Professor Muriel Cormican had been watching Metropolis, a 1927 silent German film, when the idea hit.
“Buzz! Before AI could exist, it had to be imagined,” said Cormican, associate dean
of undergraduate studies at TCU’s AddRan College of Liberal Arts and professor of
German. “AI is everywhere and deeply rooted in the liberal arts.”
This is how the team-taught artificial intelligence class led by Cormican and offered
for spring 2025, came to be.
Wait. A German professor is teaching a class on artificial intelligence?
“Collaboration is increasingly crucial to affect change,“ Cormican said. “We have
to look at these bigger issues and problems through a cross-disciplinary lens.”
AI has been woven into research, curriculum and daily applications across the TCU
campus in recent years. Horned Frog students find AI in expected disciplines like
business and science and a few unexpected ones like Cormican’s class. It is the latest
iteration of Liberal Arts in Action, the brainchild of Sonja Watson, dean of the AddRan College of Liberal Arts, to emphasize cross-disciplinary collaborations
on some of the biggest and the most pressing issues of the day.
AI and the liberal arts are not a stretch. The very programming for AI requires linguistics.
Furthermore, there are questions about the implications of AI on creative expression.
Then there are the thorny ethical issues of machine learning, in addition to the real-world
implications of utilizing it.
“We want to explore how we are using AI and how it is using us,” Cormican said.
The AddRan team working on the initiative is made up of Rashaan DeShay, associate professor of criminology and criminal justice; Curt Rode, senior instructor of creative writing and director of the Center for Digital Expression; and Esther Teixeira, associate professor of Spanish and Hispanic studies. They assembled the content and will co-teach the class, which explores AI in theory,
in practice, in literature and in the kind of films that started Cormican down this
path, including Spielberg’s Minority Report.
Liberal Arts in Action is open to all interested TCU students.
