About LACET

A lacet is a braid: separate strands woven together, making the whole stronger than any strand alone. Small liberal arts colleges are each working through what artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies mean for their students, their teaching, and their institutions. The Liberal Arts Collaborative on Emerging Tech (LACET) is where we do that work side by side.

LACET began as many good things do: with a conversation. After the AI and the Liberal Arts Symposium at Connecticut College in October 2025, two of our founding members started talking about ways to collaborate and support one another. Two quickly became three, and that group planned our first webinar, held in February 2026. Conversations with colleagues at other liberal arts colleges were happening all the while, and the group grew from there.

Many institutions are asking similar questions about AI. At small colleges those questions play out differently, shaped by our scale, our resources, and a culture built on close teaching. Much of our work is putting them in context: what AI creates or complicates for our students, what that asks of our institutions, and how any of it sits with the values our colleges are built on.

Join us as we work through the challenges and opportunities that AI and other emerging technologies bring to learning and research in the liberal arts.

Founding Members

• Susan Purrington, Connecticut College

• David Watts, Colby College

• Eric Chown, Bowdoin College

• George Cusack, Carleton College

• Andrew Purrington, Trinity College

• Sarah Lohnes Watulak, Middlebury College

• Nikki Weaver, Le Moyne College

For questions and inquiries, contact us at info.lacet@gmail.com.