The Program

In this era of rapid technological advancement, artificial intelligence (AI) has extended its reach into nearly every corner of life—including the crucial task of college application essay writing. While AI can generate vast amounts of text in an instant, how can we use it to truly enhance our writing skills? Where should we draw ethical boundaries for AI-assisted writing? And how can we preserve the authenticity, creativity, and “humanity” in our work in the age of AI?

This September, Ben Glaser, Director of AI Initiatives in the Humanities at Yale’s Poorvu Center for Learning and Teaching, will join Heather Klemann, Senior Lecturer in English and Course Director for Yale’s introductory English course English 1014: Writing Seminars, to help you explore how to craft compelling, story-driven college application essays in the age of AI era - essays that engage readers and truly stand out.

Date & Time

China Standard Time:

• Wednesday, September 10; Saturday, September 13; Sunday, September 14; Wednesday, September 17; Saturday, September 27; Sunday, September 28
• 20:00 - 21:30

The Topics

Navigating the World of AI-Assisted Writing
Ben Glaser

**Each session will begin with a 10-minute grounding exercise to get the participants all present and un-distracted in the digital space**

Session 1: What is AI Writing? What is Writing?
This session introduces the core concepts behind artificial intelligence in the context of the written word—how machine learning models are trained on vast text corpora to recognize patterns and generate language (“inference”). We will survey different kinds of LLMs and training, then focus in on available AI writing tools.

Session 2: The Threat of Deskilling: When Not to Use AI Writing Tools
This session covers the scenarios where the human writing process is irreplaceable—when writing is learning, and tasks require deep subject expertise or understanding or unique genres. We’ll discuss the risks of over-reliance on AI, including potential for bias and loss of authentic voice, as well as ethical concerns and data security.

Session 3: Productivity and Creativity: When to Use AI Writing Tools
Discover how AI writing tools can serve as invaluable creative partners, helping brainstorm ideas, overcome writer’s block, and accelerate the drafting process. In this session, we’ll explore the strengths of AI in performing research and summarization, generating content, and refining style.

Session 4: Design Your AI Writing “Stack”
In this interactive final session, participants will have the opportunity to design their own AI-assisted writing workflow from the ground up. You’ll deploy appropriate models, choose a writing or programming environment that suits your needs, and develop strategies for integrating these tools into your creative process. We’ll focus on practical methods for evaluating the style, coherence, and overall usefulness of the results. By the end of the session, you’ll leave with a custom workflow blueprint and the confidence to experiment and refine your own AI writing stack.

How to Write an Interesting College Essay from a Boring Prompt
Heather Klemann

Session 1: Original, Sincere, Unexpected: Brainstorming and Drafting the College Essay 
In the drama of the college application, the essay is the part where, at last, the main character turns directly to the audience and speaks. At its best, it maps the contours of the writer’s thinking and captures their voice. In this session, we discuss strategies for brainstorming, outlining, and drafting in the earlier stages of college essay planning. Our goal is to develop essay topics that offer original ideas, sincere engagement between reader and writer, and, ideally, something a little out of the ordinary. By the end of the session, participants will see the college essay not as a chore to be painstakingly completed, but rather as a heartening opportunity to inspire and dazzle readers. This event will be the companion to a second workshop on revising essay drafts.

Session 2: Polished, Concise, Memorable: Revising the College Essay
The real work of college essay writing begins with the revision process. In this session, participants will understand first, how to re-read and identify the strongest parts of their essays, and second, how to bring these strengths to the fore through re-organization, cutting text, and adding where needed. We will also attend to the art of the sentence, the delicate balance of word choice, punctuation, and grammar that conveys an authentic and captivating voice. Participants are encouraged to bring drafts of 1–2 college essays to the session. 

The Speakers

Ben Glaser
Director, AI Initiatives in the Humanities, Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning

Ben Glaser is Director of AI Initiatives in the Humanities at the Poorvu Center and Yale Library. He is developing university-wide strategies to explore Generative AI’s impact on and integration into teaching and research. He supports faculty with course design, policies and practices for ethical AI use, and deploying and assessing AI tools. He is particularly interested in increasing both AI literacy and interpretability across Yale’s scholarly community.

Ben Glaser received his PhD from Cornell University in 2012, joining Yale’s English department in 2013. His research on poetry and poetics has been published in a range of venues, including his book Modernism’s Metronome: Meter and Twentieth-Century Poetics (JHUP, 2020). He is currently studying the poetic prosody and phonology of Large Language Models.

Heather Klemann PhD ’13
Senior Lecturer in English, Yale University

Heather Klemann is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Yale University, and the Course Director for Yale’s introductory English course English 1014: Writing Seminars. She received her AB from Princeton University in 2003 and her PhD from Yale University’s Department of Comparative Literature in 2013. She is interested in the performance of reading and her research has appeared in Studies in Romanticism, Eighteenth-Century Studies, and The Lion and the Unicorn. In 2022, she received the Fred Strebeigh and Linda Peterson Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2022. She is currently working on manuscripts on the performance of reading and writing pedagogy.

Format

The langauge of the program will be English.

Six 90-minute lecture and discussion (a total of 9 hours) in six days

* Those who attend all sessions will each receive a Certificate of Attendance from Yale Center Beijing.

Participation Format

  Zoom 会议

*Please download and install Zoom beforehand. Yale Center Beijing’s staff will contact confirmed participants for further testing in advance of the program to ensure a pleasant experience.

Registration

Participants：

• Middle / high school / university students and anyone who is interested in writing (recommendation: be at least 16 years old)
• English language proficiency for meaningful participation during discussions

Fee：

• Early Bird (by August 17): RMB 4,888
• Participants of past Yale Center Beijing programs, those who have paid in advance for the 'For Humanity' Lecture Series, and Group Registrations (at least three persons) Special Discount: RMB 4,800 per person
• Standard Ticket: RMB 9,888

*The registration fee for the event is non-refundable. Unless due to a force majeure reason, Yale Center Beijing will not refund any part of the registration fee if a participant fails to attend the event.

Contact：

Please send an email to yalecenterbeijing@yale.edu, or reach out to the Yale Center Beijing Team for inquiries:

WeChat ID: Yalecenterbeijing

Cellphone: +86 13810559940

(Monday to Friday, 9:00 - 18:00 )

Registration：

To apply, scan the QR code below, or click HERE.

Experience Yale Program Series

Yale Center Beijing has held Yale faculty-led multi-day programs over the years for next generation leaders and lifelong learners to engage in intellectual exchanges with peers and Yale faculty, discover new passions, and be immersed in critical thinking, evidence-based discussions, and collaborative activities.