Call for Participation 

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In 2026, the Teaching and Learning Center at the CUNY Graduate Center will host the second cohort of faculty in the Critical AI Literacy Institute (CALI).

Over the past year the conversation around AI at CUNY has settled into something of an unhappy disequilibrium. Some faculty have found ways they’re comfortable talking about this technology with their students, and creative approaches to engage with genAI while maintaining an emphasis on learner agency. Others continue to struggle with the presence of these tools, tinkering with their teaching to find a balance they find acceptable. Many faculty continue to resist genAI for personal, disciplinary, ethical, or political reasons. Student use is all over the map, and though genAI has spread through the digital infrastructure of the university, many learners continue to use it rarely, if at all.  

How genAI will be embedded within the knowledge systems of the future remains fiercely contested. AI companies promote a vision of their software as labor-saving efficiency machines, bound to increase productivity while either displacing human labor or shifting its role. Yet, many companies report stagnating use and needing to invest in quality control by humans for work that was outsourced to genAI. Commercially-available tools evade guardrails intended to constrain their behavior and protect vulnerable users, reports percolate of an impending burst of the AI capital bubble, and local conflicts around the building of data centers are spreading. Amidst all this, AI continues to dominate news cycles and capture the imagination of business leaders and policymakers. Managing its presence will require strategic positioning and investment from educational institutions. It also demands the solidification of a critical vocabulary through which scholars can understand its impacts. 

Where there is consensus, it is around the belief that if these tools are to be integrated into educational environments, they should only be integrated ethically and responsibly. There remains debate, however, about what ethical and responsible use looks like in the university.

The Critical AI Literacy Institute posits that responsible instructional use can only follow from engagement with the material realities of the technology and reckoning with their environmental, ethical, and epistemological costs. This belief informs the call below for a second cohort of CALI Faculty Fellows who will focus on three specific areas of curriculum development.

1. Critical Foundations of AI. We will recruit faculty from multiple disciplines to work together to develop modules for a course that offers a critical introduction to AI grounded in core disciplinary questions. Each selected faculty member will create a 3–4 week module, teach it in their own class in Fall 2026, and position it for possible adoption in a CUNY-wide AI foundations course.
    
2. Ecological Implications of AI. We will recruit faculty from multiple disciplines to develop curricula exploring the ecological implications of AI. Courses or course modules may explore these implications from a variety of perspectives including, but not limited to, the environmental impacts of AI infrastructure, policy and regulation advocacy to influence AI development, and tracing the political economies of AI.
    
3. T(h)inkering with AI. We will recruit faculty who will develop purpose-built, focused genAI tools to meet specific pedagogical goals within their courses. Faculty in this track will explore how scoped applications of these custom tools can support students as they work through familiar challenges, experimenting with approaches that fit the methods and questions of their fields. Faculty from a variety of disciplines are encouraged to apply; technical skills or experience with software development is not required.

Fellowship Structure, Requirements, and Compensation

The second CALI will run from Spring 2026 through Winter 2026-27, and will bring together approximately 20 faculty members to envision, create, implement, test, and revise approaches to teaching with or about generative AI in undergraduate courses in their disciplines. Faculty in the second CALI Cohort will focus on producing curricular modules that fall into one of the following tracks:

1. Critical Foundations of AI
2. Ecological Implications of AI
3. T(h)inkering with AI

CALI faculty will then teach materials they’ve developed in a course in Fall 2026, and participate in ongoing research initiatives connected to the Institute.  

Compensation for participation in this project will be $6,000 paid through the CUNY Research Foundation in $3,000 increments at the completion of two phases of work.   

Phase One, April – August 2026

CALI Faculty Fellows will:

Phase Two, August 2026 – January 2027

CALI Faculty Fellows will:

Eligibility 

All CUNY faculty who will be teaching undergraduate courses in Fall 2026 and are available for all the activities stated above from April 2026 through January 2027 are eligible to apply. Adjunct faculty members and Graduate Teaching Fellows are also eligible to apply, but must demonstrate a commitment from an academic program that they will be teaching a specific course in Fall 2026 (see below).    

Apply

To apply, please complete the form below by January 26, 2026. Within the form, be sure to upload your CV and answers to the track questions in a single pdf (title convention: lastnamefirstname.pdf).

For adjuncts and Graduate Teaching Fellows, please include a memo from the department chair of the program where you’ll be teaching in Fall 2026 indicating a commitment to your appointment as instructor of record of a specific course.

Application Questions

Please select one track below in which to submit your application, and answer each question separately. Answers to each question should be fewer than 300 words. 

Track One: Critical Foundations of AI 

1. What are the key methods and principles from your discipline that will help students better understand how to engage with genAI?
2. What defines a critical approach in your field, and how does it inform the way you discuss AI with your students?
3. In a three-week module, how would you help students develop an understanding of these methods and principles?
4. List the other disciplines that you think should be represented in a critical foundations of AI course, and note why.    

Track Two: Ecological Implications of AI

1. How does your research and teaching engage with the ecological, political, and/or economic implications of AI?
2. What defines a critical approach in your field, and how does it inform the way you discuss AI with your students?
3. What curricular materials do you envision creating and how would these materials deepen students’ understanding of the ecological implications of AI?
4. What is the value of exploring ecological implications of AI with students?

Track Three: T(h)inkering with AI

1. If you could develop a custom AI tool for one of your courses, what would you want it to do, and what pedagogical challenge or learning goal would it address?
2. What defines a critical approach in your field, and how does it inform the way you discuss AI with your students?
3. What do you see as the value of tinkering and experimenting with genAI tools in your field, and what possibilities does that open up for your teaching and your students?
4. What concerns do you have about bringing AI into your course, and what strategies or guardrails would help you work through those concerns in practice?

Application Form

Applications due by January 26, 2026. CUNY login required.

Submit via: https://cuny.is/cali2-apply.

Additional Information

CALI staff will host an Information Session for anyone with questions about the fellowship on December 17 from 4-5pm, on Zoom. Please register at: https://gc-cuny-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/QLSLgQ9_Q-OzWQWHgqTPJA 

Please direct any questions pertaining to the CALI Faculty Fellowship to Luke Waltzer ([email protected]).