In the fall 2025 semester, MiddCORE announced its partnership with OpenAI for its 2026 J-Term session. The plan to work with the $500 billion company led to a 50% increase in applications to the program from last year, according to Robert Moeller, associate professor of psychology and director of MiddCORE. He received 133 applicants for only 44 spots.
Each winter term, MiddCORE works with a different company to invite students to face overarching, specialized challenges and work on problem solving. This year, students across a range of majors and class years are analyzing how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used in higher education to support student learning, culminating in mock presentations to OpenAI.
“The project is designed to give students a structured way to think carefully about those questions rather than accept what companies or tools offer at face value,” Moeller said. “Students are not building products, they’re not promoting OpenAI, but they are analyzing tradeoffs. They’re thinking about multiple perspectives and developing what are hopefully thoughtful and evidence based recommendations grounded in their values.”
Framing the scope of one specific challenge for students to take on and narrowing down possible tasks for a company like OpenAI required careful consideration. OpenAI has faced controversies over ChatGPT, its large language model (LLM), for its high risks for users, environmental impact and studies that show its threat to critical thinking skills.
“My goal is to give students frameworks for making judgement to decide when AI can support their work and their learning, as opposed to trying to push either blind adoption or complete rejection of the tool,” Moeller said.
Students are focusing on the ethics and productive uses of ChatGPT and other AI tools as it relates to learning.
“What are the challenges that people have to deal with? What are the bottlenecks? What are the issues with access?” Moeller said.
Theo Haythe ’28 has found the work a mix of challenging and interesting so far.
“We did mini projects in class for our first week, and are now working on research for our case study during the second week. Research has been focused on collecting clues to further our suggestion to OpenAI,” Haythie said. “I’ve been exposed to the brightest minds in different industries, such as Geroge Lee from Goldman Sachs, Parker Harris of Salesforce, and Morgan Thomas of Accenture.”
Moeller, though, emphasized that the focus of MiddCORE is in exploring how AI should be ethically and effectively used in higher education.
“We know that [AI] tools can be used in ways that are not helpful. So a helpful distinction for this is to think about the distinction between automation and augmentation. Automation is when AI replaces thinking, such as having a paper written for you. Augmentation is when AI supports thinking, such as brainstorming, presenting counterarguments, testing ideas, while still being responsible for the work,” he said.
According to Moeller, students who use AI to support reasoning are gaining far more educational value than those that treat it as a shortcut.
Outside of AI-related projects, guest speakers from a range of industries have spoken to the MiddCORE students about negotiation, venture capital, consulting and general career advice. Beyond its strategic challenge, the program also hopes to prepare students for an ever-changing job market. Moeller firmly believes that a liberal arts education is critical to understanding a work world increasingly shaped by AI.
“AI tools have become ubiquitous across industries and often across functions. Preparing students for that reality means emphasizing reasoning and ethical decision making. In educational contexts, this makes writing and reasoning even more central, since students who can articulate their thinking clearly are far better positioned to use these tools productively,” he said.
The pushback against AI usage in and out of the workplace is significant, however.
“Avoiding [AI] entirely is going to increasingly limit how effectively people can participate in the workforce. AI is already embedded in many professional tools and workflows, often invisibly. So, we’re all engaging with it in software we use, that we’re just not even really aware of in some ways. I think choosing not to engage at all would make collaboration and efficiency difficult, and even just some fields of participation,” he said.
This week, Anthropic, a leading AI safety and research company, released a report examining the correlation between user inputs in ChatGPT and the educational background required to understand the output. The report reinforces the importance of writing and reasoning skills, suggesting that AI tools tend to amplify existing strengths and gaps.
“A lot of people thought that AI was going to level the playing field for people. And the evidence suggests it does not do that. Writing quality and reasoning skills are really strong predictors for how much value someone gets out of AI tools,” Moeller said. “The work that professors do in their courses that teach reasoning skills and writing skills, those are not being replaced. They are needed more than ever.”
As the college reckons with AI usage on campus, it is increasingly looking at the ways to approach the looming technology. Part of college President Ian Baucom’s strategic planning includes an AI working group that addresses how to establish “college operations in an era of AI and rapidly changing technology,” according to their website.
“I think Middlebury is in an exploratory phase, and I think that's the phase we should be in at this point,” Moeller said.
Participant Andrew Rodriquez ’28 has found the program’s strategy effective in guiding students.
“Professor Moeller has been really great at pushing the envelope of the case study and shifting the needle towards making sure we are getting to the right steps. This is one of MiddCORE’s most wide open cases so he has been really good at pushing us to get to where we need to be to actually present,” Rodriquez said.
Students in the course will present their solutions to the community in Wilson Hall on Jan. 23.
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.
Luke James Power '28 (he/him) is a News Editor.
Luke previously served as a contributing writer and as a news editor of "The Anvil" Middlesex school. He is majoring in economics and history. He is also a senior analyst with the Middlebury Student Investment Committee, and enjoys skiing, squash, and golf. He lives in Manhasset, NY.
