The 35th annual Duremdes Christian Emphasis Week, held September 21-25, was a memorable experience as guest speaker Danny Morales’s creative and passionate preaching helped students go deeper in their walk with the Lord.

According to a BU press release, Christian Emphasis Week was created in 1992 by Drs. Gene and Jane Duremdes of Princeton, West Virginia. Thanks to their faith and generosity, hundreds of BU students have made professions of faith and been baptized over the past three decades.

Sensing a special calling to “share with the students of Bluefield University some of the blessings they have received from the Lord,” the Duremdes created the event with BU leaders to allow students and the public at-large to “examine their spiritual lives” and to “seek answers to life-impacting questions.”

What was once hailed as a technological breakthrough with the potential to transform how people work has quickly become a concern in most college classrooms. As students turn to AI tools to help complete their work, professors are grappling with how to use the technology as a learning tool without allowing it to replace learning itself.

With multiple breakthroughs in AI in recent years, many students are relying on AI to complete their schoolwork and other daily tasks. In fact, a recent survey conducted by ed-tech provider Instructure found that 90 percent of college students use some sort of artificial intelligence to complete their assignments.

“The thing with AI and students, I believe, is it is affecting the student’s ability to think critically, causing them to not have their own opinions about certain topics,” said Caleb Casey, a BU student. “Most times now, instead of a student trying to learn and understand a certain topic, AI just does it for them.”