From Proust to Pitching Data: How Hahn Teaching with Technology Grants are Transforming Teaching in the Humanities, Athletics, Language Learning, and Beyond.
Each of the projects featured in this blog was made possible through the Hahn Teaching with Technology Program at Pomona College. Supported by the Hahn Fund for Innovation (established through a generous 1990 gift from Franklin and Margaret Hahn), the program funds projects that bring technology and teaching together in creative ways. Hahn funds have supported everything from computer hardware and software to faculty stipends, research and teaching assistant hires, student labor, guest speakers, and books. The grant’s call for proposals opens each spring, with awardees announced the following summer. What began as a transformative gift over three decades ago continues to fuel exactly the kind of innovation on display at this year’s talks. Collectively these projects demonstrate not only technological adoption, but also thoughtful experimentation, critique, and pedagogical reflection.
Advancing AI and Digital Humanities with Proust – Virginie Duzer
Professor Virginie Duzer, Chair of Romance Languages and Literatures at Pomona College opened with a centuries-old passage warning that a new invention “will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn it.” The audience might have guessed it described artificial intelligence (AI), but the source was far older: Plato’s Phaedrus, and the “dangerous” technology in question was writing itself. The parallel set the tone for a course exploring what literature can teach us about AI, and what AI can reveal about literature.
The class of seven undergraduates, all self-described non-users and skeptics of AI, spent the semester building retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems, doing topic modeling, and working with tools like Gallica and Stories to study Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. The discoveries were genuinely illuminating. Their RAG tool, for instance, initially could not locate the famous madeleine scene, which led to a productive literary insight that the madeleine episode is less central to the text’s structure than popular culture suggests, and the concept of “lost time” referenced in the title appears only twice in the first volume.
“If you build AI, you can critique it better. You know how it works. You can explain it to others, and you can articulate exactly why you refuse to use it.” – Professor Duzer
Students also compared how different large language models responded to probing questions, noting that Claude appeared to recognize it was being tested while ChatGPT did not, which sparked a rich conversation about the nature of AI behavior. The takeaway was that building and breaking AI tools gave students the technical skills, but more importantly sharper critical thinking. As a final project, students are creating digital “Proustian memories” of Oldenborg using the tools they developed over the semester.
Elevating Pomona Softball with Rapsodo 2.0 Technology – JoAnne Ferguson
The softball program at Pomona-Pitzer (our athletics coalition) introduced a data analytics tool, the Rapsodo 2.0, for the first time this season, focusing on pitching analysis. The dual-purpose device, set up between home plate and the pitching mound, tracks velocity, spin rate, spin efficiency, and trajectory in real time. A Pomona student, Xander, was hired to operate the system during intrasquad scrimmages, entering pitch data on an iPad as catchers signaled each call.
JoAnne Ferguson, the coach described herself as “feel-type” coaches rather than data-driven ones but noted that today’s student-athletes respond to metrics. Being able to discuss spin direction using a clock-face model or compare fastball and changeup velocities in a post-session meeting, gave them a shared language with their pitchers. Athletes can also review their own sessions independently through the app’s cloud-based portal.
This first season focused exclusively on pitching to get the implementation right. Next year, the program plans to expand to hitting analytics and to incorporate the device into summer recruiting camps, where objective data can supplement scouting observations. At the Division III level, the coaches emphasized, access to this kind of technology is rare, and the students are hungry for it.
AI-supported Pragmatics Instruction and Assessment – Eileen J. Cheng & Feng Xiao
The third project tackled one of the thorniest challenges in language instruction: pragmatics, or the ability to use language appropriately in context. Knowing the grammar of a polite refusal is one thing; actually producing one in a culturally fluent way is another. The research compared whether AI-generated feedback could match human feedback in helping Chinese language learners improve their pragmatic competence.
The study used Luduan.ai, an adaptive learning platform developed with 5C students that offers speaking assignments in 17 languages. Students interacted with AI in role-play scenarios, like visiting a post office in Beijing, for example, and their spoken responses were recorded and transcribed. Half the participants received feedback from a human research assistant, and the other half received feedback directly from the AI platform.
Preliminary results from the first ten participants are promising. Both groups improved significantly from pre-test to post-test. Looking at average score improvements, the human feedback group gained about eight points while the AI feedback group gained about six, suggesting human feedback may hold a slight edge, though the sample is still too small for statistical conclusions. The research is ongoing, and the platform itself is freely available to students across the Claremont Colleges.
Using Tableau to Teach Economics – Marisa Cameron
In Professor Marissa Cameron’s Economics of Crime class, students learned Tableau, one of two data visualization platforms that dominate the job market, through a sequence of five guided projects and one independent project. The guided projects introduce 14 different visualization types of increasing complexity, with detailed step-by-step instructions running to nine pages each. By the end, students design their own dashboards from scratch, selecting their own topics, sourcing their own data, and building fully interactive visualizations.
“The results have been striking” Professor Cameron recounted. According to Professor Cameron, one student created a dashboard on K–12 school shootings which was so polished that the original dataset’s author now features the work on their website. The interactive dashboards allow viewers to hover over data points for detail, click legend items to filter across all visualizations, and explore the data dynamically. Students are producing this caliber of work after just a few months with the software, Professor Cameron notes.
A key part of the grant funded a student teaching assistant, a former student who used Tableau extensively during a summer internship, to support peers through the steep initial learning curve. Alumni surveys show graduates are actively using Tableau in internships and careers, and the course now offers a path to official Tableau certification. One notable observation was that current AI platforms struggle with Tableau troubleshooting, so the human TA remains essential.
Tokyo in 3D: Printing Terrain to Teach Japanese Literature and Culture – Kyoko Kurita
Kyoko Kurita, a professor of Japanese studies, presented a creative solution to a perennial teaching challenge of how to convey the significance of Tokyo’s topography to students who have never been there? The city’s high-low geography, where hilltops historically housed powerful samurai and low-lying river areas belonged to the poor, is central to its literature and culture. But two-dimensional images, dominated by skyscrapers, obscure the ground-level terrain that gives neighborhoods their meaning.
According to Professor Kurita, the answer was 3D-printed topographic models. Using a program called Map to Model, she generated printable terrain files of specific Tokyo neighborhoods, choosing whether to include buildings or show only the underlying landscape. The printing process itself became instructive as higher-elevation areas fill in later during printing, visually revealing the topography. White gaps in the model turned out to mark baseball fields or temple cemeteries, prompting students to notice features they would otherwise overlook.
The physical models allow students to trace a literary character’s path with their fingers, feeling whether they are walking uphill or downhill, and understanding what that movement signifies socially and culturally. The presentation included 3D-printed scale comparisons of Tokyo Tower, a traditional pagoda, and even a Godzilla figure, further bringing proportion and presence to an abstract cityscape. Tokyo has over 800 named slopes, and their names, steepness, and direction all carry cultural significance that the models make tangible.
Podcasting Marginal Francophone Voices – Thomas Muzart
Thomas Muzart, an Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, created a new course called “Voices on the Margins” exploring how minority communities in contemporary France use podcasting to reclaim their narratives on race, gender, and identity. The course allows students to produce a full podcast season of their own, entirely in French.
The grant funded three things: professional podcast training for the professor in Paris, recording equipment including a high-quality portable recorder and studio microphones, and visits from working French podcasters via Zoom. The class is based at the Hive’s Studio One, which has a recording booth, and the FLRC’s panoramic camera system made the virtual guest sessions far more interactive than a typical video call.
Students began by producing short personal audio segments, including reflections on family, identity, and everyday life, before tackling their final project, which was a six-episode season titled “A Survival Guide for Francophone Students at the 5Cs.” Episodes cover topics from cultural shock to navigating liberal arts education through a francophone lens. The professor noted that podcast production has unexpected benefits for language learning, particularly pronunciation and rhythm, since students must write scripts, rehearse, record, and edit, engaging with the language at a depth that classroom conversation alone rarely achieves.
The Deltos Project: An Online Collection of Accessible and Equitable Resources for the Study of Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient Mediterranean – Jody Valentine
Professor Jody Valentine, the final presenter, shared an update on the Deltos Project a web-based platform that has grown from a personal teaching organization tool into an open-access resource for scholars worldwide. The site hosts modular teaching units at the intersection of classics and gender studies, a combination that few scholars are trained in from both directions. The goal is to lower the barrier: a gender studies professor who has never taught ancient material, or a classicist unfamiliar with feminist pedagogy, can find ready-made modules with primary sources, discussion frameworks, activities, and curated reading lists.
The site recently went live, featuring a carousel of modules organized by topic. Each module can function as a standalone unit insertable into an existing course. One highlighted module, created by a Pomona student, centers on material culture objects and includes a downloadable workshop. A detailed contributor form, developed through extensive back-end work, is designed to make submission straightforward and to establish a consistent standard of quality across contributions.
“Teaching with technology can also mean real, in-person community building—and that has been one of the project’s greatest pleasures.” – Professor Valentine
The project’s student research assistants now meet weekly in a shared Friday lab session, sometimes working independently, sometimes collaborating on tasks as varied as designing merchandise and formatting images. The project is hosted on WordPress with a professional developer to ensure longevity, supported through the professor’s startup grant, and designed to be inexpensive to maintain once the initial build is complete.
Looking Ahead
The event closed with a reminder that the next cycle of Hahn Grant proposals opens in April, with a mid-May deadline and June notifications. The RITG Team emphasized their availability for drop-in consultations and project support throughout the year.
Visit the Hahn Teaching with Technology Program to learn more, and explore the Call for Proposals if you’re interested in applying. For guidance or support with your application, feel free to contact Susan Pennestri at susan.pennestri@pomona.edu.