As artificial intelligence continues to reshape both classrooms and careers, students and faculty alike are waiting to see how Drake University will address it going forward. 

Drake President Marty Martin announced in an April 3 campus-wide email the advent of an AI Strategic Planning Committee to outline AI guidelines at Drake. This will include developing “shared principles, policy guidance, and professional development recommendations to support the responsible use of artificial intelligence.”

“Its work will focus on balancing innovation with responsibility, including careful attention to data privacy, security, equity, and institutional risk,” Martin said. “In addition, the committee will prioritize training and support to help members of our campus community use AI thoughtfully, effectively, and in ways that align with our mission.” 

Currently, these policies are left to departments and professors, leading to variation in how classrooms use AI. 

Chris Snider, a professor of journalism at Drake, will be serving on the Curriculum Subcommittee, which will focus on “curriculum, instruction, and student AI fluency.” Snider promotes the use of artificial intelligence in his classroom. 

“My job is to get students jobs in the real world. If AI is part of that world, they need to understand it,” Snider said.

Snider noted that in areas like coding, generative AI can do things that it couldn’t six months ago. In professional schools like journalism, pharmacy and business, he believes that students need to accept that AI exists and know how to use it. 

“If you do not use AI, you are not going to get jobs working for businesses,” Snider said.

Snider owns a consulting business outside of Drake and has seen firsthand how coding assistants, generative writing software and research tools are becoming more common in the workplace. To prepare students for this, he expects them to first understand the subject matter, then integrate AI for application.

Students are also deciding how to use AI in their academic lives. A survey from the University of Southern California Center for Generative AI and Society found that students who used AI used it most frequently for finding direct answers to questions. 

Junior Audrey Petersen avoids using artificial intelligence entirely.

“I like to disable whatever AI features are present that are able to be disabled, and unless it is absolutely mandatory in a situation, I do not use AI at all,” Petersen said. 

Petersen said she has previously used AI, but has since discovered that it is not beneficial to her, as she believes that it defeats the purpose of schooling.

“It’s going to take me three hours versus 90 minutes to do something without AI versus with it — but in that time, I’m building new connections in my brain,” Petersen said.

Environmental implications also discourage Peterson from using AI. A 2026 paper from the publication “Patterns” found that AI systems are “rapidly becoming the key growth driver of global data center electricity consumption.”

Peterson’s anti-AI stance was challenged when one professor required AI use to complete an assignment. Students were required to feed a given prompt into AI, then copy and paste the response into Blackboard.

“I am paying money for an instructor to teach me a new skill, and then the assignment for this week is to have a robot do my homework. What were the last six weeks of class building up to if ChatGPT can do everything?” Petersen said.

Even in classes that prohibit AI use, Petersen added that she will hear students brag about using it to cheat on all of their assignments, getting around bans.

“I get whiplash from it being called plagiarism in one class and then it being required in another,” Petersen said. 

The committee will work to bring together faculty and staff from different departments in the University, and incorporate student voices and feedback, such as Peterson’s. 

“It is critically important we align our use of AI with our institutional mission and values,” Martin said. 

Although the committee is set to begin work this spring, no further timeline has been established for when an official policy will be released.