Michael Solano

Months before graduation, Jenna Barac ’25 and Anya Workman ’25 both knew that they wanted to combine their interests in emerging technologies and people, but they didn’t know that those interests would lead them right back to Bowdoin. Barac and Workman are participating in the Hastings fellow program, a two-year post-baccalaureate fellowship developed this year through the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity. The program was announced last spring in an effort to shape the College’s approach to the ethics and uses of AI.

As a student at Bowdoin, Workman completed an anthropology and digital and computational studies coordinate major with a minor in music. She knew that she wanted to combine her interests in these disciplines in her career and found the Hastings fellow program to be a great opportunity to explore those passions.

“I ultimately decided to go with this route because it really is the perfect way to combine those interests of technology and people while staying at Bowdoin and continuing to form those relationships with professors and staff that I’d started when I was a student,” Workman said. “I think this position in particular is a great way to dip into a lot of different areas and see what interests us.”

Similarly, Barac knew that she wanted to do something meaningful with her interests after studying economics and digital and computational studies and thought the program would allow her to do that while staying at Bowdoin.

“I’ve always cared about how technology has impacted people and the implications of it,” Barac said. “I’m really grateful to be here around this emerging technology and to be at the forefront of how an educational institution responds to and evolves with the technologies that are released.”

Over the summer, Barac and Workman built the infrastructure that would allow the initiative to launch this semester. This included setting up the Hastings Initiative website, researching the intersections between AI and various disciplines and informing faculty about two new research grants sponsored by the initiative.

Workman and Barac also conducted listening tours with non-academic departments to answer some of their potential questions surrounding AI and how it can be implemented into their work.

“These are really just opportunities to hear about what these cohorts are thinking regarding AI and for them to ask us questions. Oftentimes, we end up having subsequent meetings and building a relationship around how they can engage with the initiative or how we can help them,” Workman said.

Barac discussed potential collaborations on greenhouse gas emissions research at the College that she looks forward to exploring through the research portion of her job. Workman also described some of her research, which included writing a report on AI use in high school education that she shared with the education department. To help faculty consider how they might use the new faculty lines created by the initiative, Workman also created resources for each department receiving a new line in regards to how AI is being utilized in that field.

“Even though I took classes in different departments while I was here, I didn’t engage with everything that I would have wanted to. It’s really great to be able to engage with those things that I wasn’t necessarily able to do as much as a student,” Workman said.

Barac similarly expressed excitement about the opportunity to collaborate with faculty as well as the initiative’s postdoctoral fellows through research and projects.

“I’m really looking forward to collaborating with faculty and our postdocs on some of these projects because they have really good ideas for how to incorporate AI into their research,” Barac said. “Learning about different departments that I had no idea existed when I was a student and learning how to support them and learning more about the work that they do and the impact that has on the Bowdoin community has been a really valuable experience.”

A major focus of their role is education surrounding AI development, both for those who are enthusiastic about its potential and those skeptical of its future uses.

“We want people to be skeptical, but we want to make sure that we have spaces where everyone, regardless of their knowledge of AI or their stance on it … feels like they can come to talk about it to learn more,” Workman said. “Not everyone needs to be an expert, and not everyone wants to engage that much, but [we’re] just making sure that there’s a baseline of knowledge so that people can make informed decisions.”

Workman and Barac encourage students to get involved with the initiative through some of their upcoming student conversations, speaker events and hackathons in collaboration with other departments and groups across campus. Workman and Barac are also hiring student ambassadors for the program starting next week, who will offer perspectives on how the initiative can thoughtfully engage with students.