IBL News | New York
The George Washington University launched its GW Engineering AI Academy in November to equip faculty to lead change through AI fluency and an entrepreneurial mindset.
This strategic initiative aims to position the GW’s School of Engineering and Applied Science as an AI-forward institution, taking a leadership position.
“We’re building AI literacy across our school, moving from uncertainty to confidence, from tools to workflows, and from passive adoption to intentional innovation,” said Professor Lorena Barba, GW Engineering AI Academy Director.
“The entrepreneurial mindset aids in challenging the status quo, recognizing opportunities at the intersection of disparate concepts, and solving complex problems to drive meaningful societal impact and human flourishing. Our vision is: AI Literacy as the Foundation for Transformation.”
The integration of AI literacy with the Entrepreneurial Mindset is a framework championed by the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), of which GW is a partner. This framework follows “a set of attitudes, habits, and behaviors conducive to problem-solving, innovation, and value creation, especially in engineering contexts.”
“The result of this initiative is engineering education that prepares students not just to use AI, but to shape how AI serves humanity,” explained Lorena Barba.
For the inaugural session with the first faculty cohort, the GW Engineering AI Academy focused on AI Workflows, exploring how to move from being an AI “operator” to an AI “manager, orchestrating a team of digital specialists.
The second session focused on context management by curating and maintaining an optimal information bank available in everyone’s AI assistant.
