UNE’s Jennifer Mandel awarded three-year fellowship in AI-informed assessment
Jennifer Mandel, Ph.D., associate director of assessment at the University of New England, has been awarded a three-year fellowship to develop, implement, and share AI-informed approaches to assess student learning.
The New England Educational Assessment Network (NEean) selected Mandel for its “Authentic Assessment in the Age of AI” fellowship that runs from fall 2026 to summer 2029 with funding from the Davis Educational Foundation.
Mandel joins a community of 22 assessment professionals from across New England for the professional development and collaborative knowledge-building workshops offered through the fellowship. Over three years, the cohort will gather for in-person fall and spring meetings, an annual three-day summer institute, and virtual workshops and coaching sessions with grant staff.
Mandel’s grant-funded AI-informed assessment projects aim to reach across the UNE community, which is grounded in interdisciplinary pedagogy, and are intended to be shared at regional and national venues.
Mandel brings 14 years of experience in outcomes assessment. Trained as a historian, Mandel builds on historical methods of using evidence for analysis in her assessment work. She partners with colleagues, including UNE’s University Assessment Committee, and has helped advance UNE’s annual assessment reporting and program review processes over the past decade.
In January 2023, after free generative AI (GenAI) tools were publicly released, UNE’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) invited Mandel to facilitate a University-wide discussion on ChatGPT and its implications for higher education. Since then, she has been learning about GenAI by attending presentations, testing the tools, and engaging in discussions on its applications.
The experience has left Mandel poised to explore the future of GenAI tools at UNE. The Davis Foundation-funded AI fellowship will help her, in working with partners across the region, to create strategies to respond to the rapidly-moving technological advances.
"The development of GenAI has put demands on us to more deliberately select measures that reliably and authentically assess student learning, and ensure students complete their own work and are ready for these fast-moving changes when they graduate,” Mandel said. “The NEean-Davis fellowship will help me upskill, integrate these emerging technologies into outcomes assessment practices, and work on projects that will benefit my office and University-wide assessment processes."
Mandel begins the fellowship while also working in collaboration with UNE’s team at the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ yearlong Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum. The UNE team is led by Marc Ebenfield, Ph.D., CETL director, and includes Lisa Herschbach, Ph.D., director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and assistant dean in the College of Business; Aime Levesque, associate dean of Academic and Faculty Affairs; Liz Crampsey, Ed.D., associate dean of Academic Affairs in the Westbrook College of Health Professions; and Eric Drown, Ph.D., director of the Center for Writing and Speaking.
Building on UNE’s AI policies and guidance, the team aims to further establish and advance AI literacy across the University. Mandel will build on the team’s progress during the second and third years of her fellowship.