A new Stanford University initiative will offer $1 million in seed grants to faculty, students, and staff willing to rethink how artificial intelligence fits into college teaching.
“The vision of this initiative is that it becomes something bigger than what we’ve done before,” said Dan Schwartz, the Halper Family Faculty Director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “We want to generate more energy, get more people involved, and see their best ideas and their genuine concerns.”
The grants, announced by AI Meets Education at Stanford (AIMES) and the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, will fund course development, research, and scholarly works on critical issues in AI and education.
“No one knows what works in the classroom better than the people who are teaching and learning there every day,” said Provost Jenny Martinez. “By empowering those who are closest to the issues to experiment and iterate, we’re channeling Stanford’s spirit of innovation towards one of the most pressing challenges for higher education.”
The grants are open to applicants across the university and don’t require any AI expertise.
“We’re very excited to get proposals that address the whole range of relationships with AI, including people who don’t think it belongs in their learning environment or that it should have a very limited role,” said Cassandra Volpe Horii, associate vice provost for education and director of the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL). “We want our questions and our work to improve learning in a world where AI exists – whether or not using AI is the answer.”
AIMES grew out of CTL and the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE) as a way to support critical engagement with generative AI in Stanford teaching. The new initiative expands that work, with the Accelerator bringing research expertise from learning experts across campus.
The initiative, launched with guidance from President Jonathan Levin and Provost Martinez, is designed to move beyond talk. “We’re not simply providing advice, we’re providing money,” said Jay Hamilton, the Freeman-Thornton Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Hearst Professor of Communication in the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S). “It’s a simple truth that innovation and experimentation involve effort and time, and we’re providing the money to support that.”
The grants
During the development of this initiative, Schwartz could not help but reflect on the reality that teaching methods in higher education can be stubbornly durable – some haven’t changed in decades, he noted. “My big fear with AI and education is that it’s just going to automate bad ways of teaching,” said Schwartz, who is also the I. James Quillen Dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) and the Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Educational Technology at the GSE.
He wants applicants for these grants to think seriously about whether new technology can lead to fresh forms of instruction, not just faster versions of old ones.
“With this initiative, Stanford is leaning into an area of incredible possibility and peril,” said Schwartz. “It’s an existential moment for students, for faculty, for everybody, and we need them all involved. We’re going to approach it in a very uniquely Stanford way.”
The three streams of funding for the grants are:
1. Course and Curriculum Grants: Up to $100,000 for faculty and lecturers, with student collaboration, to develop and revise courses that meaningfully address AI, whether or not students use AI directly.
- These proposals could include: Convening groups of students and instructors for discussions, facilitating experiential learning, building shared approaches, tools, or materials, and redesigning assignments, assessments, or a full course. These grants could be used to address part of a course, whole courses, or multiple related courses.
2. Innovation with Evidence Grants: Up to $50,000 for faculty, lecturers, and students to develop and test new approaches to AI in teaching and learning.
- Proposals may address any higher education teaching and learning context at Stanford and do not need to span an entire course. For example, they may focus on a curricular unit, an activity, an assignment, an assessment, or curated experiential learning. These grants will include the collection of data relevant to student learning.
3. Thought Leadership Grants and Awards: Commissions and prizes up to $3,000 for faculty, staff, lecturers, and students for works on critical issues in AI and education.
- The first track of the Thought Leadership awards, led by the Accelerator, welcomes proposals for thought pieces that address the potential impacts of Generative AI on the development of critical thinking and creativity. Projects can be intellectual products of any form, ranging from writing to art to software.
- The second track, which will open in fall, is led by VPUE and will consider any topic at the intersection of AI and education across multiple formats, including op-eds, essays, policy briefs, visual or performance art, videos, empirical data, and more.
AI in education affects everyone. That’s why these grants are open to a wide pool of applicants, with the Thought Leadership grants and awards available to all members of the Stanford community.
“This should be a whole-of-Stanford approach,” said Michele Elam, who is the senior associate vice provost for undergraduate education and the William Robertson Coe Professor in the Humanities in the English Department in H&S, and senior fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). “We want to engage the wider Stanford community, beyond ‘experts,’ to include students, instructors, and staff who bring their own insights, knowledge and experience to the table, who have something to share, and would welcome a public forum to do so.”
Together, the three grant streams aim to amplify strengths that are found in AIMES, CTL, the Accelerator, and many groups around Stanford: thinking deeply about the best way to teach, developing rigorous evidence for important action, and sharing unique expertise and perspectives to inspire positive change and future work. Grantees will have access to CTL’s expertise and experience in Stanford course and curriculum design, the Accelerator Studio’s advanced technology and research expertise, and insights on applying findings in teaching and learning to projects from both groups.
Isabelle Hau, executive director of the Accelerator, describes the seed grants as “catalytic” – small and flexible enough to encourage risk-taking. “We are at an inflection point: AI is reshaping how students learn, how knowledge is accessed, and what skills matter,” said Hau. “Investing now ensures we shape that transformation intentionally, so AI deepens learning and well-being and supports human development rather than short-circuiting it.”
Intention and a human-centered focus are crucial in this effort. The organizers aren’t naive about the risks of AI in education, such as creating harmful shortcuts in learning and disconnecting students from intellectual rigor and critical thinking. (That’s why a theme of the first thought leadership track is “critical thinking.”) But they’re also betting that designing courses around AI can produce stronger thinkers.
“I’m imagining two years from now, when Stanford students are better critical thinkers because of the way instruction and assignments changed from the evidence and the implementation of what we learned from this effort,” said Hamilton. “That’s what’s really exciting.”
This story was originally published in Stanford Report.
