UW-Oshkosh AI Trailblazers spotlight ethical, program-aligned AI adoption at national conferences

UW-Oshkosh's early, ethical and intentional approach to artificial intelligence is earning national recognition, as faculty and staff leaders shared the university's work at two premier higher-education conferences in fall 2025.

Through UW-Oshkosh's established AI Trailblazers initiative, teams represented the university at the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference and AACN Transform, the national meeting of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), demonstrating how responsible, values-driven AI adoption can strengthen teaching, learning and student success.

At the 2025 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference (online), UW-Oshkosh presented Grounded Innovation: How a Framework & Philosophy Statement Drive Ethical AI Use in Classrooms. The session was competitively selected through a national proposal process and highlighted the university's AI Framework and Philosophy-developed proactively ahead of UW System policy-as a practical model for guiding classroom use of AI.

EDUCAUSE presenters included: Terese Blakeslee, PhD, RN (Associate Professor); Becca McLagan, MS. Ed​; Kim Brundidge, MSN, RN, CCRN, (IAS & DNP-FNP student​); and Nahal Rahmanpanah, DNP, APRN, FNP-C (Assistant Professor).

The presentation emphasized cross-functional collaboration, particularly between nursing faculty and instructional technology leaders, and showed how institutional values can translate into clear, actionable guidance for instructors and students.

"Our goal has never solely been to adopt AI quickly, but to also adopt it well," said Seon Yoon Chung, PhD, RN, CHSE-A, Dean and Professor of the College of Nursing, Health Professions, and STEM at UW-Oshkosh. "By grounding our work in shared principles and program outcomes, we've been able to support faculty innovation while maintaining trust, transparency and academic integrity. Earning opportunities to share our work in front of national peer audiences is a real validation of where we are going at UWO."

That momentum continued at AACN Transform 2025 in Anaheim, California, where UW-Oshkosh was invited to deliver a featured two-hour block titled Faculty and Student Journeys: AI Integration in Nursing Education. The invitation allowed the team to combine three proposed sessions into a single, end-to-end narrative illustrating a deliberately backwards-designed approach to AI integration.

AACN presenters included: Erika Janssen, PhD, MSN, RN​ (Assistant Professor); Lindsay Morgan, DNP, MSN-NE, APNP, FNP-BC​ (Associate Professor); McLagan​; Brundidge; and Rahmanpanah.

The presentation traced UW-Oshkosh's work from foundational guidance-such as the AI Framework and Philosophy, syllabus statements and student waiver language-through research efforts, including a published scoping review of AI-powered simulation and an AI perspectives survey. It concluded with implementation examples featuring AI-powered avatar simulations in nursing education.

"Our experience shows that governance, research and instructional practice don't have to compete with one another," Chung said. "When they are aligned, they create space for innovation that is ethical, scalable and truly centered on student learning."

The response from national peers underscored the growing impact of UW-Oshkosh's AI Trailblazers initiative. Dr. Patricia Morton, editor of The Journal of Professional Nursing, offered to mentor the team in developing publications based on this work, and representatives from the University of Michigan sought guidance on launching their own AI avatar simulations and related research collaborations.

Together, the EDUCAUSE and AACN presentations reinforce UW-Oshkosh's reputation as a thoughtful early adopter of artificial intelligence-one that prioritizes ethical use, program alignment and collaboration across disciplines. What began as internal pilots through AI Trailblazers has evolved into nationally recognized work, now poised to expand and further strengthen UW-Oshkosh's leadership in responsible AI innovation.

"I'm proud of how well we represented UW-Oshkosh on the national stage," said Becca McLagan, a member of the AI Trailblazers group and teaching, learning and technology specialist in the UW-Oshkosh College of Nursing, Health Professions, and STEM. "The support we've received has allowed this work to grow from internal pilots into nationally recognized efforts. These initiatives are now positioned to scale, and I'm excited about what this means for our programs and for UW-Oshkosh's continued leadership in responsible AI innovation."

Study nursing at UW-Oshkosh