That means knowing when and how to use AI in the right way, to support learning rather than replace it, he says. He borrows the analogy from journalist Kevin Roos between ‘weightlifting’, where AI can be used as a tool to enhance the minds of students, and ‘forklifts’, where AI can be used to replace some tasks to provide greater capabilities.
“A forklift is a very useful tool when moving heavy objects around a warehouse,” says Urban. “But if you take that forklift to the gym to lift weights, you’re defeating the purpose of the workout. So whether you should use a forklift or not depends on the purpose of the activity.”
In that regard, Lehigh is taking a decentralized approach, giving teachers and students the tools to incorporate AI into their curriculum, but ultimately leaving it up to individuals to decide how to implement AI. The end result is not to ban or celebrate AI, but to experiment with it, assess its impact on learning, and understand where it benefits and harms.
“We don’t assume any particular use case is good,” Urban said. “We want to assess whether it’s helping or hindering learning and be able to adapt it for future use.”
From the classroom to your career
With the government’s push to introduce AI on campus, Lehigh Center for Career and Professional Development (CCPD) conducted a survey of dozens of employers, many of them Fortune 100 and 500 companies, to best determine the skills they are looking for in graduates.
“AI has changed the way work is done in nearly every industry. What we are hearing from our employer partners is that AI is not necessarily replacing jobs, but it is reshaping positions,” said CCPD Senior Director Lori Kennedy, who led the study.
Among the many examples they found, engineers are using AI to prototype ideas. Legal and compliance teams use it to review documents. And scientific writers use it to write literature reviews and first drafts.
“This means AI has become a fundamental expectation, rather than a bonus or a ‘nice-to-have’ skill,” says Kennedy. One employer said, “New employees will be using AI tools by their third day on the job.”
