Exploring AI in Writing Across the Curriculum

On March 19, 2026, Writing Across the Curriculum held its annual WAC Talk. This year’s session focused on the role of generative AI in disciplinary writing.

Our esteemed guest speakers, Dr. Valerie Esposito Kubanick (Nursing) and Dr. Emily Verla Bovino (Performing and Fine Arts), delivered insightful presentations on how they integrate AI into their pedagogy to reflect real-world experiences students may encounter as they enter their careers.​

Dr. Kubanick, the 2026 American Psychiatric Nurses Association awardee for Innovation in Nursing, stressed the need to critically assess AI-generated information, as it can mean the difference between life and death for patients. To illustrate this, she asks her students to enter a clinical prompt into a generative AI platform then critique the output for errors, paying close attention to hallucinations, in which AI generates fictitious or illogical information and presents it as fact. Dr. Kubanick acknowledges the strengths of generative AI but recognizes that it can never replace the human touch– it cannot observe what a nurse would, empathize with a patient as a nurse would, or cry with a family who has lost a loved one, as a nurse would. As such, she ultimately views AI as a supportive partner to the student and the professional, but not as the final, credible voice.​

Dr. Bovino, project leader of a 2024-2025 American Council for Learned Societies Digital Justice Grant, who also stewards York College's public art and is organizing the Southeast Queens Film Festival with the Southeast Queens Center for History and Culture, emphasized the importance of experiential learning for communicating the continued relevance of discipline-specific writing. She challenged the common perception that all students use and embrace generative AI recounting how students in York's Fine Arts discipline actively challenged the use of AI in art for racial justice, exploitative labor and environmental concerns during a recent visit to an exhibition by Korean artist Ayoung Kim that incorporated video-to-video generative AI. Dr. Bovino follows 'consentful tech' practices with students, allowing them to opt in or out of the use of generative AI, while making them aware of its adverse impacts, especially for the most vulnerable. She has explored the ethical quandaries of AI with her students in a Manifold project she published on the critical use of AI by Black and Indigenous artists and builds AI literacy with in-class activities that invite students to practice using CUNY's Enterprise version of Microsoft Co-Pilot as a research assistant with grounding (the verification of information provided). Her course policy stresses mutual respect between student and professor, and allows for experimentation with Co-Pilot if students provide a full transcript of AI prompts and responses.​

Both speakers’ talks centered on the application of their pedagogy to their students’ future careers. Attendees engaged in a robust discussion about creating authentic and practical learning experiences, the environmental and ethical implications of using AI, and the value of writing within their respective disciplines. Building AI Literacy is important for our students, as they currently use and will continue to use AI in their personal and professional lives.