Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom - the Spelman College Echoes and Algorithms Podcast Episode 1

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The Garden of Innovation: A Spelman Story

The Spotify Podcast Studio at Spelman College hummed with anticipation as three faculty members settled into their seats for the inaugural episode of "Echoes and Algorithms" hosted by Mark Lee, Ph.D., senior vice president of Academic Affairs. The studio itself was a testament to partnership and possibility part of the Spotify NextGen Audio program, powered by Spotify's Creator Equity Fund.

The initiative has already transformed Spelman's media landscape, providing academic scholarships to five students, hosting an on-campus Creator Day, and delivering targeted training for students, faculty and staff. The program's first triumph was "Emmett Till: The Cultural Afterlife of an American Boy," an original podcast produced entirely by Spelman students under Dr. Michelle Hite's instruction a powerful example of what happens when you give Black women the tools and trust to tell their own stories.

Outside, the historic campus was in full preparation for Homecoming 2025 and stood as a living monument to over a century of Black women's excellence. Inside, these three scholars were ready to chart a course for the next century.

Pioneers in more ways than one, Drs. Nicole Taylor, Michelle Hite and Cynthia Neal Spence are among the first three faculty members selected by the Office of the Provost for the Vision Casting Pilot Project Initiative, a bold new funding model that is reshaping how innovation happens at Spelman.

Experience "Echoes and Algorithms" Episode 1

The Teacher's Heart

Taylor, chair of the education department, leaned forward with the intensity of someone who has spent countless hours defending her profession. "Will AI replace teachers?" She repeated the question that haunted every educator in 2024. Her answer came swift and certain: "Teaching is a heart connection. It's a human connection. That can never be computerized."

But Taylor wasn't dismissing AI she was reimagining it. As the leader of the only all-women's HBCU offering teacher certification, she carries a unique responsibility. Her students spend three days a week in actual classrooms,witnessing firsthand how technology is already reshaping education. Her mission is to ensure Spelman graduates enter those spaces not as passive consumers of AI, but as critical architects of its use.

"Imagine," she said, painting a picture with her words, "a student who has never been to a beach, never heard the waves. What can we use AI for to create that experience?" It is technology in service of connection, not replacement of it. Teachers make over 1,500 decisions a day, she noted, and AI is simply another tool in their arsenal guided always by the heart.

The Writer's Wit and Wisdom

Spelman College Honors Program Director Michelle Hite Hite approached the microphone with the careful deliberation of someone about to challenge a beloved narrative. A digital humanist, director of the Ethell Waddel Githi Honors Program and associate professor in the literature, writing and media department, she has been thinking deeply about Joyce Johnson, D.Mus., Spelman's legendary organist and professor emerita of music who has had an expansive career as an internationally known performer. A member of the Spelman community since 1953, she is heralded as a "pianist extraordinaire, astounding and thrilling audiences with her consummate artistry yet many only know her as the organist who played at Martin Luther King Jr.'s memorial service.

"She said it herself," Hite explained, recounting an interview where a journalist tried to reduce Johnson's entire life's work to that single historic moment. "When asked if playing for the King memorial defined her sense of purpose, Johnson responded simply: In a word, no."

"We've frozen her in that story," Hite said with quiet passion.

"What happens when we get beyond the master narrative and actually engage who Black women are in their fullness?"

The digital humanities project Hite is launching aims to comb through Johnson's papers in Spelman's archives, using AI and digital tools not to objectify or reduce, but to liberate and expand. It was work inspired by the vision of Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Ph.D., the College’s Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies, of recovering Black women's stories but with twenty-first-century tools.

"In five years," Hite said, her eyes bright with possibility, "I hope people ask: 'What else don't we know?' The biggest tribute we can pay to anti-Blackness is to wonder about the lives of Black people openly."

The Justice Keeper

Spelman College Professor Cynthia Neal Spence Spence spoke with the authority of someone who had walked through Spelman's garden as student, alumna and now senior faculty member. As founding director of the Social Justice Program and associate professor of sociology, she sees AI through an uncompromising lens.

"Who's actually behind the door?" she asked pointedly. "Who's feeding information into the systems that inform AI? Whose rights are being violated?"

Spence invoked Safiya Noble's book "Algorithms of Oppression," reminding everyone that AI systems are embedded with the same racism, sexism and classism that plague society. In the criminal justice system, AI enables targeted surveillance. In healthcare, it predicts outcomes based on biased data, she explained. Her students in the social justice residence hall grapple with these gray areas constantly.

But Spence's vision isn't one of rejection it is one of revolutionary participation. HBCUs must be at the forefront, she insists, not just training students to use technology, but training them to interrogate it, to transform it, and to ensure they don't become part of the problem, but creators of solutions.

"We have historically innovated for the sake of our own liberation," Hite had said earlier, and Spence embodies this truth. On the podcast she speaks of her own journey through Spelman's sociology department, mentored by feminist scholars who taught her to use statistics to tell the stories of their people. She speaks of her family mother, sisters, sister-in-law, all Spelman women and how the College has always been seen as a space for developing young Black women who care.

"In five years," Spence predicted, "they'll be saying, 'Here they go again. Those Spelman women are in leadership positions in technology, asking questions that have never been asked before'."

The Duality

Spelman College Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs Mark Lee As the conversation wound down, Lee clearly moved, invoked W.E.B. Du Bois and his concept of double consciousness. "No matter what happens, those of African American descent must cope with the current reality while translating it through lenses of ethnicity, color and gender. It was an exhausting inheritance, but also a powerful one," he shared.

In the rich exchange of ideas between peers, Spence added, “The reality is that it is more than dual consciousness; we must move through the world operating with multiple intersecting lenses.I would suggest that DuBois is a jump-off point for invoking Kimberle Crenshaw’s intersectionality.”

What emerged from this first podcast episode of "Echoes and Algorithms" is a vision of AI education that refuses to choose between excellence and equity, between innovation and justice, between technological prowess and humanistic wisdom. At Spelman, these aren't contradictions they are inseparable.

In five years, Taylor would have trained teachers who brought heart to every algorithm. Hite would have used digital tools to tell fuller stories about Black women's lives. Spence would have ensured every Spelman woman interrogated technology from an intersectional lens, always asking: How will this affect those on the margins?

These are not just theoretical commitments. Each project was backed by the Vision Casting Pilot Project Initiative, with $10,000 in funding designed to turn visionary ideas into documented proof of concept. The initiative represents a new philosophy from the Office of the Provost: invest in faculty imagination first, support both mentors and students, and create results that could attract the resources to scale from ten students to a hundred. Lee hopes to increase these amounts in the coming years as the model proves itself.

The New Model

The Vision Casting Initiative is not typical academic funding. Lee and the Provost's Office designed it as an incubator of ten pilot projects for the 2026-2027 academic year, each aligned with Spelman's Centers of Excellence. The projects have to do more than advance knowledge; they have to tangibly benefit students while demonstrating the College's strategic plan in action.

The application process itself was revolutionary. The faculty weren't asked to write traditional grant proposals listing what they hoped to accomplish. Instead, they submitted "Project Vision Reports" -- five-page documents written in the past tense, describing the most successful version of their project as if it had already happened. This approach honors imagination as much as methodology, recognizing that the best innovations often start with a clear picture of the future you want to create.

Taylor's project demonstrates AI proficiency while growing career pathways for future educators. Hite's extends Spelman's voice by recovering and amplifying Black women's stories. Spence's advances inquiry and critical thinking by teaching students to interrogate technology through a social justice lens.

The funding structure reflects Spelman's values: faculty receive stipends for their intellectual labor, but the bulk of resources go toward student compensation, guest speakers, and project needs. Even the unused funds, if any, have purpose they will help address students' financial obligations to the College. Nothing is wasted. Everything serves the community.

The Legacy

"Spelman is great because we always seek to be better," Spence said, her voice thick with emotion. "We can't get complacent thinking about how great we are."As the recording ended, three women sat in a studio on a historic campus, having just articulated a vision for the future.

They are among the first to benefit from a new model of institutional support one that trusts faculty vision, invests in student development, and understands the best way to secure Spelman's future is to fund its present imagination.Their projects will run for a year. Their results will be documented, packaged, and presented to potential funders who can help scale these pilots into programs that touch hundreds of students instead of dozens. It is a model of innovation that recognizes a fundamental truth: the best ideas often need proof of concept before they can attract major investment.

But the real innovation isn't the funding structure it is the mindset. Lee and the Provost's office are betting that Spelman's faculty, given resources and trust, will create the kinds of projects that institutional advancement teams dream about: measurable impact, clear alignment with mission, and compelling stories of student transformation. It wasn't about adapting to technology it is about shaping it. It isn't about surviving AI it is about ensuring AI serves the cause of liberation. It isn't about competing for scraps, it is about building proof that will attract abundance.

The garden of Spelman cultivated these women – two alumnae and one University of Kentucky alum, and now they are cultivating the next generation with institutional support that matches their ambition. In their hands, algorithms will have to reckon with echoes -- the echoes of ancestors who innovated for freedom, the echoes of Dr. Johnson's untold stories, the echoes of students asking "What else don't we know?"

The future of AI, Drs. Taylor, Hite and Spence insist, will be written by Black women who care. The Office of the Provost just gave them the resources to prove it.

"Echoes and Algorithms" - Where liberal arts education meets emerging technology, where vision becomes reality, and where the future is shaped by those who refuse to be shaped by it.