MiddCORE, the college’s experiential learning program, recently announced its partnership with OpenAI for its 2026 J-Term session. Serving as a credit-bearing J-Term class, MiddCORE’s winter program requires a competitive application process and involves working with a company partner to take on challenges and foster leadership and problem-solving skills.
The partnership with OpenAI comes at a time when Middlebury is reckoning with the use and impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on campus. The Middlebury Handbook currently allows the use of AI when permitted by an instructor but does not provide any further guidance, and professors are navigating the gray space of endorsing or outlawing AI in their classrooms. On Tuesday, the college Helpdesk sent an email to students acknowledging the AI tools now available with Middlebury credentials through Google and Microsoft; it asks students to consider data security, privacy and ethics in their use. A more robust “governance and communication framework” for AI use is in progress, the email said.
Rob Moeller, associate professor of psychology and director of MiddCORE, said that finding a company to partner with each year entails cold calling and leveraging pre-existing connections through Middlebury’s alumni network.
OpenAI is an artificial intelligence (AI) company that aims to develop “safe and beneficial” artificial general intelligence, which it defines as AI systems that are generally smarter than humans, according to the company charter. In 2015, now-CEO Sam Altman, Elon Musk and other tech leaders co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit research organization. Now worth $500 billion, it has since made significant advances in large language models (LLMs) and is best known for its LLM ChatGPT.
“I try and get companies that I think our students would most like to work with, and companies that have challenges that I think are engaging and interesting and complicated,” Moeller said.
The company is no stranger to controversy. In 2023, OpenAI’s board of directors announced that it had fired Altman, leading to more than 700 of 770 OpenAI employees signing a letter to board members threatening resignation if Altman was not reinstated. Within the same week, all but one board member resigned and a new board was created with Altman returning to his position.
OpenAI has since faced numerous copyright violation lawsuits that accuse it of reproducing work without permission. It has also been accused of using celebrities’ voices without their consent within its ChatGPT systems, and former employees have decried the lack of accountability in AI companies, calling for stronger whistleblower protections.
Numerous reports have identified the data centers that house AI servers as large consumers of water and electricity, producers of electronic waste and significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.
The collaboration marks a shift in reputation and size from previous partnerships. Last year, MiddCORE worked with Athletic Brewing Co., an alumni-founded company that specializes in non-alcoholic beer products. In the past, the program has partnered with companies such as New Balance, LEGO, Patagonia and L.L.Bean.
“We work with the company to develop a case study, and we come up with a very specific challenge that all students from any major would be able to do. A good case, ideally, is a case that requires a liberal arts education to work through,” Moeller said.
These cases are actual business problems the companies may face. The 40 students in the program are joined by approximately the same number of mentors, composed of alumni and people connected to the college, to solve strategic challenges.
“No one in the room, including the company, the consultants that are working with students, the professors, no one knows what the answer is. So, it's a really unique place to be,” Moeller said.
In his own classes, Moeller invites his students to explore the benefits of AI tools.
“My approach this fall with AI has been to encourage students to use it, to share their prompts, and to have discussion in class about how to use it to have a tool that promotes learning and realizing that it's easy to use it in ways that circumvent learning, but it can also be a really powerful tool to increase learning,” Moeller said. “I join my students in trying to figure out how to do that best.”
MiddCORE interns Weronika Wozny ’27 and Jason Chiappinelli ’27 are aware of the concerns surrounding AI, but are optimistic for the partnership’s impact.
“I’m excited to see what the scope is going to be and how people are going to engage with it. If it is approached properly, it can be a good lesson on the positive incorporation of AI within the academic environment, because I think there are a lot of uses of it that can be good,” Wozny said.
“There is space for valid criticisms, but AI is going to be a fact of life, so it’s about understanding what it is going to be here,” Chiappinelli said.
OpenAI’s controversies won’t limit the goals of the program.
“I want students to know that they are graduating into a world where there are going to be a lot of tough decisions to be made, a lot of challenges that need to be solved, and are going to be equipped to do it. We are hoping that they will lean into, rather than withdraw from, the challenge,” Moeller said.
Norah Khan '27 (she/her) is an News Editor.
Norah has previously served as a Arts & Culture Editor. She is majoring in Political Science and English, with minor in Spanish. Outside of The Campus, she is involved with Matriculate as an Advising Fellow and the Conflict Transformation Collaborative as a Conflict Coaching Peer Facilitator.
