AI Taskforce, University of Southern Maine

Zach Newell came to Maine for a position as dean of Libraries and Learning at the University of Southern Maine in September 2022.  He has been in higher education for the past 20 years.  In that span he has worked as a full-time instructor of art history, as a humanities librarian, a department chair and more recently as both a director/dean. Zach was most recently working as the Dean of Library Services at Eastern Illinois from 2018 to 2022.  Zach has traveled extensively, having grown up in the Middle East before settling in Massachusetts. Zach spent time as a Fulbright scholar in 2012 working at the library of Alexandria, Egypt during the Arab Spring. Zach has degrees in philosophy, art history and library science. Zach recently completed a dissertation that explored the place of creative pedagogy in information literacy. It is through the lens of information literacy that Zach recently co-chaired an AI Task Force and has been involved in shaping policy around AI.