The Institutional Readiness for AI panel on stage at “Better Together: California Convening on AI in Higher Education.” From left to right, Don Daves-Rougeaux, Senior Advisor to the California Community Colleges Chancellor on Workforce Development and Generative AI; Sean Hauze, Chief Operating Officer, San Diego State University; Ilkay Altintas, Chief Data Scientist, San Diego Supercomputer Center and UC San Diego; Michelle Fischthal, Vice Chancellor for Institutional Innovation and Effectiveness, San Diego Community College District; and moderator Emily Magruder, Director of Innovative Teaching and Future Faculty Development, CSU Chancellor’s Office. Photo by Pearce, UCSD Multimedia Services

On February 6, education leaders from across the state gathered for Better Together: California Convening on AI in Higher Education, hosted by the California Education Learning Lab (Learning Lab) and the University of California (UC) San Diego, in partnership with an intersegmental planning committee also representing California State University (CSU) San Diego and the San Diego Community College District.

The gathering brought together faculty, staff, and administrators from California community colleges, CSUs, and UCs to explore the evolving role of AI in teaching and learning, emphasizing the power of cross-segment collaboration and elevating student voices throughout the day. 

Giselle Cortez-Tlaxcuapan, an applied math student at CSU Fullerton, spoke on the Ethics and Responsibility in AI plenary panel about how AI can make higher education more equitable and accessible. As a Hispanic woman, she shared that she sees few students like herself in her advanced math classes and being able to ask questions of generative AI and leverage it for notes gives her confidence in feeling prepared to speak in classes or follow up with professors in ways she hadn’t before. While acknowledging the importance of academic integrity, she emphatically told the audience of faculty and administrators that students need support, not blanket bans in this new AI landscape. 

“I don’t think the answer to handling AI is purity and abstinence. I think it’s just: teach them how to do it.” — Giselle Cortez-Tlaxcuapan, Applied Math Student, CSU Fullerton

In another session, a collaborative project between UC San Diego, San Diego Community College District, and industry partner Vocareum demonstrated how an AI-assisted math tutor integrated into classes can support math remediation. Additionally, a partnership between Sac State, Folsom Lake College, and UC Davis showed how AI tools can provide students with the necessary guidance and metacognitive support to succeed in complex, open-ended, project-based engineering tasks. These represent a few of the pioneering AI initiatives and tools shared by Learning Lab grantees and other faculty and administrators at the convening.

Programming committee member Elisa Sobo, whose work on the Learning Lab-funded Equitable Alliance project models regional, intersegmental collaboration to improve AI access, celebrated the significance of this moment.

“For me, the fact that high-level leaders from each of the three segments of California’s higher education system not only attended but actively participated confirmed the radically innovative nature of our efforts to break down intersegmental silos through the Better Together convening.” —  Elisa Sobo, Director for Undergraduate Research in the College of Arts and Letters, UCSD

The California Education Learning Lab is a state-funded, grantmaking program, housed in the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation and administered in partnership with FoundationCCC. Learning Lab’s mission is to improve learning and close equity gaps for students attending the California Community Colleges, and California State University and University of California campuses through strategic grantmaking that incentivizes teaching and learning innovation and streamlines pathways, in addition to convening higher ed partners. 

Visit the AI Initiative webpage for more information about Learning Lab’s AI in higher education activities.