The AI4OPT Faculty Training Program (FTP) provides faculty members from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and minority-serving institutions (MSIs), in the US, with courses in artificial intelligence (AI), data science, and course design to establish a minor or major data science program at their institutions. An ambitious undergraduate education initiative led by Charles Pierre, an associate professor in mathematics in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Clark Atlanta University (CAU).

The primary objective of the FTP is to equip faculty members at HBCUs and MSIs with the necessary skills to design, execute, and teach undergraduate courses in data science, AI, and optimization, enabling their students to pursue careers in AI. The overarching principle is to train educators to establish a scalable and reproducible program. A visual representation of the FTP's fundamental approach is presented in Figure 1.

The FTP is structured into cohorts and cycles that span three academic years. During the initial two years, participants in the cohort will enroll in courses tailored to STEM professors with a mathematics background but no prior exposure to AI, developed by AI4OPT. Following two years of coursework, participants will have acquired sufficient AI knowledge to join regular courses offered at AI4OPT institutions, such as the University of Southern California, UC Berkeley, and Georgia Tech.

To learn more about the accomplishments of the first cohort or to submit an application for the upcoming cohort, please refer to the links provided below.