:39 The environmental cost of AI 35:52 AI subsidies and what happens when prices rise 41:26 Closing thoughts and thanks