Cap: accelerating AI workforce development: preparing faculty for teaching AI across domains and pathways

This $392,942 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) program (CFDA 47.070) aims to develop an Artificial Intelligence (AI) workforce development program at Marymount University, a Hispanic-Serving Institution located in Arlington, Virginia.

The key objectives of this 2-year project are to: 1) Establish a 12-credit graduate certificate program to train faculty and graduate students across disciplines on AI principles and practices through experiential learning, and 2) Enable these trained educators to then teach AI applications to their students at the high school, community college, and university levels. This initiative seeks to broaden access to AI education beyond computing professionals, empowering a diverse range of students to develop the necessary skills for AI-enabled careers. As a Hispanic-Serving Institution, Marymount will leverage its existing relationships with local school systems and community colleges to reach underrepresented minority students. The project results will also be disseminated to other Hispanic-Serving Institutions to support expanded AI education and workforce development efforts.

Abstract

This project is an expand AI capacity building pilot (cap) that targets developing the workforce of the future where using artificial intelligence (AI) is seen as increasingly essential in many work sectors. The first step in this process is to educate teachers from a variety of different subjects, in high school, community colleges, and universities on what AI is, how IT can apply to their field, and how they can train diverse students in its use, empowering the future workforce to be employed in high paying jobs. The project also seeks to broaden AI education, addressing not just the few who see themselves as computing professionals, but the broader range of individuals who can improve their economic mobility by having the necessary skills to implement AI-enabled applications that will be essential in their chosen profession. Marymount university?s approach to this workforce development initiative is to leverage its educational strengths to focus the needed AI skill development on educators, who can in turn amplify the effect on students across all disciplines and work sectors. The project will recruit faculty and graduate students across disciplines in the various educational pathways and teach them AI principles and practices in a low cost 12-credit graduate certificate program, focusing on experiential learning. The curriculum has been developed and approved by the university. Once the initial cohorts have been through this program, these graduates will be mentored when returning to their teaching environment where they can begin teaching the AI-applications to their students to prepare them for the AI-enabled workforce. As marymount is a hispanic-serving institution, the project leverages existing ongoing relationships and educational pathways with local school systems and community colleges who each have large minority student bases. Marymount university will further disseminate the results of this project, particularly to other hispanic-serving institutions through ongoing activities with the computing alliance of hsis (cahsi) and other high schools and community colleges. The expandai program supports AI-powered education and workforce development, infrastructure and research at minority serving institutions to strengthen and diversify U.S. Research and education pathways and provide historically marginalized communities with new opportunities in stem careers. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are not planned for this award.