Blog Posts by Westmont

Students in Helen Rhee’s Embodiment and Suffering class received an unusual assignment this fall. The religious studies professor and church historian directed them to leave Adams 217, where they meet, go to the library, pretend to return a book and then head to their supposed next class in the Global Leadership Center — only using paths accessible to someone in a wheelchair. Anyone who knows the campus recognizes the potential difficulties awaiting these students.

How can we best engage ethically with artificial intelligence (AI) and its accelerating influence? We seek to establish a framework for critically evaluating its impact on human lives — as both a tool of empowerment for extraordinary achievements and a force that risks undermining human dignity through its underlying biases and resulting harms. Exploring AI’s deep roots in the 75-year history of computing will help demystify the mechanisms behind its seemingly incomprehensible abilities as we examine key breakthroughs that have fueled the explosion of generative AI innovations.

Thanksgiving is more than a holiday marked by turkey, pumpkin pie, and family gatherings—it is a reminder that gratitude begins the moment we recognize we are not owed anything, yet we have been given everything. In my Moral and Spiritual Psychology class at CS Lewis, I invite students to practice gratitude not as a fleeting habit but as a way of being, encouraging them to keep a weekly gratitude journal that thanks God for five things each week.

Westmont celebrated 50 years of women’s athletics during Homecoming weekend, drawing what may have been the largest gathering of athletic alumnae and current student-athletes in college history. The weekend’s sport-specific events culminated in a dinner honoring women’s athletics trailblazers and legacy builders, attended by about 200 guests and 125 current female student-athletes Oct. 18 at Montecito Covenant Church.

This May, CATLab embarked on its annual trip to San Francisco, bringing along twenty-two students for an unforgettable deep dive into the heart of California’s tech industry.

Each May in downtown Santa Barbara, the glass doors to the CATLab office swing open to welcome a new cohort of student innovators.