Alicia Maldonado-Zahra is a scholar-activist fellow working for Goshen College and the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery. She teaches courses in the peace, justice and conflict studies department, and works with student protest groups to ensure their voices are heard. She also has gained a reputation within the college as having strong opinions on AI. Through Maldonado-Zahra’s work with the coalition, she has read through research on the environmental impacts of AI data centers. While the coalition is a Christian group, its practices are also rooted in Native American cosmology.  “Mennonites and Native Americans have a lot in...

By John Eash-Scott • October 1, 2026 • Features

On Sept. 22, The Record sent out a survey to understand and analyze data on AI use across campus. During the seven-day open period, 70 students, 31 faculty members and 16 staff members responded to the survey.  Overall, students are more abstinent than faculty and staff. 43% of students said they never use AI, against 19% of faculty and 13% of staff. Only 20% of students use AI somewhat often or frequently, versus 45% of faculty and 50% of staff.  Out of the 70 students who responded, 30 of them claimed to never use AI. The predominance of the “never”...

By Igor Sapucaia • October 1, 2026 • News Josiah Miller • October 1, 2026 • News

President Rebecca Stoltzfus launched the AI Task Force 10 months ago, with the prospect of obtaining a grant from the Lilly Endowment Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education Initiative. She hoped this would lead to further discussions on various ways Goshen College can approach AI.  During these AI Task Force meetings, topics such as having a Statement of Ethics and an AI Policy site for GC came up, among other AI-related conversations.  In a process which started in February, the AI Ethics Workgroup led by Philipp Gollner, professor of history, met multiple times throughout the spring with other faculty members to...

By Hannah Smith • October 1, 2026 • News

The IT department used artificial intelligence to make changes to 95 pages in this first phase of the project, which was completed. The first phase of the project took about three months and was finalized mid September. The refresh included collaboration between the IT department, faculty and students and its objectives were to better showcase what GC has to offer and make the website more interactive for online visitors. “We wanted to make sure that the voice that was being portrayed in each page for different departments was unique,” said Isabel Massud ’26, a part of the project’s team. AI...

By Elena Oborocea • October 1, 2026 • News

Kaitlyn Muns, an image and video aesthetics tutor at SpaceXAI, formerly known as xAI, visited campus on Monday.  Muns spoke in a career planning class taught by Patrick Farran, a professor of business. She then had an informal chat with students. Muns worked in luxury fashion, and was a wardrobe and prop stylist for TV when SpaceXAI reached out to her via LinkedIn. “‘Never miss an opportunity’ is my motto,” she said. Muns encouraged anybody with a passion, like her, to channel that passion into AI. Interests mentioned during the event included animation and photography. “Do the things that make...

By John Eash-Scott • October 1, 2026 • News

On May 15, Pope Leo XIV signed “Magnifica Humanitas,” or “Magnificent Humanity,” his first encyclical, focused on protecting human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence. The Vatican released it on May 25.  In the 42,000-word document, the Pope asked: “Where are we going? Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves? What direction should we choose as people and as a human community?” Those questions are becoming more relevant as AI enters personal areas of life, including faith.  Sheri Hostetler, pastor at First Mennonite Church of San Francisco said, “It was becoming increasingly apparent that this technology was...

By Ana Alves Machado • October 1, 2026 • Features

AI has been integrated into every part of daily life, and it felt crucial to mark this moment — a time when it seems each decision has the potential to set our course for at the very least the rest of my lifetime.  The decision to do this issue homecoming weekend was intentional. I want alumni to know what AI looks like at Goshen College, without the filter of the corporate institution. This is the historical record that people will reference when they want to know what GC really looked like as AI first started to boom — the questions...

By Mackenzie P. Miller • October 1, 2026 • Features

Raj Biyani ’92, after volunteering his time at Goshen College for the newly-created AI Task Force, was hired as GC’s first Chief Innovation Officer, a role which he began on April 1. Biyani has already progressed GC towards the next goal of submitting a grant proposal to the Lilly Endowment Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education Initiative, due by May 1.  GC, which already received $125,000 from the Lilly Endowment after an initial proposal was accepted, is closing in on the finalization of the proposal to receive $5 million in funding. “We’re down to the tweaking stage,” President Rebecca Stoltzfus said....

By Griffin Eash • April 16, 2026 • News

I do not believe that generative AI belongs on a Mennonite college campus. There are many reasons for this, but I do feel the need to first clarify that I do mean generative AI, the type of chatbot that would have you believe it knows how to write better than you, that it gives good advice, that it is a knowledge machine — not a repository of all correct and incorrect information out on the internet. The sacredness of the human mind and communal effort has been at the forefront of the Mennonite movement for 500 years. It is not...

By Kate Bodiker • April 2, 2026 • Features

President Rebecca Stoltzfus announced the establishment of the Goshen College Artificial Intelligence Task Force on Nov. 28. This task force will lead the implementation of GC’s Lilly grant planning period. According to its charge, the AI task force will “provide broad thinking and compelling ideas for GC’s in Higher Education Phase 2 Implementation and/or Collaborative Grants.” The task force will be led by Stoltzfus alongside Raj Biyani ’92, who will serve as AI strategy advisor and co-chair. Biyani is currently leading a seminar series that was opened up to GC staff in December. Biyani says that his goal for the...

By Liam Shaw • January 15, 2026 • News

For most of the semester, Goshen College has been hosting Raj Biyani ’92, an investor and mentor who worked as a managing director for Microsoft IT. On Wednesday last week, Biyani spoke on the role artificial intelligence has been playing in industry at a luncheon hosted by the business department. Biyani said that he has spent his time in Goshen in three main areas: speaking to students, engaging with the community and presenting on artificial intelligence. Of his time here on campus, he said, “It’s been incredible. It’s been actually very, very energizing.” Jodi Beyeler, vice president for institutional advancement,...

By Josiah Miller • November 13, 2025 • News

At the beginning of this semester I decided to make a small change to the masthead. Next to the editorial, the masthead features the staff of The Record, as well as a few other bits of information.  I added the line “The Record is made without the use of A.I.” It felt important. We live in a world where A.I. is being used for more, and getting better every single day. Over the past 18 months, A.I. has hurtled forward at breakneck pace.  I remember first playing with A.I. as a first-year. I signed myself up for a beta version...

By Tyson Miller • April 3, 2025 • Features

When Suzanne Ehst, associate academic dean, was writing her dissertation, she encountered documentation of some of the anxieties and implications of the pencil replacing the standard quill and ink:   “There were certain writers who were so scared that [the pencil] was going to change the quality of writing,” Ehst said. “[It] was going to change the rhythms of writing — it was going to make our writing dumber when we didn’t have those natural pauses to dip our quill and ink.” As artificial intelligence becomes more prominent and accessible academics are wrestling with these new tools — determining what is...

By Mackenzie P. Miller • January 16, 2025 • Features