About This Session
Faculty-focused AI initiatives are well underway at many institutions, but staff are largely figuring out generative AI on their own — often without structured training, shared vocabulary, or clear guidelines. Liberal arts colleges face particular challenges: small teams wear many hats, professional development resources are limited, and staff roles vary widely in how they intersect with AI.
This presentation shares how Carleton College designed a Critical AI Literacy certificate program specifically for staff, built from the ground up around their new critical AI literacy framework. With the first cohort launching after this conference, this is a live look at an in-progress effort — the decisions made, the trade-offs navigated, and the questions still being worked out.
Program Structure
5 Core Sessions
Foundational knowledge, practical application, and ethical engagement — balancing what AI is, how to use it, and when not to.
9 Elective Sessions
Participants choose 3 electives tailored to their own role, giving flexibility across diverse staff functions.
Async Baseline
A pre-session Moodle module establishes a shared baseline before any in-person work begins.
Hands-On Practice
Participants work on tasks drawn from their own jobs — not generic exercises, but real workflows.
The Three Pillars of the Certificate
- Foundational knowledge — What generative AI actually is, how it works, and what its real limits are
- Practical application — Prompting, evaluating output, and building real workflows for participants' specific roles
- Ethical engagement — Bias, privacy, data confidentiality, and knowing when AI simply isn't the right choice
Learning Outcomes
- Articulate the case for a structured staff AI literacy program, as distinct from one-off workshops or faculty-focused initiatives.
- Explain at least two design decisions involved in structuring a staff AI literacy certificate — including how to balance content across sessions and why a core-plus-elective model serves diverse staff roles.
- Identify one concrete next step to advance staff AI literacy at your own institution.
Session Description
Rather than a polished retrospective, this is a candid look at how Carleton built a certificate program that attempts to balance practical skill-building with critical and ethical engagement. Attendees will see how the framework was grounded in institutional values, what structural decisions shaped the design, and what the team is still figuring out.
Time is reserved for audience exchange so participants leave with ideas and strategies they can adapt to start a similar initiative on their own campus.