2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Given the rapidly evolving landscape of generative AI in STEM education, this Work-in-Progress paper describes an active 3-year NSF-funded initiative at a private university in Massachusetts that addresses the critical need and growing demand of K-12 teachers and administrators to integrate technological knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and content knowledge of generative AI, or the GenAI-TPCK framework, to enhance teaching and learning in high school STEM classrooms. The program provides participants with the opportunity to engage in an immersive professional development (PD) experience focusing on generative AI for one summer week, followed by continued engagement over the course of the following academic year, to build their efficacy in AI-informed teaching and their students’ AI-powered learning. The paper first outlines the program’s six objective components: 1) AI foundations, 2) generative AI tool proficiency, 3) AI-informed lesson plan development, 4) AI-powered classroom implementation and assessment, 5) professional development (PD) model evaluation and scaling, and 6) professional learning community (PLC) leadership. Participants included 12 public high school science and engineering teachers from 7 different school districts. This first cohort formed a community of practice to support and sustain their efforts. Program evaluation was designed to provide insights for the leadership team to inform future components of the upcoming year-long program, as well as to gather participant feedback to help improve next year’s summer AI institute. Teachers shared that the summer PD experience shifted their mindsets from being initially skeptical of using AI to overwhelmingly integrating AI into their classrooms. Some also shared in their AI Action Plans that they intended to take on leadership roles in their schools and districts by training colleagues and informing district policies on AI task forces, evidence of which was captured in follow up meetings and conferences. Overall, participants agreed that the summer AI PD experience was highly positive and that they felt significantly more confident and prepared to incorporate AI into their teaching. As the program is still ongoing, future work will focus on providing support and peer networking to teachers for the remainder of the 2025 – 2026 academic year and preparing the program to incorporate the next cohort beginning in summer 2026, leveraging the teachers’ leadership experiences as their PLC grows.