April 30, 2025
Meghan O'Toole
Leading the way with AI: Lake Forest College announces new artificial intelligence minor
Beginning in Fall 2025, Lake Forest College students can explore artificial intelligence (AI) through a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary minor.
With two distinct tracks—AI studies and AI governance—the AI minor program is designed to help students think critically, act ethically, and lead confidently in a world increasingly shaped by AI.
AI is already shaping the workforce across a range of industries. Understanding how AI works and how to govern it ethically is essential to success in the current job market. The new minor allows students to combine AI with a variety of majors to prepare for the changing landscape of future careers.
The minor is co-chaired by Executive Director of the Krebs Center for the Humanities and Professor of English Davis Schneiderman and Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics Sara Jamshidi.
“We proposed this new minor in artificial intelligence because students today need more than just technical fluency—they need the critical, ethical, and interdisciplinary tools to navigate a world increasingly shaped by AI,” Schneiderman said. “Lake Forest College is uniquely positioned to lead in this space: no other small liberal arts college offers a program like this, one that bridges humanistic inquiry and AI governance frameworks with real-world applications.”
Lake Forest College is one of the first small liberal arts colleges to offer a comprehensive and interdisciplinary AI credential that is firmly rooted in the liberal arts tradition.
AI studies
Students explore how artificial intelligence is shaping the human experience through literature, ethics, history, and the arts. This humanities-driven track invites you to ask big questions about what it means to be human in the age of AI and offers practical skills for the 21st-century workplace.
AI governance
Students learn the processes, standards, and guardrails essential for ensuring that AI implementations are ethical, safe, and compliant. Through this minor, graduates become proficient in designing governance plans that cover the entire AI lifecycle, from proper launch and ongoing monitoring to issue resolution and sunsetting.
Alongside the AI minor, our robust data science and computer science programs provide opportunities for students to learn how to build AI systems—complementing the minor's focus on assessment and critical engagement.
“The data science and computer science programs discuss the nuances of building machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms. But the subject is far too expansive and ever-present to only explore on the development side,” Jamshidi explained. “Take, for example, the ‘monoculture’ problem that AI use presents. As people use AI more in activities like writing, human writing styles can start to converge to the styles inherent to common large language models. What impacts will that have on creative writing? How will this impact our expectations as readers? These are profound questions that extend well beyond algorithmic programming and design.”
Lake Forest College is preparing students to develop, evaluate, and govern AI responsibly.
Students will be able to declare an AI minor with the Registrar beginning in the fall.
HUMAN and AI at Lake Forest College
The new AI minor is not the College’s first engagement with artificial intelligence. The College’s Krebs Center for the Humanities received a $1.2 million grant from the Mellon Foundation for the HUMAN (Humanities Understanding of the Machine-Assisted Nexus) project.
The HUMAN grant project aims to explore artificial intelligence through a humanities perspective, equipping students with the skills to ethically integrate AI into their professional lives with an emphasis on equity and justice.
HUMAN explores what it means to be human in the age of AI by engaging an interdisciplinary group of humanities faculty fellows who, in partnership with Chicago-based organizations, are developing:
- New courses that focus on AI
- Digital humanities research projects
- Seminars
- Publications
- Artist residencies
- And more
Students are gaining a broad understanding of the role that the humanities should play in public policy, cultural preservation, and community education in an AI-inflected world.
HUMAN addresses the urgent need for an informed understanding of the interplay between the humanities and the fast-evolving realm of artificial intelligence to ensure ethical developments, promote equitable technological advancement, and nurture meaningful human-AI collaboration.