Joining a Chronicle of Higher Education panel discussion on the necessity of higher education to prepare students for an AI-inclusive workplace, Dr. Jessica Stansbury, director of the Center for AI Learning and Community-Engaged Innovation at The University of Baltimore, said there is a link between AI literacy and career readiness.
UBalt's mission "is career readiness ... to make sure that our students are prepared for the workforce," Stansbury said. "As fast as the technology continues to grow, it's really important that we look at it from different avenues."
The online forum, hosted by the Chronicle on March 16 and available as a free playback, included Stansbury and two other noted experts on education, industry and artificial intelligence, as well as two journalists who cover the field.
UBalt is on the leading edge of a growing national conversation about AI's efficacy as a tool for learning, productivity, efficiency, and more, Stansbury says.
"We think of AI as more of a partner," she told the panel. "So, how do we augment our humanness, our human processes, or elevate our humanness in working with AI? The reality is, we work very closely with industry; we've brought in a lot of industry through different types of events to help our faculty and our students really understand what's happening in the workforce, [to] develop the curriculum, embed in the curriculum, create programs that are really meaningful to the students."
None of the cascading innovations of AI will make a difference to students as they prepare to enter the workforce, she says, if they don't have access to the tools in a safe environment.
With that in mind, she said, UBalt partnered with Boodlebox in 2025 to increase students' familiarity with many of the best generative AI platforms now available.
"When we're talking about teaching literacy and fluency, rather than just focusing in on, 'Oh, we need to know how to work with ChatGPT,' or 'We need to know how to work with Claude,' we actually provide them access to all of those engines, so we learn the what, the why, the how, the when of generative AI."
Learn more about The University of Baltimore's Center for AI Learning and Community-Engaged Innovation.