Where Curiosity Meets Innovation
BU's AI Commons was formed to foster AI literacy and facilitate meaningful exploration of artificial intelligence through a variety of resources and events. We support learners at every stage of their journey, providing resources that range from foundational knowledge to advanced research tools. By cultivating AI literacy, we empower students to navigate a world that is continuously evolving, equipping them with the skills and mindset needed to lead with confidence and purpose.
Leadership
Jeff Donahoo
Office Location: Jack C. Massey Center 629
Sue Maszaros
Email: sue.maszaros@belmont.edu
Office Location: Bunch Library, 2nd Floor
Redemptive AI and Human Flourishing: Belmont’s Guiding Principles
Belmont University believes that wisdom is the foundation of a faithful and purposeful life. As we enter the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI), we are called not to passive adoption but to thoughtful engagement marked by discernment, courage, and hope.
Belmont’s Christ-centered mission anchors our hope in God’s ongoing work to bring creation to its fulfillment. Grounded in the inherent dignity of every person, revealed most clearly in Christ, who is both truly human and truly divine, we affirm that AI does not replace or rival the Creator (Psalm 8). This conviction shapes our view of AI as a tool meant to serve and reflect the deepest values, aspirations, and responsibilities of our institution. AI must never displace the sacred relationships that shape our lives: mentorship, coaching, counseling, healthcare, spiritual guidance, and family and friendship are fundamentally relational and covenantal. In these spaces alone, trust is cultivated, human formation is supported, and imagination is sparked.
Statement of Scope
This document articulates Belmont’s philosophical and ethical stance on AI across teaching, research, administration, and community engagement. Its purpose is to ensure that use and development of emerging technologies remain aligned with Belmont’s Christ-centered mission, the Imago Dei, and the institutional commitment to human dignity, justice, accountability, and responsible stewardship.
Rather than imposing constraints or prescribing rigid practices, this framework offers a moral compass rooted in wisdom and discernment for shaping future policies, governance, and academic practice. It invites faculty, staff, and students into a shared vocation of thoughtful engagement with AI to provide a foundation for its integration into pedagogy, scholarly inquiry, and institutional operations, ultimately equipping students to lead others through a synthetic landscape with character and purpose.
Belmont’s Unique Value Proposition
Belmont University embraces AI as an opportunity for whole-person formation, reaffirming our identity as a Christ-centered learning community committed to character, creativity, and innovation. Our dedication to Christian character formation, expressed through our shared aspirations of seeking excellence, offering gratitude, unleashing hospitality, and living and working together toward a common good, provides an implicit framework for discerning how AI supports our mission.
Drawing from Belmont’s rich history of the unique and irreplaceable nature of human beings who are made in the image of God, we identify three critical limitations on the use of AI.
Human Primacy: Artificial systems must support human creativity, authorship, and originality, complementing rather than diminishing the value or compensation of human creators. Belmont upholds moral clarity, human purpose, and Christian ethics as its highest standards, while adhering to the rule of law in matters of attribution, responsibility, and intellectual-property ownership. If legal frameworks conflict with human primacy, Belmont maintains commitment to human primacy to ensure technology never overrides human agency or creative dignity.
Human Direction: An artificial system shall function as a tool within human-led creative processes, where humans originate the concept, direct execution, or make final decisions.
Transparency and Consent: Artificial systems shall uphold and protect intellectual property, using or contributing to creative work only with documented consent and transparent disclosure of their involvement.
Aligning AI with Our Values
AI offers extraordinary possibilities, yet it must be held in tension with Belmont’s core commitments. We affirm that technological progress must never compromise the values and virtues that are central to a Christ-centered institution.
Our AI engagement aligns with Belmont’s values in the following ways:
- Christ-Centered Formation: AI supports, but never replaces, spiritual, intellectual, and moral development. It is a catalyst for wisdom, compassion, truth-seeking, and moral courage.
- Purpose and Calling: Students learn to use AI as a tool to deepen creativity, expand capability, and clarify vocational direction.
- Integrity and Accountability: AI-assisted work must be transparent, attributable, and responsibly sourced, consistent with the Pillars of Integrity: Human-Centered Design, Transparency, Accountability, Justice, Empathy, Discernment, and Stewardship.
- Community and Belonging: AI should strengthen human connection through accessibility and collaboration, while recognizing that authentic formation sometimes requires human-only spaces and relationships.
- Courageous Innovation: We encourage responsible experimentation, guided by hope, unity, and the protection of human dignity.
Embracing Emerging Technologies
Belmont believes that technology should serve human purposes rather than supplant them, and we embrace AI not as passive adopters but as active shapers. We engage emerging AI tools with intentionality, harnessing them for discovery, scholarship, and ethical innovation that advance the well-being of people and communities. Belmont University aims to equip students with a world-class understanding of how to implement AI wisely across disciplines, while also providing technical solutions that address the most complex challenges of our time. Our distinctive strength lies in weaving ethical reflection, interdisciplinary collaboration, and creative exploration into the very fabric of our university life and mission.
Responsible and Accountable AI
AI technology providers have a duty to take reasonable measures to prevent foreseeable harm. Accountability is central to preserving human dignity and ensuring that AI remains a tool that protects rather than diminishes human flourishing. Human vulnerability to sin, pride, and manipulation requires accountability and guardrails to protect against the tendency to misuse technology. In addition, privacy and autonomy are essential to honor the person. Individuals must understand and freely consent to how their data and likenesses are used. AI must empower rather than manipulate, advancing truth and human welfare over persuasion of exploitation, and it must be accessible and equitable rather than narrowing digital divides.
Dialogue and Debate
Belmont cultivates open, respectful dialogue about AI where students, faculty, and community partners engage diverse perspectives to shape shared understanding and responsible practice. The resulting dialogue weaves enduring wisdom with creative possibility and courageous innovation to enable responses that advance justice, imagination, and community thriving.
Student Engagement
Building on Belmont’s longstanding commitment to practice-informed education, we recognize that the radically changing career landscape requires renewed focus on vocational discernment. Accordingly, Belmont is dedicated to fostering principled, mission-driven external partnerships that acknowledge AI’s realities with moral clarity and market awareness, while equipping graduates with a deep understanding of AI’s capabilities and limitations, responsible and ethical use, and mastery of AI-enabled systems and processes.
Faculty Engagement
Belmont affirms teaching as a sacred vocation, calling faculty to mentor, model, and guide students in the art of discernment. Because Belmont understands teaching as the cultivation of wisdom, character, and purpose, not merely the transmission of information, AI must remain a tool that deepens engagement, supports critical thinking, and strengthens creativity. AI-immersed learning can expand access and inclusion, particularly for students with learning differences, fostering a more personalized and hospitable learning environment. Effective AI pedagogy amplifies the capacity for personal mentorship and student-centered innovation.
Belmont, therefore, supports faculty adaptation of AI-enhanced practices while steadfastly preserving the formative power of deeply relational human interaction.
A Hopeful Path Forward
Anchored in the hope of Christ's redemptive work, Belmont University leads with discernment and courage toward a future where Artificial Intelligence serves human flourishing and advances God's kingdom of justice, creativity, and abundant life.
Suggested Resources
- Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and Dicastery for Culture and Education. Antiqua et nova: Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence. Vatican City: Vatican Press, January 28, 2025.
- Institute for Ethics and the Common Good. "DELTA Framework." University of Notre Dame. Accessed December 15, 2025.
- McKinney, Jason Lee. What Is a Person in the Age of AI? Foreword by Gavin Ortlund, afterword by Sam Allberry. Tullahoma, TN: WordCrafts Press, 2025.