Education Initiative To Strengthen Students’ AI Literacy, Training

The University of Texas at Dallas will receive $4 million over four years from the U.S. Department of Education to boost high school and college students' proficiency in artificial intelligence (AI) and prepare them for the future workforce.

UT Dallas is one of 18 institutions across the country to receive a grant from a $51 million pool through the Office of Postsecondary Education to advance the understanding and use of AI technology in postsecondary education.

The University is partnering with Uplift Education, a North Texas charter school network with 23,000 prekindergarten through 12th-grade students on 20 campuses. Together, the partners will launch the UTD/Uplift: Future Ready AI Collaborative, a K-16 initiative focused on building AI literacy for students in grades 10 through 12 while strengthening college and career readiness and augmenting outcomes during their college years.

"The grant will allow UT Dallas to develop a model for how AI can strengthen instruction, advising and institutional artificial intelligence across both secondary and postsecondary systems," said Gaurav Shekhar MS'16, MS'23, PhD'24, associate dean of administration, student success and alumni relations in the Naveen Jindal School of Management, and associate professor of instruction in information systems. "Second, this project will help train teachers in our high schools to help with college and career readiness. And lastly, we want to use AI to help augment our processes and frameworks at the University."

"We want to be one of the foremost AI schools when it comes to academics. This grant is a shot in the arm to making that dream possible."

Gaurav Shekhar MS'16, MS'23, PhD'24

Providing college and high school students with a fundamental understanding of AI and providing instructors with the training needed to keep up with the quickly evolving technology is a primary goal, said Shekhar, principal investigator on the project.

"If this works with such a large population, the model could be replicated anywhere else," he said. "We also want to make this a solid pathway for Uplift students to come to UT Dallas."

Dr. Hasan Pirkul, dean of the Jindal School and Caruth Chair, emphasized the importance of all students learning AI.

"AI is being adopted incredibly fast by businesses and corporations. They are making huge investments," he said. "It's changing the way our business processes work. If you want to work and be productive in today's society, you have to know AI's strengths and weaknesses. You have to know how to use it as a productivity tool, and you have to know its limitations."

AI will not only be integrated into lessons, but high school students also will learn how to use it responsibly, evaluate responses and detect misinformation to prepare them better for college.

"Artificial intelligence is shaping every industry, and our responsibility as educators is to ensure students are prepared - not just to use these tools, but to understand and shape them," said Dr. Remy L. Washington, CEO of Uplift. "Partnering with UT Dallas allows Uplift to build a powerful K-12-to-higher education pipeline that connects learning, ethics and real-world application. This grant also expands opportunities for teachers to learn, lead and bring AI literacy to life in classrooms. This reflects our shared belief that early exposure to AI can unlock lifelong opportunity."

"As AI continues to reshape the labor market, intentional preparation at the secondary level is critical," said Kimberly Wright MA'11, director of tech career development at Uplift Education and a UT Dallas lecturer who teaches in the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

UT Dallas will provide guidance on the curriculum for Uplift, helping students become competent in the fundamentals of AI by the time they graduate high school.

"This grant allows us to move beyond isolated AI lessons and toward a coherent, communitywide approach," Wright said. "By aligning high school learning with postsecondary expectations and real workforce applications, we're helping students build the judgment, fluency and confidence they'll need long after graduation - and showing them that their community is ready to engage, guide and grow with them in this AI conversation."

The grant also will help the University bolster its computing capacity for the third Jindal School building currently under construction.

In addition to preparing the future workforce, the grant can be used to track real-time data to aid retention efforts and to help craft efficiencies in student advising as enrollment grows, Shekhar said.

"We want to be one of the foremost AI schools when it comes to academics," he said. "This grant is a shot in the arm to making that dream possible."

Media Contact: Veronica Gonzalez, UT Dallas, 972-883-4358, [email protected], or the Office of Media Relations, UT Dallas, (972) 883-2155, [email protected].