Policy Concerning the Academic Use of Artificial Intelegence – 2025-2026

Background

As Christians, truth and integrity are primary tenets of our faith, and we are commended by the Apostle Paul to: “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a worker who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15). At Cornerstone College & Seminary (CCS), scholastic honesty and integrity are the foundations upon which an academic career is built. We want our students to not only achieve their educational goals, but to do so with integrity. In ministry, integrity is everything (2 Cor. 1:12; Titus 2:7; and 1 Tim. 4:12). Walking with integrity affirms your witness to the world as an image bearer of Christ (Gen. 1:27). Preparing for ministry is part of your ministry, and choosing to pursue higher education at a Christian college shows your desire to use your mind to serve God. “The mind of the discerning acquires knowledge, And the ear of the wise seeks knowledge (Prov 18:15).

The recent development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools has prompted questions about whether they are suitable for academic purposes. There are many ethical concerns, the chief among which is that AI draws from myriad sources to respond or provide information as a human. An AI-produced response cannot be challenged, critiqued, or evaluated because it is not attributed to specific sources. It is, essentially, a ‘crowdsourced’ synthesis of data, functionally equivalent to citing Wikipedia in a formal academic paper. Because AI responses have no attributional pedigree, use of AI tools should be limited in academic settings. While there are many opportunities for abuse, not all uses of AI are considered unethical. Here are some examples of ethical uses of AI in academic environments:

• Research Assistance: AI can aid in topic selection, source finding, key concept identification, and exploring diverse perspectives on a subject.
• Brainstorming and Outlining: AI can be prompted to generate ideas.
• Summarization: AI can help distill lengthy journal articles or academic research papers into concise summaries and can help the student understand complex materials. (Note that any summaries used in assignments must cite their original source, not the AI that produced the summary.)
• Data Visualization: AI tools can be used to create charts, graphs, and other visual representations of data, enhancing the presentation of research findings.
• Data Analysis.AI tools can analyze complex data sets and identify relationships among data, as well as summarize key findings suggested by data.
• Accessibility Support: AI can be employed for text-to-speech or voice recognition, provide captioning or transcripts of media sources, and otherwise convert learning materials into multimodal forms, enabling more effective support for the diverse needs of learners.

If a student is ever in doubt whether their planned use of AI is ethical, they should consult their instructor or leadership at CCS. The policy that follows acknowledges ethical use of AI, while also prohibiting unethical use of AI. We encourage students to understand this policy and seek clarification if any aspect of the policy is unclear.

Scope

This “Policy Concerning the Academic Use of Artificial Intelligence” is for students, faculty, and staff at CCS. It applies to all academic work. For clarity, this policy refers to AI tools that are of a general “query-answer” style, such as Bing CoPilot, Chat-GPT, among others. It does not refer to purpose-built AI capabilities, such as dedicated grammar checkers, which are integrated into common productivity software. To say it simply, this policy applies to those AIs in which you can ask a question, and the AI responds with a detailed answer of words that are not your own.

Policy

All work by students must be an original creation by the student. The exception is for works to which the student has given proper credit by use of proper citations. The use of AI to create novel content for academic purposes is prohibited. There are two exceptions to this prohibition: 1) an instructor specifically authorizes use of AI for a specific purpose; and 2) the student’s use of AI is within the “ethical use” exceptions (see background section of this policy for what is considered ethical use). When AI is used under these exceptions and the results are incorporated into a student’s submission, the use of AI must be disclosed (cited) within the resultant paper or product. 

The use of AI to academically cheat is prohibited. Forms of AI cheating include, inter alia, producing papers or writing prompt responses (in whole or in part), creating essays (in whole or in part), plagiarizing, assisting in answering test questions, helping to paraphrase a quote, using AI to summarize another’s work when the assignment requires a summary, or in any other way defeating standards of academic and Christian integrity. If in doubt, the principle the student must remember is that all work must be a student’s own creation unless properly cited as the work of others. 

Students should understand that detection methods of AI use and AI evasion are employed by CCS. The use of AI without prior permission will be considered tantamount to plagiarism since AI generated material contains unacknowledged and uncited content.