My approach to AI in higher education is grounded in Human-Centered Intelligence: a commitment to keeping humans in the group and computers in the loop. My work focuses on responsible AI in teaching and learning, with a particular emphasis on Human–Human Teaming (HHT) as the precursor to effective Human–Machine Teaming (HMT). I approach AI integration through systems thinking, examining how cognition, judgment, accountability, and trust are distributed across people, tools, and institutional structures. I intentionally celebrate the full spectrum of perspectives on AI, from early adopters to thoughtful dissenters; durable, ethical AI practice must emerge through collective sense-making rather than forced consensus or technical inevitability.

Across my AI-related work, I emphasize two complementary pathways. The first focuses on responsibly offloading routine and repetitive cognitive labor so that educators and learners can reclaim time and energy for meaning-making, creative synthesis, relational learning, and other forms of high-level cognitive work that only humans can do well. The second looks beyond generative AI alone to a broader ecosystem of AI-enabled tools (agentic, adaptive, explainable, and decision-support systems) that can be thoughtfully integrated to support flourishing learning communities.

I am a lifelong, autotelic learner with advanced degrees in French and Comparative Literature, ethnomusicology, bioethics, instructional design, and computer science. My Scholarship of Teaching and Learning includes medical humanities, trauma-informed and neurodivergent-affirming pedagogy, accessibility and Universal Design for Learning, heutagogy (learner-directed education), experiential and play-based learning, and meta-disciplinary design that bridges STEM, the humanities, medicine, and the arts. Across my work, I focus on dismantling silos that limit learning and replacing them with environments that support autonomy, curiosity, and ethical sense-making.

Outside of Work

• Founder of Wren Astra, LLC for play-based, trauma-informed coaching and toolkits and creator of the Inner Compass Healing Method™
• Favorite subject: physics, because it requires a word problem (literature), drawing the problem (arts), plugging in mathematics (STEM), imagining systems we cannot directly test (divergent thinking), and moving fluidly between abstraction and reality (music)
• Avid fiber artist and paper collector
• Deadlift PR: 315 lbs
• With my husband and autistic son, I own and operate a zero-waste regenerative farm in the Sequoia, where we grow medicinal herbs and mushrooms and practice ancestral agriculture methods
• Music maker (Wren Astra)
• Certified Hypnotherapist and Trauma-informed Coach

Education & Credentials

• PhD, CUNY Graduate Center
• MA, New York University
• BA, Texas A&M University
• ACC, Chartered Management Institute & Moving the Human Spirit