{"id":692,"date":"2026-09-14T17:26:01","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T17:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dlinq.middcreate.net\/updates\/?post_type=update&p=692"},"modified":"2026-09-22T14:21:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T14:21:18","slug":"faculty-spotlight-interview-dr-erick-gong","status":"publish","type":"update","link":"https:\/\/dlinq.middcreate.net\/updates\/update\/faculty-spotlight-interview-dr-erick-gong\/","title":{"rendered":"Faculty Spotlight Interview – Dr. Erick Gong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This faculty spotlight interview is the fourth in a series that tries to answer the question, how are faculty at Middlebury actually using AI? These interviews move beyond the hype about the potential power of AI to share how Middlebury faculty think about, and use, AI in their work.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Professor<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Dr. Erick Gong is a professor of Economics<\/a> and has been at Middlebury since 2011. He was kind enough to sit down with us to talk about his AI usage at the terribly busy start of September. Read on to learn more about how Erick is using AI to help keep his curriculum up-to-date and aligned, help with his research, and address student learning needs.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Gong primarily teaches intro level statistics and also a course focused on advanced econometric methods. He also often advises senior thesis students. This teaching load allows Erick to observe students work with data from the very beginning of their Middlebury careers all the way to the end.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using AI in Research<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In his research, Erick tries to answer questions that are of interest to social scientists. For his latest project he is asking the question: \u201cWhat was the effect of Martin Luther King Jr\u2019s leadership on the Civil Rights Movement?\u201d To answer that question, he considers if King did not exist, would we have had the same trajectory of the Civil Rights Movement? This is a big historical question Erick acknowledges he cannot fully answer. However, he can put together a data set where he documents and tracks everywhere that King spoke, and then he tries to link those events to various outcomes in the civil rights movement, specifically nonviolent protests.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you can imagine, this generates data from many sources. AI can help him work with that data. Erick estimates that he began using AI in 2024 or 2025, and it often helped him code in different languages that he was not as familiar with. An example prompt might be \u201chere\u2019s the code from Stata, here\u2019s what I\u2019d like to do, what would be the Python or R equivalent?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January of 2026 Claude Code came along. Claude Code enabled Erick to do a lot of the tedious data cleaning work at a much faster rate. It also assisted with more advanced statistical analysis. Erick then adjusted his work methods to begin by writing a strategic plan for what he wanted to do with his research, and then he would work with Claude Code on designing a plan for that work. This placed Erick\u2019s role into more of an evaluator of the work as opposed to doing the actual coding of specific parts of the project.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This efficiency allows Erick to focus his time and attention on the analysis of the data. He can carefully think through questions like \u201cDo these results make sense?\u201d and \u201cAre there problems with this result?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using AI in Teaching<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Erick noted that agentic AI has transformed his teaching in multiple ways. The way that he teaches the use of AI to students has evolved as the tool has changed and become more embedded in the tools that students use. However, perhaps the most exciting change to his teaching has been his ability to quickly implement curricular changes on the fly. It usually takes several iterations for a faculty member to get a course to a place where they feel happy with the resulting design. However, that time commitment often discourages professors from continuing to change the class once it gets to a stable state.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Erick\u2019s curriculum, he has many pieces that are working together: problem sets, data labs, and class assignments. They are all tied together. So, if he decides to pull one thing out to make space for another topic or component, he has to revise everything. Claude Code has made this process much faster and more streamlined. He can ask Claude to check all of the places, assignments, class notes, etc. that touch on the topic that he is adjusting or changing. Claude will then generate a list of items that need to be changed. It can then go a step further and help Erick make the necessary changes to achieve his goal.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cIt\u2019s allowed me to constantly refresh and update my curriculum so that I feel like it\u2019s basically helping students wherever they are at.<\/em>\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In addition, Erick works to understand what employers are expecting in terms of what our students should be able to do with AI, and he tries to update his curriculum to integrate these skills.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI\u2019s role in Curriculum Differentiation<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Erick also uses AI to help him test his curriculum\u2019s impact on students with differing abilities so that he can find areas that might be problematic and be proactive in the way that he manages those sections of the curriculum. He identifies areas of struggle and uses AI as a partner to figure out better ways to present those areas of the curriculum and help students practice their skills in effective ways.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Claude has also allowed Erick to create his own textbook for his class. While he didn\u2019t intend to do this, by sharing his slides, outlines, and notes for a class, he found that with Claude\u2019s help he was able to draft a rough textbook of materials. It has also helped him to generate many questions for each topic to help students practice their work on each part of his class.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s also used Claude\u2019s assistance to generate short explainer videos for difficult concepts and even created a web site to help students who have had several semesters between taking a prerequisite for a course (Intro-level statistics) and Linear Regression. Students have often asked to revisit the previous course content to refresh their knowledge. In response, Erick created a website with a series of refresher labs so that they can work their way through the material at their own pace and focus on those areas that they find the most challenging.  <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Screen<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Without Claude, he would have had to learn HTML and JavaScript to put together the site, and it would have been a months-long process which would have left little time for him to evaluate and review the site.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Advice for Faculty<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Erick found that the best way to learn how to use AI to help you in your work is to begin experimenting. Since everyone\u2019s use case is so unique, it is difficult to explain or demo what the work is like. He appreciates that Claude can hold information in memory so that the context of his work is not lost each time he starts working with the tool. This allows him to onboard Claude with his own professional guidelines and expectations for the work that he is doing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cI always have a list of ideas that I would like to pursue while teaching and I think what Claude Code is doing is actually allowing me to pursue a lot of these different ideas because it\u2019s not limited as much by time as I am.<\/em>\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Erick\u2019s attitude going into using AI was that he felt it was important for him to learn, and he wanted to make it fun. Between January and May of this year he was learning a lot of new things every day in his work with Claude. However, he is aware and concerned about cognitive offloading – not only for his students, but also for himself. He considers what he might be losing because of this work, but the fact that he is starting to use AI after he has developed and refined fundamental skills and knowledge is very different from students\u2019 experiences of using AI as a novice in their field.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He often guides students through the process of auditing AI\u2019s work by asking \u201cWhat is that line of code doing? How are you verifying that the actual end result, moving from a raw data set to a clean data set that you can use for analysis, is accurate?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He notes that working with AI takes patience, but there are a lot of resources available to help you learn. He estimates that he took two weeks in January to really focus on learning the basics, but that window can probably be much shorter now given the way the tools and support have advanced.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also suggests that faculty think of working with AI as if they are onboarding a new RA or employee in terms of teaching it your rules and guidelines for how you want to work. At the same time – he\u2019s not advocating for AI to replace those roles, but when those roles can\u2019t exist, AI can help assist a faculty member with their work.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parting Thoughts<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n

\u201cThe more that I work with AI, \u2026the greater the importance of [my interaction] in the physical world\u2026. I find that I need to talk to people more \u2026 It really emphasizes the need to unplug.<\/em>\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Working all day in a digital space can be exhausting and it can be difficult to break away if you feel you\u2019re making a lot of progress. Erick notes that he has developed consistent patterns of unplugging and connecting with people whether through his faith, relationships, learning new things, reading books, or writing things down on actual paper. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cYou have to nourish the mind, nourish the body and nourish the soul.<\/em>\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This faculty spotlight interview is the fourth in a series that tries to answer the question, how are faculty at Middlebury actually using AI? These interviews move beyond the hype about the potential power of AI to share how Middlebury faculty think about, and use, AI in their work.\u00a0 Dr. Erick Gong is a professor […]<\/p>\n

Read More… from Faculty Spotlight Interview – Dr. Erick Gong<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"1","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"software":[],"update_type":[],"theme":[],"discipline":[],"class_list":["post-692","update","type-update","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dlinq.middcreate.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/update\/692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dlinq.middcreate.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/update"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dlinq.middcreate.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/update"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dlinq.middcreate.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dlinq.middcreate.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/update\/692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":697,"href":"https:\/\/dlinq.middcreate.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/update\/692\/revisions\/697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dlinq.middcreate.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dlinq.middcreate.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dlinq.middcreate.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"software","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dlinq.middcreate.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/software?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"update-types","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dlinq.middcreate.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/update_type?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dlinq.middcreate.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/theme?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"discipline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dlinq.middcreate.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/discipline?post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}