Dear colleagues,
As we begin the 2025–26 academic year, we are writing to share an update on a topic of transformative importance for higher education and for Rice: artificial intelligence and its impact on our teaching and learning. The rapid evolution of AI presents extraordinary opportunities to enhance our teaching, accelerate our research and enrich the educational experience for our students as outlined in Momentous, Rice’s 10-year strategic plan. While we know that AI is no substitute for critical thinking and learning, we believe it is a tool that, when used responsibly, can accelerate and extend them. By teaching our students the best ways to use AI now, we are preparing them to be responsible, engaged citizens and to thrive in their education and careers in the future. We have been working collaboratively across the university to develop a strategic and supportive framework for engaging with these powerful new technologies in teaching, learning and operations.
Below you’ll find a guide to new resources, programs and tools that will be available to you this fall. These initiatives are designed to empower you to explore, innovate and lead in this new landscape.
Teaching Development Grants: To assist you in incorporating AI in responsible ways into your classes to prepare our students, we have designed a number of opportunities, which come with support from Digital Learning. Please follow this link to learn more or apply for any of the opportunities listed below.:
- Accelerating Responsible AI and Education: Four New Funding and Collaboration Opportunities for Rice faculty
School-Based AI and Teaching Faculty Learning Communities: A Faculty Learning Community is a small group of faculty who meet regularly throughout the semester to explore a common interest. We are inviting faculty groups to propose and lead their own communities to tackle an AI-related challenge or theme that is most relevant to their specific school or discipline.
AI Exploration Grants: This program provides seed funding for faculty to conduct small-scale experiments with AI in their teaching. You can either propose your own project to test a new tool or assignment, or you can apply to join a structured pilot of OpenStax Assignable, a new AI-powered learning platform developed here at Rice
AI Course Development Grants: This initiative supports the creation of new undergraduate or graduate courses that significantly integrate AI into the curriculum for Rice students. The goal is to build out Rice’s core, cross-disciplinary course offerings that explore AI’s technical, ethical and societal dimensions.
Public-Facing Responsible AI Courses: This program is for faculty or departments interested in sharing their AI expertise with a global audience. We are seeking ideas for developing non-credit courses for external platforms like Coursera or for professional audiences through the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies or other venues. - A search is underway for Rice’s first assistant director for AI and Education, an exciting new position partially funded through the Whitten Faculty Innovation and AI Literacy Fund. This role will co-design and manage innovation pilots, help build a campuswide culture of experimentation around AI-powered pedagogy, and serve as the lead communicator for these critical initiatives.
The Rice AI Hub, presented by the AI Advisory Committee: This website will serve as the primary source for university strategy, policies and a curated list of resources, including all trainings, call for AI teaching grants and other resources. (This web page is meant to provide internal resources and will not present the research and innovation being done by our faculty and institutes.)
Expanded Access to AI Tools: To ensure our community has equitable access to AI tools and the support they need to use them:
All faculty, staff and students recently received access to a suite of powerful generative AI tools through our institutional partnership with Google. This includes Google Gemini and NotebookLM. We believe that providing broad, equitable access is the first step toward fostering responsible and innovative use.
- Save the Date | AI at Rice: Gemini for Education Campus Tour: Mark your calendars for a special event Wednesday, Sept. 10. This daylong event, hosted by Google, will feature hands-on training for students and faculty, product demos and discussions, and an opportunity to engage with the Google Education team about applications of tools like Gemini and NotebookLM. Visit the event website to register and learn more.
Comprehensive Training and Development: To assist faculty and staff at Rice in learning how to use many AI tools responsibly and effectively, a wide range of training opportunities will be available through the Office of Information Technology and our Transformational Technologies and Innovation and Digital Learning teams. These include:
- A Self-Paced Faculty Course: A new, Rice-developed online course, Teaching with AI at Rice: from Curiosity to Confidence, is available that explores AI’s current capabilities, its impact on students and how to integrate AI tools into teaching. All current Rice faculty and instructors will receive an optional invite to access the course via Canvas Friday, Aug. 29. Staff are also welcome to sign up and explore the course at the link provided.
- Hands-On Workshops: A series of workshops will be offered throughout the semester for faculty, staff and students on various AI topics and platforms. Recorded and live options will be available.
- AI Teaching and Learning Week: Hosted by the Rice Teaching and Learning Technologies team, this dedicated week will feature workshops and sessions focused on practical applications of AI in pedagogy. Sign up to present, join or host a panel by following this link.
New Academic Frontiers: Our commitment to AI is also reflected in our core academic and research mission.
- A new Bachelor of Science in AI: The launch of this undergraduate degree program positions Rice as a leader in educating the next generation of responsible AI pioneers.
- OpenStax AI tutoring pilot: The Office of Academic Support for Undergraduate Students and OpenStax are partnering to investigate how AI can enhance peer tutoring. As part of this collaboration, students enrolled in professor Richard Baraniuk’s ELEC631 course will work together to design and build AI tools specifically tailored to address particular challenges in tutoring.
Research Computing: To power the next wave of discovery, Rice has invested in a new computational resource designed to accelerate AI research and data-driven projects.
- Supported by the Center for Research Computing, the Rice AI Networked GPU Engine, or RANGE, system provides advanced NVIDIA GPUs with large-memory nodes and specialized networking to support the analysis of massive datasets. RANGE will enable researchers to tackle pioneering projects in fields as diverse as computational biology, solar astrophysics, climate modeling, materials science and generative AI. As an institutional shared resource, researchers will be able to submit proposals for access starting in November. Look for more details in the September issue of the Office of Information Technology’s Elevate IT newsletter.
We know that there are likely many other AI-related events, opportunities and projects happening across Rice to address the needs of faculty, students and staff. Please contact us to share your initiatives and help us grow the new AI Hub website. These initiatives represent the early stages of a coordinated, universitywide effort to thoughtfully and strategically engage with artificial intelligence. We are confident that by working together, we can harness the potential of AI to advance our mission of unparalleled teaching, research and service.
We encourage you to explore these new resources and look forward to a semester of innovation and discovery.
Sincerely,
Amy Dittmar, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs
Shawn Miller, associate provost for digital learning and strategy