Stephens-Martinez

Kristin Stephens-Martinez: Redefining Learning with AI

K’Mari Greene, Trinity Communications

The First-Year Experience in Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, designed to connect new students through themed courses, small group learning and interactive experiences, includes the longstanding FOCUS program and new Constellations cohorts.

There are 16 Constellations offered in the 2025-2026 academic year, each exploring an important and timely question. Kristin Stephens-Martinez, associate professor of the practice in Computer Science is teaching COMPSCI171: Learning How to Learn with AI, part of the Constellation How Does Artificial Intelligence Impact Human Experiences?

Stephens-Martinez has always loved teaching and helping others, and she’s excited to be working closely with first year students in a Constellation cohort. She’s familiar with helping undergraduates navigate the challenges of arriving on a college campus as they look for belonging and structure.

In the classroom, Stephens-Martinez is a big advocate for understanding why something is correct, not just finding the correct answer. It may sound counterintuitive, but she believes that wrong answers give more information.   

“I’m genuinely curious to understand where students currently are because if I can’t understand that, I can’t figure out how to get them to where I want them to be,” she said.   

She encourages students in all areas of the Trinity College to embrace discomfort as part of the learning process. “Getting comfortable with discomfort is actually important when it comes to learning,” she said. “The hard part is that it’s not comfortable.”   

We sat with Stephens-Martinez to better understand her perspectives on teaching. This interview has been lightly edited for length and content.

What advice would you give to female students who want to pursue STEM but might be afraid?   

My first question would be, “Why are you afraid?” 

"The point of going to college is to better understand the world, so you can narrow down and articulate what you’re trying to solve. " 

Then, I’d ask them to think about why they want to learn STEM. What is the problem you want to solve in the world?  What do you want to make better? 

That problem can be vague and that’s perfectly fine. The point of going to college is to better understand the world, so you can narrow down and articulate what you’re trying to solve.  

Having that kind of clarity and using that as a guiding star helps a lot in not caring about the little things — and you’re allowed to change your guiding star. You’re allowed to decide “Oh, my guiding star is still the same, but I’m going to go about this in a completely different way.” It’s perfectly reasonable.   

Why did you decide to teach in this Constellation?  

When it was clear an AI Constellation was going to happen, we knew the Computer Science department needed to be involved. Three faculty agreed to take part, and we all bring a different perspective to AI. I decided this was my opportunity to think about how AI and education interact and how to best use it. 

My class has four key themes:

  • What is Learning: How to recognize when learning has happened
  • How Does Learning Work: How does the human brain learn something
  • What is Generative AI: Define what generative AI is
  • Take Control of Learning: Reflect on your own learning and figure out how to learn what you want to learn

How will you foster relationships with students this fall?

I’m going to focus on getting to know my students. Learning how you learn takes a lot of introspection. So, we’ll be spending a lot of time discussing both the content and how we learn. Those kinds of discussions require trust. So, we’ll start small and as the class gets comfortable, we’ll discuss more deeply. And through that I hope to get to know my students and they’ll get to know each other as we go down this shared journey of better understanding how they learn and how AI can be used to support that.