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Task Force for Use of Generative AI

September 23, 2025

Among the key components of LMU’s current Strategic Plan is the idea that, by “embracing the spirit of adaptability that has defined Ignatian education for centuries, we will innovate together across boundaries of all kinds to continually improve in research, teaching, and preparing students for the challenges ahead.”

The advent of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), and its rapid implementation across culture, society, and the economy, urges us to embrace our Ignatian capacity for principled and reflective adaptation. Faithful to our mission that engages the signs of the times, GenAI innovation ought to be grounded in deep, intellectual inquiry. While GenAI proponents make remarkable promises for human productivity and flourishing, the questions that attend its rollout are fundamental and the potential displacements profound.

As a Catholic institution grounded in the Jesuit and Marymount education traditions, LMU is committed to fostering mission-aligned engagements with GenAI, which will, of necessity, now be one part of any college student’s holistic education. We have an obligation to develop our collective capabilities around GenAI so that we can help students develop their own skills for effective and ethically sound engagements with GenAI.

To this end, this task force will be asked to generate principles, guidelines, tools, and practices that can help individuals engage ethically and skillfully with GenAI for academic and scholarly purposes:

  • Develop initial drafts of principles, heuristics, and reflective practices to assist faculty in ethical and effective engagements with GenAI for teaching and scholarship.
  • Map GenAI’s impact on student learning and explore opportunities rooted in the university’s mission and Ignatian pedagogy to meet this moment in a way that is uniquely LMU.
  • Generate readily adoptable definitions, frameworks, and tools for faculty to use to make clear for students the terms of engagement for GenAI in any class, project, assignment, or exam.
  • Recommend new institutional means for developing and sharing developing understandings of GenAI, particularly around GenAI’s potential benefits for teaching, learning, and scholarship, as well as GenAI’s potential ethical, intellectual, and pedagogical challenges and complications.
  • Suggest ways to foster more communal conversations and engagements with GenAI’s values, uses, and complications.
  • Explore options for how mission-aligned GenAI literacy might be embedded in curricular and/or co-curricular experiences for students.

The task force is asked to suggest ways to raise the floor of understanding about GenAI among LMU’s academic communities. In carrying out this work, the task force will also offer a model of cross-disciplinary GenAI-focused exploration, expertise-sharing, and professional development, with an eye towards sharing what is learned with colleagues beyond the task force.

 

Task Force Membership

Co-Chairs: José I. Badenes, S.J., Ph.D., Vice Provost for Academic Programs, and Jordan Freitas, Faculty Senate Secretary, Associate Professor, Seaver College of Science and Engineering

Provost Office liaison: Matt Nelson, Interim Special Advisor to the Provost for Strategic Initiatives

Representatives from the following positions and areas (26):

  • Andrieu, Jean-Paul, Director of Strategy, Architecture, and Analytics (ITS)
  • Archambault, Susan, Ed.D., Head of Reference and Instruction (Library)
  • Carl, Clinton, Senior Writing Instructor (First Year Seminars)
  • Chavez, Christine, Associate Vice Provost, Institutional Effectiveness
  • Coleman, Jared, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, AI Expert, Seaver College of Science and Engineering (Computer Science)
  • Doyle, Colin, J.D., Associate Professor, Loyola Law School
  • Finlay, Christopher, Ph.D., Associate Professor, College of Communication and Fine Arts (Communication Studies)
  • Ford, Máire, Ph.D., Associate Vice-Provost, Faculty Development
  • Frank, Matt, Director of Teaching, learning, and Research Analytics (ITS)
  • Gerken, Victoria, Vice President, Communications and Public Relations (MarComm)
  • Ghavami, Negin, Ph.D.,Associate Professor,  Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts (Psychology)
  • Granados, Ryane, Associate Director, Academic Resource Center (Writing Center)
  • Llywelyn, Dorian, S.J., Ph.D., Director, Ignatian Spirituality Center (Mission and Ministry)
  • Lontock, Greg, Clinical Assistant Professor, College of Business Administration (ISBA)
  • Parrish, John, Ph.D., President Chief of Staff and Vice President for Institutional Strategy (President’s Office)
  • Pearson, Kyra, Ph.D., University Core Curriculum Committee, Associate Professor, College of Communication and Fine Arts (Communication Studies)
  • Picard, Jackson, Undergraduate Student
  • Rothchild, Jonathan, Ph.D., Associate Provost, Undergraduate Education
  • Samay, Csilla, Ed.D., Associate Dean of Students, International Initiatives and Special Projects (Student Affairs)
  • Scheibler, Sue, Ph.D., Academic Honesty Review Committee and Committee on the Excellence of Teaching, Associate Professor, School of Film and Television (Film and TV Studies)
  • Shain, Jack (John), Graduate Student
  • Smith, Brendan, Ph.D., Faculty Senate President, Associate Professor, Seaver College of Science and Engineering (Mechanical Engineering)
  • Sullivan, Mairead, Ph.D., M.S.W., Director, University Core Curriculum, Professor, Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts (Women’s and Gender Studies)
  • Tobaldo, Shannon, Ed.D., IDEAL Director, School of Education
  • Willette, Demian, Ph.D., Associate Professor Seaver College of Science and Engineering (Biology)
  • Winters, Justin, Instructor, School of Film and Television (Screenwriting)