CAP: Enhancing Pathways for Student Success in AI

This project is an ExpandAI Capacity building pilot (CAP), which focuses on establishment of a robust Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) thereby enhancing the research capacity of the institution and facilitating AI-focused educational curriculum development and training. This project, in partnership with regional collaborator Northwestern University, seeks to modernize CS education programs and diversify the CS workforce by integrating technological acumen with broader skills needed to be impactful in a modern AI workforce, including project scoping and management, working with and managing teams, time management, managing cultural differences, negotiation, and communication.

This project addresses this gap through a model of enhancing student education by blending existing teaching frameworks and methodologies with embedded work experiences. The project builds an ecosystem of collaboration in which to integrate frontier knowledge in artificial intelligence with the advanced software development principles to provide students, and underrepresented students in particular, with the technical, interpersonal, and leadership skills needed to become future innovators in the academy, industry and their communities.

The overarching goal of the CAP: Enhancing Pathways for Student Success in AI project is to create a sustainable and transformational model of talent development education in AI that would help diversify the AI-related workforce in the Chicago area. To support this main goal, the project has two objectives: Objective 1: To improve educational success of minority students in AI by blending existing teaching frameworks and methodologies with embedded work experiences; and Objective 2: To build an ecosystem of collaboration, between educational institutions at different levels (community colleges, teaching institutions and research institutions) and business partners to provide underrepresented Chicago students with the technical, interpersonal, and leadership skills needed to become AI workers and leaders.

This unique project-based internship model focuses on problem solving and team-building experiences. The model provides students with a distinctive opportunity to expand their skills and build a student support network that scopes across schools and demographics. The project will also build community and new centers of excellence in AI where such activities were not previously well developed.

This includes laying a foundation for a larger collaborative, inviting potential new partners from Community Colleges and other local area institutions, thus expanding access to the same opportunities and allowing other programs to benefit from the improvements in curricular and extra-curricular activities.

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.