A recently added course at Texas Christian University encourages students to examine how artificial intelligence impacts real people.
That could involve exploring how AI is changing the voice-acting industry or impacting hiring practices.
The class, “A Human-Centered AI Future,” is one component of a new certificate that will be available as soon as next fall. It comes as academia adjusts to the AI boom and its adoption by the industries graduates are entering.
The subject was first offered last spring as a special topics course, which has subjects that change from one semester to the next. It will be offered as a stand-alone class from this year forward due to high student interest and engagement, said Muriel Cormican, associate dean of undergraduate studies for the AddRan College of Liberal Arts and one of the class’s professors.
The idea for the class was sparked when AddRan Dean Sonja Watson invited Cormican to teach a class on an up-and-coming subject of interest to students. Cormican was already interested in AI and suggested examining it through humanities and social sciences.
“We were both excited about that idea,” Cormican said.
She recruited three other faculty members to join her, and they set about planning the class.
This spring, three are teaching the course together, an unusual but impactful setup, Cormican said. They demonstrate to students the benefits of collaboration with other disciplines and that people who sometimes disagree can still engage in respectful debate, she said.
The class is designed to be hands on and discussion based rather than lectures. Students are encouraged to approach it as if they all belonged to the same research team.
“Our idea behind that was to try to bring the idea of real-life skills and work environment into the classroom,” Cormican said.
Last spring, students worked on research projects in six groups of three, presenting their findings at the end of the course. The three best projects received monetary prizes.
A prize-winning project explored how AI used in hiring software had the potential to exclude people of color and women by assuming companies wanted to hire employees who matched their staff’s current demographics. The students argued that such AI should be implemented cautiously and also suggested solutions, Cormican said.
Trying to keep pace with the fast-changing field throughout the semester is something Curt Rode, one of the instructors, is looking forward to.
“It’s going to be a thrill, a terrifying, exhilarating thrill, to try to keep up with,” Rode said.
He pointed out the recent controversy regarding Grok, X’s AI platform, as an example of a development that warrants discussion.
Grok edits real images at the request of users, including undressing those in the photograph. Critics around the world have raised the alarm about a lack of guardrails for this feature and about its potential to generate sexualized images, including of children.
“These are terrifying concerns,” Rode said. “We need to be talking about that — not what happened last March but what’s happening in September or what’s happening in January of ’26.”
The class has wide appeal with students across focus areas — including business, communications and fine arts — enrolling, Cormican said.
“We get very, very different perspectives, for example, from somebody who’s coming out of the business school, than from somebody who’s coming out of the College of Communication, than from somebody who’s coming out of AddRan,” she said. “Together, all these perspectives are hugely valuable, and that’s what we’re trying to emphasize, this interdisciplinarity.”
The insights students gain should appeal to employers across industries, she said.
In December, TCU officials gave the nod to start planning the four-course certificate on AI. The hope is that students can begin pursuing it in the fall, Cormican said.
McKinnon Rice is the higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at mckinnon.rice@fortworthreport.org.
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