2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The rapid advancement and widespread availability of AI technologies have marked a pivotal moment in higher education, necessitating a swift and comprehensive transformation in teaching and learning approaches. Institutions are compelled to adapt to this paradigm shift to prepare students for an AI-driven workforce. However, integrating AI into higher education presents multifaceted challenges, including the lack of clear guidelines for incorporating AI into curricula, the necessity for governance oversight, ethical concerns surrounding AI, faculty preparedness, and the imperative to equip students with relevant skills.
To address these challenges, the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) launched the rAIder Strategy in Fall 2024, a comprehensive framework designed to integrate applied AI throughout its educational programs, campus-wide academic productivity, research, industry, and community engagements. Building on MSOE’s long-standing tradition of applied education and industry engagement, and drawing on research and benchmark analysis of AI adoption from over 30 universities, the rAIder Strategy employes a structured, phased approach intended to balance immediate applied AI adoption with long-term strategic goals. While the strategy is in its initial stages, early implementation efforts are underway and already offering valuable insights.
To ensure all MSOE students get a baseline understanding of AI, the rAIder Strategy includes the integration of foundational AI concepts into the core curriculum across disciplines and opportunities to pursue AI education in academic degree programs, minors and certificates. Furthermore, the rAIder Strategy involves the launch of short-term professional development programs through workshops and training sessions to enhance faculty preparedness. These efforts are not only aimed at increasing faculty proficiency with applied AI tools but also at empowering faculty to integrate AI in their teaching and improve their productivity. The increasing faculty participation in these early sessions suggest a growing interest and heightened recognition of the importance of AI literacy.
Recognizing the necessity for governance oversight and ethical considerations, MSOE has established a new role of Applied AI Director and will be forming an institutional, multi-departmental steering committee to oversee the rAIder Strategy. MSOE has initiated the creation of comprehensive guidelines and policies for the ethical adaptation of AI within the educational process. There are plans to integrate AI ethics into coursework across curricula to engage students in the responsible use of AI technologies. While the rAIder Strategy is still in its nascent stages, early observations suggest positive outcomes. Preliminary results of the rAIder Strategy implementation also highlight the crucial need to maintain an ongoing dialogue between academia and industry to ensure AI applications align with changing professional standards and core job-readiness skills. Future objectives of the rAIder Strategy include expanding interdisciplinary applied AI academic programs, refining the governance structure, integrating AI literacy skills across curricula, increasing engagement with the educational community to share best practices and insights, and developing and implementing tools to assess the impact of applied AI.
Furthermore, these early findings suggest that the rAIder Strategy is laying down a sustainable framework for integrating applied AI within higher education. Through this innovative approach, MSOE is building a foundation for long-term AI literacy, responsible governance, robust research, industry partnerships, and community involvement, ensuring that both students and faculty are well-prepared for the future careers in the AI-driven domains.