Utilizing Artificial Intelligence in Financial Planning Courses

Students tend to be a step ahead of faculty with tech, apps and even AI tools. Where the words “AI in the Classroom” may invoke feelings of cheating and ChatGPT generated essays, AI tools can be leveraged for the greater good. AI tools can help students and faculty create and fuel innovation. AI can help faculty better focus time on their mission and goals; automating structural tasks that in the past were time intensive. In this session, Presley Fee, Financial Planning Program Coordinator, will join Dr. Craig Lemoine, CFP(R), Financial Planning Program Director, for an innovative exploration of AI tools across financial planning and wealth management classrooms. Register now for the AI In The Classroom session.

Craig Lemoine is a Certified Financial Planner™ Professional with almost thirty years of experience in financial planning and wealth management. Dr. Lemoine is currently the director of the University of Illinois undergraduate Financial Planning Program and a Clinical Professor in the college of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. This is Craig’s tenth year leading the financial planning program at Illinois. In that time, the program has grown from 85 to 230 students and is nationally ranked among the top programs in the country.

Presley Fee is the Financial Planning Program Coordinator at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She manages digital content, serving as the producer of the Land & Everything Else podcast, and organizing the program's annual career day. Presley studied financial planning in her undergraduate program and holds a Master's degree in Education Policy, Organization & Leadership, both from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is currently in a doctoral program studying Curriculum & Instruction.

The Story Beyond the Record: Lessons from Researching Black Panther Leader Ericka Huggins

Drawing from the research behind Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins, this presentation examines what happens between encountering evidence and making a historical claim, and how that research process has shaped the classroom. Using the research on Ericka Huggins as a case study, the presentation explores how historians follow evidence across different kinds of sources, navigate gaps and contradictions, and determine what can and cannot be responsibly claimed about a historical subject. It then considers how these experiences have informed Phillips’s teaching, particularly how she helps students question sources, recognize silences and competing perspectives, work with uncertainty, and develop arguments that are well supported by the available evidence. Faculty participants will be invited to consider how similar research habits and interpretive practices might be adapted to their own disciplines and classrooms.

Mary Frances Phillips is Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins, winner of the 2026 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography. Her research and teaching focus on Black women’s political histories, Black feminist politics, archives, biography, and the Black freedom struggle.

Reimagining Interpreting: Coaching Skills for Teaching in the Age of AI

In this session, Özüm Arzık Erzurumlu leads a conversation on integrating coaching skills into everyday teaching practice, drawing on her work as an ICF-certified professional coach and her research on coaching frameworks in interpreter education. The session introduces a set of practical tools – reading affect before analysis, a three-move sequence for feedback conversations, growth-mindset language, the TGROW model, and the instructor's own composure under pressure. Participants will then apply these to two situations: co-writing a class contract with students, and three familiar teaching moments handled two different ways. The focus will be on practical approaches, shared challenges, and pedagogical decision-making, with time for collective reflection and exchange.

Özüm Arzık-Erzurumlu is a faculty member in Translation & Interpreting Studies at UIUC, an ICF-certified professional coach, and the author of Reimagining Conference Interpreting in the Age of AI (Routledge, 2026). Her research and teaching focus on the intersection of human judgment, coaching frameworks like TGROW, and technology in higher education.

When Two Courses Become a Creative Team

Since 2019, two independently taught courses with distinct learning outcomes have come together each fall to design and build a fully functioning escape room for a real client. In this case study, we will share how we have refined our model for bringing students from multiple disciplines together, breaking down silos between courses, and creating a productive give-and-take throughout the design process. We will discuss what students gain from working across disciplines, with a client, and on creative work that continues beyond the semester, as well as how we collaborate as faculty while maintaining distinct courses and learning goals.

Amber Schultz is a Teaching Assistant Professor of Theater Studies and core faculty of the Game Studies and Design program. As an experience designer, she utilizes human-centered design to integrate performance, games, and immersive design into playable theatre experiences. Her scholarship explores the intersection of psychology, immersive performance, and game design, with particular focus on developing frameworks for audience interaction in playable theatre and other immersive contexts. She is an affiliate of Siebel Center for Design and IMMERSE: Center for Immersive Computing.

Emilie Butt is a Lecturer of Game Studies and Design and Information Sciences. She specializes in escape room design, board games, makerspaces and makerspace librarianship, and community engagement with a focus on youth and teen services. Her course design is centered around experiential and project-based learning to support the growth of key design and learning skills in students, particularly those around collaboration, communication, critical thinking and handling ambiguity. She is also interested in how these experiences affect students’ self-concept, identity, and evaluation of their own capacities.