OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma higher education officials allocated $3.4 million in grants to seven colleges and universities to fund artificial intelligence innovation.
The grants provide “seed money” to implement artificial intelligence technology across Oklahoma higher education institutions. The funding for the Innovations with AI Program comes from the State Regents’ System Innovation Fund, which is appropriated dollars.
The program aligns with the long-term goals of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, according to a meeting agenda. The State Regents received 20 proposals from higher education institutions.
“Providing these ‘seed money’ grants for comprehensive AI-driven projects represents a bold step to position state system colleges and universities to maximize the impact and sustainability of AI applications in higher education,” said Courtney Warmington, chair of the State Regents. “By investing in technology innovations today, we are preparing our campuses and the students they serve for new workplace frontiers tomorrow.”
Southeastern Oklahoma State University is the recipient of nearly half a million dollars and representatives for the school spoke to the Regents at a meeting Thursday about their proposal.
“This fund will be a game changer for Southeastern,” said Eric Kennedy, a professor at the university. “These types of dollars for an institution like us don’t come along every day.”
The funds approved for the school will fund the creation of an AI tool for a “learning management system” to evaluate online classes and professors as well as physical AI workstations and tools available to students, he said.
“The whole goal of this is to make our students better agents for their employers when they get out of Southeastern and they enter the workforce,” Kennedy said.
The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, University of Central Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and Rose State College each received a $500,000 grant.
Murray State College and Oklahoma State University each received grants just under $500,000.
Other proposals include projects “AI agents” for admissions support and student guidance, integrating “realtime” market analytics into curriculum, training secure artificial intelligence models with patient data for “clinical research and professional training,” and to use the technology to automate “low-level tasks.” One proposal would use AI to extract, validate and transfer information from documents like transcripts, applications and other forms.
Nick Hathaway, vice chancellor for budget and finance, said the program has encouraged institutions to innovate with AI to “enhance the student experience” and monitor online instruction.
“What we received through these proposals, as I’ve heard the chancellor say, is evidence that Oklahoma’s colleges and universities are leading the way in deploying artificial intelligence to achieve efficiencies and answering the call to educate our state workforce about artificial intelligence,” he said.
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