‘What Must Be Done?’ St. John’s Answers with a New Kind of AI

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to reshape the world, St. John’s University is taking a proactive approach—partnering with Superhuman (formerly Grammarly), one of the world’s preeminent AI companies, to bring cutting-edge AI designed specifically for higher education to faculty, staff, and students. 

“AI is disrupting the way we learn and teach,” explained Luca Iandoli, Ph.D., Dean of The Lesley H. and William L. Collins College of Professional Studies and Professor in the Division of Computer Science, Mathematics, and Science. “We want to help students use AI properly, proficiently—and above all, ethically. That’s why we are addressing this challenge by asking the Vincentian question, ‘What must be done?’”

Rather than adapting existing tools built for productivity, the University sought a partner with whom it could inform an AI solution that prioritizes academic integrity, ethical use, and meaningful student engagement, turning a rapidly evolving challenge into an opportunity for innovation.

The primary issue is that current AI solutions are not designed for education; they are built exclusively for workplace productivity and other functions without a commitment to learning. “Chatbots have been built to help students offload their work, which is a bad design issue, not an AI issue. We want to avoid those problems by designing solutions centered around the needs of faculty and students and that support and enhance learning,” Dr. Iandoli said. 

While the St. John’s Academic AI task force and Office of Information Technology were benchmarking solutions, Superhuman reached out to St. John’s about a potential partnership. “They are open-minded and want to develop solutions that are specifically designed to help students and faculty to learn and teach better,” said Anne Rocco Pacione, St. John’s Chief Information Officer, who initiated the conversation that led to the partnership.

Superhuman is used by 3,000 educational institutions; 40 million individual users; and 50,000 organizations worldwide. Superhuman Go is its new AI assistant that brings proactive support to users wherever they work.

St. John’s is now part of a select group of universities in the country that Superhuman considers early strategic partners. This arrangement allows the University to provide input on the tool.

“It’s exciting. We are doing something that only a few universities are doing right now,” said Simon G. Møller, Ph.D., St. John’s Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. “Superhuman is taking the lead among AI companies in this area, so it’s something we’re proud to be associated with.”

The initiative serves St. John’s mission to reduce social inequality induced by technology and a new digital divide that risks enlarging career and income gaps between the skilled and the unskilled, with the latter typically belonging to the less privileged social groups.

“We believe it’s a moral imperative to empower students with the AI literacy they need to succeed in today’s workplace,” said Jenny Maxwell, Head of Superhuman for Education. “St. John’s vision of empowering diverse learners with quality education for life resonates deeply with our own—and together, we see extraordinary potential to leverage AI to shape a more equitable, opportunity-rich future for every student.”

Through this partnership, the University will collaborate with Superhuman using a “design thinking” approach to understand the needs of faculty and students so priorities can be identified and acted upon. “We are creating an internal team, getting feedback from students and faculty, and informing Superhuman’s team about ways to continually improve the product so that it works well in an educational context,” Dr. Iandoli explained. “The faculty task force features professors from different Schools and Colleges and disciplines. They will be the champions of the tool and help build followership.” 

How the Platform Works

Superhuman’s suite of tools provides support throughout the educational experience. Superhuman Go works in more than one million apps and websites to provide AI support through a set of agents specialized in different tasks. Unlike mainstream chatbots, Superhuman Go puts the students in charge of accepting AI-generated outputs and actively designing AI workflows through the orchestration of agents’ capabilities. Grammarly also delivers real-time feedback on grammar, clarity, concision, and tone, helping students sharpen their writing while building essential AI literacy skills. 

Managing AI agents and building effective AI-supported workflows are crucial skills, much more valuable than the now taken-for-granted prompting engineering required by mainstream bots. Faculty can also tap into these insights to better support student development, creating more opportunities for meaningful engagement with course material via the integration of Superhuman with the Learning Management System and the use of specific functionalities to design AI-enhanced assignments.

Superhuman also offers more support for academic integrity than competing platforms. The Grammarly Authorship feature can track writing in real time, indicating whether something was typed by a human, copied and pasted, or AI-generated. Most importantly, it can show a professor a student’s process and thinking. Authorship also protects students from allegations of academic dishonesty, since students can demonstrate how they combined original content with information sourced elsewhere to stay true to academic integrity guidelines. 

Roll out and Implementation

Over the summer, the University will pilot the new tool in certain summer session classes, while also offering training for all faculty. By the fall, every faculty member who wants to use it will have the opportunity to incorporate it into their classroom. The tool will then be used on a larger scale in the form of a more advanced experiment, through which feedback will be collected and passed to developers for additional improvements.

“This collaboration with Superhuman supports St. John’s University’s Strategic Plan Reimagined 2025–2028,” Dr. Møller remarked. “This focuses on student success and ensuring that every student has the resources, support, and opportunities to thrive in life and career.” 

While the University anticipates a strong adoption rate from faculty, using the tool will not be a requirement. It will always be optional for faculty to use the platform in full respect of academic freedom and specific pedagogic needs.

As the pilot moves forward, the initiative reflects more than just a new piece of technology—it signals a shift in how universities can shape the role of AI rather than react to it. By centering ethics, transparency, and human judgment, St. John’s is helping define a model where innovation and integrity move in tandem.