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CAFE and AI

Most conversations about AI focus narrowly on student use and plagiarism. At CAFE, we flip the lens. We show how AI fuels faculty innovation in course design, streamlines accessibility, and strengthens research workflows.

Collaboration Opportunities - Events and Workshops

The Endowed Provost Teaching Professor provides expertise, consultation, and perspective on faculty learning, instructional design, and academic integrity. For academic years 2026 -2027 and 2027 - 2028, the Endowed Teaching Professor focuses on generative artificial intelligence (GenAI)in teaching and student learning.
One way they do this is by visiting faculty in departments and programs to provide them with more information about generative artificial intelligence, facilitate workshops, and teach about GenAI in teaching and student learning in collaboration with partners throughout campus and beyond. In addition, the Endowed Teaching Professor may visit classes, student groups, and organizations in the Kansas City Metro Area to provide students with more information about the GenAI and facilitate conversations among students to further university learning goals and outcomes.

Who Can Submit a Collaboration Request?

Anyone in a leadership position who can bring together members of their department, program, or organization for an event or workshop. If you are a dean, department chair, or program director, for example, interested in extending the professional learning of the colleagues you lead, you are welcome to submit a request. If you are an instructor, you may submit a request for a class visit.

What Kinds of Events or Workshops Do You Provide?

The Endowed Provost Teaching Professor has many pre-existing workshops and events that can be tailored to the needs of your class, department, program, or school. Based on previous experiences, generic one-size-fits-all workshops may not be as specific. However, tailoring to the specific needs, concerns, and desires of your group ensures the workshop is relevant to your context. Hence, this outreach program is viewed as a collaborative effort between leadership and the Endowed Teaching Professor.

Note that the workshops can be adopted based on your orientation toward GenAI. Those orientations include the following:

  • AI-resistance: I want my students, faculty, or group to understand why they should avoid GenAI even if it appears to be helpful for an assigned task, because of the negative effects of this kind of cognitive thinking.
  • AI-engage: I want to encourage my students, faculty, or group to explore GenAI tools and applications and have open dialogue with me
  • AI-experimentation: I want my students, faculty, or group to resist AI in some contexts and allow experiment in others.

Example workshops include the following below. Presentations and workshops can be scheduled for 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 75 minutes, or 90 minutes.

  • Introduction to GenAI. Presentation on what GenAI is, ethical concerns within and outside the university, options available to students and faculty, followed by Q&A
  • Hands on with GenAI. Interactive workshop introducing faculty and students to GenAI capabilities; allows time for individual and small group experimentation with Google Gemini chatbot and Gemini Gems, concluding with deep reflection on how to respond to GenAI platforms.
  • GenAI and the Research Process. Presentation on the Modern Language Association’s AI and the Humanities: A Framework for Language and Literary Scholarship. Although designed for research in the Humanities, the framework can be adapted to a variety of disciplines in the social sciences, STEM, and professions.
  • GenAI and the Writing Process. Presentation on valuing human voice and style throughout the writing process
  • GenAI and Online Education. Interactive conversation about on ways instructors deliver value through online instruction in a time of GenAI chatbots and AI agents.
  • Promoting Academic Integrity. Presentation on promoting academic integrity and emphasizing student trust rather than surveillance. Includes time to discuss and share existing policies and analyze them for how much interpretation responsibility is passed to the student.

Schedule an in-person workshop today!

Spotlight: Antonio Byrd

Dr. Antonio Byrd teaches courses in Black literacies, professional and technical communication, multimodal writing and rhetorics, digital rhetoric, and composition.advanced a campus-wide conversation on how artificial intelligence strengthens teaching and learning at UMKC. is research focuses on how the legacies of using literacy for liberation carry forward into present day Black digital literacies and media features. Dr. Byrd serves as co-chair for the MLA Task Force on Generative AI Initiatives Standing and is a member of the CCCC Special Committee on GenAI.  His work has appeared in College Composition and Communication, Literacy in Composition Studies, Technical Communication Quarterly, and Writer: Craft and Context.  In 2025, Dr. Byrd published his first book manuscript, Black Tech Ecosystems: How Black Adult Learners Use Computer Code Bootcamps for Liberation with The WAC Clearinghouse.

As a Faculty Fellow, he helped faculty apply AI tools thoughtfully, weigh ethical implications and test strategies that keep student learning and accessibility at the center. Through workshops, resources and dialogue, Antonio created space for UMKC instructors to experiment with AI in ways that feel practical, creative and rooted in their teaching contexts.

In 2024, Antonio guided faculty through some of the most pressing questions about generative AI and writing, helping us think critically about:

  • how students encounter GenAI and what "human-in-the-loop" practice can look like,
  • where GenAI belongs (and doesn't) in the writing process, and
  • how to navigate conversations with students about AI use and misuse with empathy and integrity.

That series laid the groundwork for inquiry into AI and teaching at UMKC.

He completed his second faculty fellowship in 2025-2026, focusing on faculty professional learning in writing pedagogy and generative artificial intelligence. 
In 2026, Dr. Byrd was selected as the inaugural UMKC Endowed Provost Teaching Professor.
During his two-year term, Dr. Byrd will engage the university community in conversations and initiatives that promote innovative, ethical, and effective uses of AI in teaching and learning. He will also help implement forthcoming recommendations from the University’s Artificial Intelligence Taskforce and support faculty training and development through programming offered with CAFE.

Generative AI in Scholarship

Faculty are also beginning to experiment with AI in research and writing. While AI cannot replace disciplinary expertise or peer review, it accelerates repetitive tasks in scholarship.

  • Research Rabbit (gateway tool): Generate a dynamic map of related work from one seed paper and discover connections you might miss otherwise.

  • Dig deeper with Elicit (specialized): Extract variables, compare methods and scan abstracts for trends. Especially useful in systematic reviews.

  • Stay current with Semantic Scholar (broad reach): Monitor over 200 million papers with live research feeds that update your saved searches.

  • Shape your own outlines with LLMs (flexible support): Tools like ChatGPT or Gemini can draft possible frameworks for a literature review section, which you then refine for disciplinary accuracy and emphasis.

As you explore, verify sources in your disciplinary databases, cross-check AI summaries with full texts and apply your critical judgment. AI accelerates your workflow, but your scholarly expertise and judgment always drives the process.

Resources for Your AI Journey

Schedule an in-person workshop today!

UMKC's AI Learning and Resources Hub

AI Tools Available at UMKC

Academic Technology AI Resources

UMKC AI Task Force Report - June 2026

AI Guidelines and Recommendations for Instructors

AI can support your teaching, help students learn and guide responsible use in the classroom.

Have an AI usage policy outlined in your syllabus (required). Be clear and specific about what can and cannot be used. For even better results, consider specifying approved usage for each assignment.