Dell Technologies Realize magazine Issue 2 | Page 15

“ 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.” ■ How will AI impact human creativity? Subscribe to the AI: Hype vs. Reality podcast to find out. DellTechnologies.com/HvR 13