Trey Conatser’s response on LinkedIn to the IHE guest post “Responding to Disruption? Consult a Center for Teaching and Learning” is getting shared around higher ed CTL and AI communities. As the assistant provost for teaching and learning and director of the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT) at the University of Kentucky, Trey is well positioned to think about how AI is changing higher education. I asked if Trey would answer my questions, and he graciously agreed.

Q: Where do CTLs come into the AI higher ed story? What has been going on with AI at CELT and UK, and what are you seeing nationally?

A: For some, CTLs might not be the first space that comes to mind when crafting vision and strategy or enhancing knowledge and skill about AI. Yet, for my money, regardless of where you are, you’ll be hard-pressed to find people who are more embedded in the discourse about AI in education, who are more knowledgeable about it in multidimensional ways, who experiment with and use AI tools daily, and who are more expert in both the scholarship and day-to-day realities of education across the institution. Teaching center staff are polymaths; they are scholars, practitioners, educators and curious minds that, every day, have to inhabit a dizzying range of epistemic grounds.

In response to the question, I’d venture that CTLs come into the story about AI in higher education before ChatGPT altogether. For years, we’ve engaged in critical and scholarly approaches to technology beyond how-to and best practices towards larger inquiries about how digital tools, platforms and infrastructures affect our capacity to learn, grow, connect and act in the world. Those are the waters in which we swim. From that history, CTLs were able to engage generative AI with nuance from the outset.

At the University of Kentucky, CELT began hosting information sessions, focused workshops, discussion forums and even play sessions starting in the first week of 2023. We were the main central unit to do so at that time, and we quickly became the go-to, trusted hub for faculty, staff and graduate students to make sense of AI as it might impact their scholarly work, student learning and our overall purpose.

As we begin 2026, CELT continues to make AI a central part of our work. We’ve led 200 AI-related events for thousands of participants and are working with the second faculty cohort of our Teaching Innovation Institute to focus on AI. In partnership with our Center for Computational Sciences, we’ve hosted education tracks for regional summits and an NSF ACCESS regional workshop. We’ve produced resources such as an AI use scale, which has proven popular among instructors and will soon release a comprehensive starter course on AI literacy for faculty, academic staff and graduate students.

Our work has informed the university advisory group on AI. I co-chair this group, which maintains guidelines on AI in educational, research, clinical and professional contexts. Colleagues have indicated that it has been meaningful for CTL leadership to play a significant role in composing institution-level guidance and contributing to a “post-AI” vision for education, scholarship and service.

Nationally, I’ve seen some variety in how CTLs are engaging with AI, though many are pursuing a version of what I’ve outlined here. CTLs are remarkably diverse in size, specialties, org charts, cultures and goals. Across higher education, though, I see an opportunity to further capitalize on CTLs in light of recent developments around institution-level requirements, curricular integration, industry partnerships and infrastructure.

If the first step is recognizing that CTLs are effective partners in making sense of AI as a disruption, the next step is including CTLs in these larger initiatives for implementation as well as assessment. There is a good deal of discussion about how to convincingly assess the impact of AI on student learning, scholarly activity and institutional success. This involves questions that often are oversimplified or shortchanged. What is learning? Where and how does it happen and for whom? What counts as evidence? How do we know that our data means what we say it means? What are the relevant scholarly precedents? What do we need to know about AI? CTLs stand to add a great deal of integrity and insight to these projects.

Q: You make the case for CTLs being an indispensable resource as universities navigate the AI tsunami. And yet, across the country, CTL budgets, staffing and sometimes even existence are under attack. How can CTL leaders better position their centers for institutional resiliency?

A: CTLs rarely operate with large budgets outside salary lines, which is to say that we traditionally have strategized for impact with this reality in mind. I don’t mean to dismiss the precarity that some CTLs may be feeling, but I do think there are ways to show our value and build resiliency, especially in the context of AI and when additional resources may not be available.

Christopher Hakala and Kevin Gannon have offered some great advice on that front. For me, the first step is about aligning CTL work with institutional priorities. Obviously, teaching excellence and student learning are a stated priority for any institution, but there are different ways that those goals resonate locally. Especially if we notice a gap, CTLs are well positioned to jump in and address it. A big part of resiliency is being imagined as a solution when the community is faced with a challenge.

AI offers a great example of an institutional exigency in CELT’s case, and we’ve contributed proactively to other priorities such as our quality enhancement plan, our state’s graduate profile and digital accessibility. But we should also make sure to prioritize the academic units within our institution. I regularly collaborate with our colleges and departments. Those leaders and their colleagues often are the most persuasive agents for communicating our value.

Resiliency is also built through partnerships that lend the CTL’s expertise, imprimatur and labor. AI is precisely the kind of catalyst that normalizes these exchanges even if they’re not typical. Other units may be able to assist with travel funding for a joint project, for example. In some cases, a unit might fund an initiative so long as the CTL coordinates it; our SoTL community is a good example of this. Bandwidth permitting, CTL staff can participate on funded grants that generate income through labor costs.

Despite the persistent urgency to expand, resiliency also means not losing sight of core services. At CELT, midsemester student feedback has become so popular that I have to shut off our request form early in the semester. Along with support for faculty dossiers and teaching portfolios, this work makes a clear case for our impact on career advancement as well as capitalizing on local data for student success.

When bandwidth seems scarce, light-lift activities can still offer a high yield. Communities of practice, reading groups, teaching triangles, drop-in hours and other programming that leverages the CTL as a community center can raise visibility and value while leaving gas in the tank. Faculty partners or affiliates allow for more sustainable reach and programming while increasing buy-in.

All of this, though—alignment, initiative, partnerships, services, reach—rely on relationships and recognition that CTL leadership needs to cultivate and work daily to affirm. We are, fundamentally, a relational enterprise. Our resiliency lies in our relationships.

Q: What was the career journey that brought you into a CTL and institutional leadership role, and what advice do you have for early or midcareer academics who might want to follow a similar professional path?

A: Ironically, I never interacted with the CTL at my doctoral institution. I did, however, begin to work in instructional development through unique graduate assistantships that friends had held and encouraged me to pursue. It was also critical that I used teaching assignments as opportunities to experiment and explore broader issues in higher education. Those projects ultimately determined the direction of my graduate work as a whole.

As I looked beyond my program, I wanted that work to continue as a career. It meant moving away from the traditional faculty role I’d imagined toward a version of what Donna M. Bickford and Anne Mitchell Whisnant have described as the administrator-scholar. Of course, I discovered most of what I know about this sort of work and about higher education on the job. My goal—my backward design—was (and still is) to elevate scholarly teaching, meaningful learning and the significance of a college education.

To be clear, I don’t mean to imply any sort of self-made myth; I can’t stress enough how much my mentors and colleagues have enabled my career every step of the way. Like many paths, CTL work is collaborative by nature. It’s not a stage for solo acts.

I’m still learning a lot about leadership. I worked as an educational developer at my CTL before stepping into the associate director and, later, director and assistant provost roles. Looking back, I see some thematic coherence despite the usual noise of life. Those transitional moments typically involved acting upon an opportunity to make our projects, organization or people more successful at a particular inflection point of pressure or change. I’ve also prioritized becoming as familiar as possible with the full complexity of the university and its communities well beyond the immediate operations of the CTL.

For the curious, I’d recommend getting to know your local CTL if you haven’t already. Attend their events, participate in a program or just set up a time to learn more about the center. Whether you’re in a staff or faculty role, you might discover an opportunity to support or collaborate with the CTL, even in just small ways. I’d also recommend getting to know what it’s like to teach in different disciplines and under different conditions than you normally experience. Getting to know the landscape of CTLs and higher education more broadly helps significantly with clarifying your why as well as what you’d want to see in a new position.

There are some helpful organizations and resources to get a sense of educational development as a field of work. This is especially helpful if a CTL is not easily accessible. The POD Network is a good place to start, though there are other organizations as well as surveys of the field. If you’re a podcast listener, there’s never been a better time for higher education podcasts: Teaching in Higher Ed, Tea for Teaching, Intentional Teaching, Centering Centers and so on. Becoming conversant about the work and the issues is at least half of the journey.

Keep in mind that there are many career paths in educational development: some with CTLs, some with other kinds of administrative offices and some outside higher education altogether in both public and private sectors. Depending on your interests and skills, you can go into a variety of meaningful roles.