At the behest of President Levin and Provost Martinez, we are pleased to announce that AI Meets Education at Stanford (AIMES) with the support of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning is launching a new university-wide seed grant program, AI in Teaching and Learning at Stanford. The goal is to bring Stanford’s world-class spirit of innovation, inquiry, and evidence to bear on the use of artificial intelligence in teaching and learning at the college level. The effort seeks to engage faculty, instructors, staff, and students to shape the educational future at Stanford and across the higher education landscape.
The program launches with competitive grant funding possibilities for faculty, instructors, academic staff and students. There are three streams of funding:
- Course and curriculum grants to help develop and revise Stanford classes that meaningfully address AI, whether or not students use AI;
- Innovation with evidence grants to support the development and empirical testing of innovative approaches to AI, teaching, and learning at Stanford; and,
- Thought leadership funding for intellectual works on critical issues regarding AI and education at Stanford.
See below for links to the associated Requests for Proposals for full information. Proposals are due May 15, 2026. There will be Zoom information sessions on Friday, April 24, 2026, from 12:00 - 1:00 pm, and on Thursday, May 7, 2026, from 2:00 - 3:00 pm.
RSVP here (requires Stanford login) to receive the Zoom link and attend an info session.
1. Course and Curriculum Grants | Grants up to $100K, available to faculty and lecturers.
Led by the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education's (VPUE) AIMES initiative, Course and Curriculum grants provide a pool of planning and implementation funds that will support faculty and lecturers in redesigning courses and curricula to meaningfully address or integrate AI. These grants will enable instructors and student collaborators to experiment with new pedagogies, learning experiences, and ways of assessing learning in undergraduate and graduate courses—grounded in both creativity and instructional rigor. Course-based instructor-student teams will play a critical role in prototyping and testing new approaches. The Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) will provide expertise, coordination, and support for educational design and for understanding student learning and the effectiveness of seed grant projects.
2. Innovation with Evidence Grants | R&D grants up to $50,000, available to faculty, instructors, and students.
Led by the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, this program will serve as a research and development engine to benefit Stanford’s students with the broader goal of providing instances, insights, and evidence for college-level teaching and learning more generally. Innovation with Evidence grants will fund the development and evaluation of AI-enabled teaching approaches, examining their impact on student outcomes such as learning and effort. Importantly, grantees are required to collect empirical data from the implementation of their innovation. The Stanford Accelerator for Learning will provide dedicated expertise to support grantees in the science of learning, research design and execution, measurement and data collection, and modest technical support. Innovations may address, but are not limited to, a unit of instruction, section and lab activities, homework, experiential learning, assessment and full courses.
3. Thought Leadership Grants and Awards | Commissions and prizes up to $3,000, available to faculty, staff, lecturers, and students.
Thought Leadership funding is intended to support thought pieces and exchanges regarding pressing issues at the intersection of AI and college-level education. It uses an experimental format for funding that may prove to be highly engaging. Through publications and cross-sector dialogue, the two tracks —one with a focused theme, the other with an open call —will ideally foster a vibrant, intellectual and interdisciplinary community that brings together faculty, lecturers, students, and staff to engage in thoughtful, forward-looking exchange.
Track 1 is open now. Track 2 will open in the fall.
Track 1 — Themed Topics: This spring, Thought Leadership grants solicit proposals for intellectual works that consider the potential impacts of generative AI on the learning and production of critical thinking and creativity. There are strong and varied opinions about the impacts of AI on critical thinking and creativity. It is valuable to bring different ideas in different forms into productive dialog. We welcome proposals for a broad range of intellectual works including thought pieces, art, demonstrations, videos, software and more. A grant may be thought of as a commission to complete the proposed work. Awardees will be expected to join a forum in fall 2026 to share their work, and ideally, lead to synthesis publications or products that exemplify Stanford’s thought leadership on AI, teaching, and human potential. Applicants may apply to the critical thinking sub-track or the creativity sub-track or both.
Track 2 — Open Topics: In the fall of 2026,the Thought Leadership competition broadens the scope to any pertinent topic at the intersection of AI and education. For example, topics could include AI in relation to play, authorship, privacy, bias, mental health, surveillance, environmental and human labor impacts, faculty-student and peer-to-peer interactions, debates over educational models and more. Whereas Track 1 provides a commission to complete the work, Track 2 will give awards for completed products submitted through an open call. Applicants can submit short thought-pieces in the form of their choosing–from high-quality essays, policy briefs, videos or alternative media. The solicitation and sharing of these contributions will help shape not only academic perspectives but also public understanding and institutional decision-making.
Together, these three grants competitions — course and curriculum change, innovation with evidence, and thought leadership — should serve as both a catalyst within Stanford and as a help for the broader higher education field.
Which funding opportunity fits me?*
| 1. Course and Curriculum | 2. Innovation with Evidence | 3a. Thought Leadership: Themed | 3b. Thought Leadership: Open | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eligible to apply | Faculty, instructors; student team members are welcome | Faculty, instructors, academic staff, postdocs, students | Faculty, instructors, staff, postdocs, students | Faculty, instructors, staff, post-docs, students |
| Award amounts | Planning grant: up to $10K; Implementation: up to $25K per course; Multi-course projects: up to $100K | Up to $50K grants | Up to $3,000 commission | $2,000 award |
| Type of award | Project-based grant | Project-based grant | Project-based commission | Award based on submission |
| Timing | Grants awarded in summer 2026 for implementation Aug. 2026 - July 2027 | Grants awarded in summer 2026; grant period July 2026–Sept. 2027 | Awarded in summer 2026; projects due Oct. 31, 2026 | Awards decided fall 2026 |
| Core deliverables | Teaching practices implemented at Stanford; shared via convenings and other avenues | Instructional innovations and original empirical findings; shared via convenings and publications | Shareable communication for a broad Stanford and higher education audience | Shareable communication for a broad Stanford and higher education audience |
*Multiple applications: Applicants may apply to multiple opportunities, but may NOT apply to both opportunity 1 and opportunity 2. In other words, you may apply to opportunity 1 or 2, and also 3a and/or 3b.
