From the Provost’s Desk (November 2025)

Becoming an AI-ready university

I’m going to devote this issue of “From the Provost’s Desk” to updating you on the resources and tools we are providing to help teaching and research faculty members engage with artificial intelligence (AI) as we work together to better understand this rapidly developing and increasingly ubiquitous technology.

As you know, on October 17, we celebrated the installation of Professor Melanie Woodin as the University of Toronto’s 17^th president. In her installation address, President Woodin called upon the University community to come together to meet this moment – of challenge, opportunity, and change. Fittingly, AI was among the areas she identified in which U of T is poised to make crucial contributions.

Collectively, all of us at the University have an important role to play in understanding how to engage meaningfully with generative AI. This idea permeates the findings of U of T’s AI Task Force, chaired by Associate Vice-President and Vice-Provost of Digital Strategies, Professor Susan McCahan, which highlighted ways that U of T can support our community in approaching the new AI-mediated age.

Building AI expertise

In a recent blog post, higher education researcher Alex Usher notes that a key challenge for universities in adopting new technologies is that universities fail to sufficiently consider the resources, time, and intellectual curiosity required to integrate these technologies with pedagogy. Our AI Task Force came to similar conclusion. Its final report identified supporting and growing AI expertise and enabling safe experimentation with AI as key strategic priorities. These priorities apply to the full spectrum of university activities but are particularly salient to teaching and research activities.

Developing quality teaching and assessments with AI in mind

It’s definitely harder to teach about things we don’t know. Like it or not, our students are using AI and becoming proficient in it in ways that we need to recognize and understand. AI has the capacity to be a valuable teaching tool – it can assist with bespoke tutorials, study aids, and writing assistance. Nonetheless, it can also be used to “game” traditional modes of assessment. And without guardrails, it can cross the boundaries of ethical study and authorship. The challenge for instructors is to develop teaching and evaluation methods that encourage critical thought and human-centred learning while guarding against these risks.

With this in mind, the Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation (CTSI) has developed resources for faculty members who want to gain familiarity with generative AI and explore how it intersects with the classroom. These include:

• Teaching with Generative AI: a collection of guides, explainers and idea generators to aid in course design and assessment
• GenAI Sessions and Workshops: ongoing and standalone opportunities for faculty members and instructors to learn more about AI tools and how to engage with AI in classrooms, assignments, and assessments.
• A guide to GenAI Tools: an overview of available AI tools that you may wish to explore in your teaching, tutorial and course design, along with links to useful primers on how GenAI works
• Teaching Examples: a collection of how U of T instructors are – and are not – incorporating AI in their teaching
• Institutional and External Resources on AI: links to teaching-related resources within and outside of the University environment.

As we have adapted to – and I would contend succeeded with – other challenges in the past (online learning when COVID first appeared is a particularly prominent example) learning from our colleagues who are early-adopters and advocates can be very effective in our context. We invite anyone who feels they can champion this work to step forward (to me or to Susan McCahan) so that we can amplify this expertise across the academy.

Using AI to augment research

Moving on to research, an equally fundamental task of our faculty, AI offers us tremendous opportunity to accelerate research in its capacity to rapidly combine and parse large datasets, identify patterns and connections, and simulate experimental conditions. Some would argue that this is the most transformative potential of this new technology. Despite the numerous risks and challenges of AI in the research space (such as data security and replicability of results), it could conceivably save us years of research and lab time. Indeed, U of T’s three campuses are home to a multidisciplinary network of AI research centres and units (e.g., Acceleration Consortium, T-CAIREM, SRI, CARTE) and an inspiring cadre of researchers who have already been recognized as AI pioneers in their fields and in the broader domain of research.

The Research Working Group of the AI Task Force has recommended that researchers carefully review any AI output, disclose substantive AI use, and refrain from using AI in reviewing papers or grant applications in ways that compromise peer-reviewer accountability or confidentiality. To help researchers take advantage of the benefits of AI, we have developed several resources and guidelines:

• Centre for Research & Innovation Support:
  • Generative AI Considerations in Academic Research
  • Generative AI Learning Resources for Researchers
• University of Toronto Libraries:
  • Generative AI tools and copyright considerations
  • Citing AI generative tools
  • AI for image research in art and architecture
• School of Graduate Studies
  • Guidance on the appropriate use of GenAI for graduate academic milestones

Tools for Exploring AI

An equally important commitment that we have made is to ensure that faculty members have access to the right tools to support AI exploration and readiness securely at U of T. To that end, the University has vetted tools that can help you gain familiarity with AI:

• Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: offers data protection and is free to all faculty, staff, and students at U of T
• ChatGPT Edu: offers institutional security and privacy and enhanced features akin to ChatGPT Plus; available for an annual fee
• Other specific AI assistants and tutors as listed here

We are also piloting select tools for specific projects, such as Cogniti and Claude. As the University develops its “AI Kitchen,” more tools will come online. The AI Kitchen will provide additional AI tools, alongside opportunities for learning and exploration for faculty, librarians, staff and students. I recommend that you bookmark our AI hub – ai.utoronto.ca – to keep abreast of developments in this rapidly shifting area.

The question of sustainability and other concerns

Of course, we recognize that AI, while promising, also has its downsides. The environmental costs of AI are clearly evident, as are ethical challenges with large language models including which data is being used and attribution of intellectual work. We must attend to these on a societal level and universities are among the best places to consider these issues and find solutions to mitigate them.

My conversations with leaders from other universities suggest that we are well prepared and that our AI Task Force (and Professor McCahan) have been extremely thoughtful in their approach. I invite us to take up this challenge together. If you have any ideas or questions, please email me or the Office of Digital Strategies at avpvp.digitalstrategies@utoronto.ca.

I hope you will take advantage of the work we have done to make us an AI-ready university.

Sincerely,

Trevor