With the rapid rise and development of artificial intelligence technology, the College is now offering several new courses on AI across the School of Arts and Sciences and graduate schools, according to Dartmouth News. The courses, which span a variety of degree programs and fields, center around the application and use of AI in organizational decision-making, data analysis and engineering.
Thayer School of Engineering and Tuck School of Business adjunct professor Laura Ridlehoover is currently teaching MGMT SP034: “Prototyping with AI: From Idea to Demo in Days” — a Tuck class geared towards Master’s of Business Administration students aiming to enter the technology sector — this term for the first time. The class focuses on how AI can be used in the product development process.
Ridlehoover said it is “really important” for students to understand how AI works because it’s a “tool that you'll be expected to learn how to use.”
“Hopefully the students will become comfortable with some of these tools and … experiment with them further after the class,” Ridlehoover said.
Quantitative social science professor Herbert Chang ’18 is currently teaching QSS 045: “AI Machine Learning for Social Science,” which introduces students to different data analysis techniques used to detect misinformation in AI-generated material. The class teaches students traditional coding before shifting to teaching students to train AI agents to code.
Chang first taught the class in 2024 but “overhauled” the syllabus this year to include content on agentic coding, in which AI agents are programmed to complete complex tasks he said.
“It is imperative that these new ways of coding and doing data science are being taught to students,” Chang said.
While Chang said he thought the College is headed in a “good direction” by “going all into AI,” he emphasized that students should combine AI with “liberal arts and critical thinking traditions.”
Thayer lecturer Reed Harder ’13 is teaching ENGM 182: “Operations Research,” which he describes as an “interim machine learning course,” as part of Thayer’s Master’s in Engineering Management program. According to Harder, the MEM program as a whole allows students to use AI without any “academic constraints.”
“We leave it pretty open ended for the students with the knowledge that they are going to go out [into] the world and … have to engage with these tools,” Harder said.
Harder said he believes that the implementation of AI tools in education can be a “balancing act” between using them as a learning mechanism while still thinking about problems “without the crush of AI.”
“You can use [AI] very effectively if you’re careful and judicious,” Harder said. “But at the same time, encouraging students to think about problems without the crutch of AI is something that I strongly think is a key component of a lot of courses.”
Tuck professor Scott Anthony ’96 is teaching MGMT SP019: “AI and Consultative Decision-Making,” a laboratory class that teaches students how to use AI to aid with organizational decision-making. Students ultimately learn how to make a “personal AI strategy that balances short-term efficiency and long-term growth and development,” according to the syllabus.
Anthony said “the bar has gotten higher” for the class, which he first taught in 2024, as AI tools have improved. For example, Anthony was satisfied with “a very simple output” from students’ final projects during the first iteration of the class. This year, in contrast, the final project to develop a “synthetic consultant,” an agent that can interactively give a company advice.
“I’ve never seen a synthetic consultant before,” Anthony said. “It might go horribly wrong, but the whole point of the class is, even if we fail, we’re gonna fail in an interesting way.”
Anthony said he believes that AI was “a great big, disruptive change” to the world and does not have an “obvious” correct implementation in education.
“The idea that you experiment, with some degree of guardrails, to see what works and what doesn’t work is the exact right way to do it,” Anthony said. “I don’t think you should be all in, [but] I don’t think you should say let’s not use the tool at all.”
