Carolyn Speer, PhD helps educators and institutions use AI well. Not chasing tools, but growing the human judgment that decides how to use them. Keynotes, workshops, and consulting on AI in higher education.
Carolyn Speer, PhD is an AI speaker and consultant who helps colleges and universities put intelligent tools to work for students, faculty, and staff. At Wichita State University she directs the Office of Instructional Resources, leading the instructional design, visual design, and educational technology teams and the training of all 1,000-plus WSU instructors. She advises university leadership on the instructional use of AI and teaches in the College of Education. She works this material out in practice: she runs the university's faculty training and its annual Academic Resources Conference, so her talks are tested with working instructors before they reach your stage.
She does not hand audiences a list of apps to download. As she puts it, AI is the blade and you are the edge: the tool can draft, summarize, and analyze in seconds, but the judgment about what is worth doing, and whether the result is any good, is still yours. Her work helps people name their own human work, figure out what they can do that AI cannot, and build that capacity and their AI skills together, usually with the enterprise tools their campus already pays for.
First-generation students have been her focus for a long time. Her doctoral research looked at how first-generation adults adapt to college, and she now speaks nationally on AI and student success, including a 2026 keynote for NASPA's Region IV-West Summer Critical Conversations and an invited session at the FirstGen Forward 2026 Network Champion Convening in Austin. Her honors include Wichita State's Leadership in the Advancement of Teaching Award and the Anthology Catalyst Award for Faculty Training and Development.
The world needs trained human minds.
From the keynote, The Human in the Loop
Some are keynotes, some are hands-on workshops, and some are structured conversations for a team. Several are for students themselves, not only the people who teach them. They all come back to one point: grow the human work first, then put AI to work in support of it. Each is tailored to your audience, and if you want something different, let's talk.
Knowledge work has two buckets: the heart and the tasks. AI can take on a lot of the tasks. This keynote is about the heart, and about the third bucket, the thinking about your thinking, that no tool can do for you.
AI is disrupting education; that part is settled. The sharper question is what it does to learning. This talk pulls apart knowledge and understanding and asks what we owe students when the answers are suddenly free.
AI can widen the digital divide or help close it. Practical, low-cost strategies that start with the AI students already have, plus the ethics of AI as a workforce skill.
A hands-on session that moves people from awareness to fluency through five moves: evaluate, edit, consult, collaborate, create. They leave with judgment, not just an app they tried once.
A working session for faculty on building assignments that put AI's strengths to use and make cheating beside the point. The goal is design that rewards the human thinking you want to measure, instead of policing the tools.
Less a lecture than a structured conversation. A group places itself, its people, and its institution across four stages, from Awareness to Leverage, then names the next real step using the tools it already has.
A talk for students, especially first-generation students, on using AI to level the playing field: the tools your school already gives you, how to use them without outsourcing your own learning, and why AI fluency is now a workforce skill.
A practical workshop, built for new students, on noticing the difference between AI that supports your learning and AI that quietly does it for you. How to use the tools as an assistant, not an author, and still come out smarter.
Tell me about your audience and what you're hoping for, and I'll be in touch shortly.
Every booking comes with a one-hour planning call beforehand, so the talk fits your audience, not a template.
Carolyn travels to your event or presents virtually, whichever works for you.
Fees work with a range of budgets. If cost is tight, reach out anyway and we'll find a way.