“ It’s time for academia to change with the world and embrace
interdisciplinary fields around new technologies. This new
approach means that we will need to break down silos and
academic structures that have existed for years.”
—Yiannis Papelis, VMASC at Old Dominion University
an Individualized Integrated Interdisciplinary
Studies program.
“It’s time for academia to change with the
world and embrace interdisciplinary fields
around new technologies,” Papelis says.
This shift towards interdisciplinary education,
however, is not without its challenges.
The biggest problem, according to Papelis, is
that the new courses don’t fit into the traditional
academic paradigm.
“This new approach means that we will
need to break down silos and academic structures
that have existed for years,” he says.
While the shift won’t be easy, he reiterates
that “problems in life don’t come in neat packages
with specific outlines.” Just as students
will face multidisciplinary obstacles in the real
world, academia must also adopt a multifaceted
approach to AI education.
BUILDING A BRIDGE
MIT seems to be doing exactly that kind of
innovating with its new College of Computing.
Case in point: the way it’s hiring for tenure
positions. The school will offer 50 new faculty
positions, half of which will be bridge positions—dual
appointments between the new
college and academic departments located in
any one of MIT’s five schools.
The goal is not to drop the specializations
that the university worked so hard to create—
it is simply about accepting that everyone
needs to study technologies like AI, no matter
what their field of study or their future job
aspiration. The formula to prepare the next
generation for an AI-driven world, he explains,
is not to change the entire curriculum but to
“fold AI it into existing courses.”
On the whole, for the students who don’t
go on to become AI experts in the traditional
sense, “they might not build deep learning
models to recognize patterns, but they will be
aware of what AI is, what it can do, and how to
bring AI tools to their field,” Papelis says.
These multidisciplinary academic structures
around AI, Papelis points out, will be key to
positioning AI as “an integral part of basic
technology literacy, no matter what field of
study you choose.” ■
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