You are in graduate school at a remarkable moment. Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and NotebookLM are already changing how people research, write, analyze, solve problems, and learn. They can help with everything from brainstorming and summarizing to coding, literature reviews, and presentation design. They can also mislead, invent, and tempt us into shortcuts.

So the question is no longer whether these tools matter. They do. The real question is how to use them well.

In the years ahead, success in many professions will depend not just on what you know, but on how well you can work with generative AI: how skillfully you prompt it, how carefully you test it, how wisely you judge its output, and how creatively you use it to deepen your own thinking rather than replace it.

That is what this course is about.

TNDY 331 – GenAI for Graduate Success
Prof. Robert Klitgaard
Tuesday and Thursday | 4:00 – 6:50 p.m. | June 2 – 25, 2026
Online only
Open enrollment | No prerequisites | No exams

TNDY 331 will help you become more capable, confident, and inventive with GenAI. You will learn practical skills: prompting, context engineering, fact-checking, source verification, and ways to avoid AI’s confident mistakes. But the course reaches beyond technique.

Its larger purpose is to ask an older and deeper question: What is graduate education for? And how might these new tools help you fulfill its highest aims?

Across fields, graduate education has long been meant to build six things: mastery of a field, integrity and ethics, research skills, collaboration, communication, and the habits needed for a lifetime of learning. This course draws on that enduring wisdom, adds my own perspective as a teacher and scholar, and explores how generative AI can strengthen each of those aims.

If you want tools that can help you thrive in graduate school—and stand out in a changing job market—this course is for you.

Questions? Please contact robert.klitgaard@cgu.edu. Guest post by Robert Klitgaard.