This episode of the Getting Smart Podcast is a part of our New Pathways campaign. In partnership with American Student Assistance (ASA), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Stand Together and the Walton Family Foundation, the New Pathways campaign will question education’s status quo and propose new methods of giving students a chance to experience success in what’s next. 

On this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast Tom Vander Ark is joined by Dr. Amanda Stent, director of the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and Dr Taniya Mishra, founder and CEO of SureStart. Administered by Colby’s Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the Halloran Lab for Entrepreneurship, the summer-long SureStart curriculum at Colby evolved from a longtime friendship between the two guests. 

The Davis Institute for AI  facilitates interdisciplinary, human-centered scholarship using rich datasets with real-world consequences and prepares students for a future where AI is transforming industries, careers, and modes of discovery, creativity, and scholarship. 

A new generation of ethical AI designers spent eight weeks at Colby this summer for a start-up boot camp called SureStart. In addition to nine rising sophomores from Colby, the program attracted four students from partner school Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the nation’s first degree-granting historically black college or university. The program aimed to teach students with an interest in AI skills to develop a well-researched and market-ready product that solves a real-world problem with a convenient and cost-effective solution. Students also had the opportunity to work with SureStart mentors including partners from organizations such as Alethea, Lockheed Martin, and Bloomberg Second Measure.

This episode highlights the programs and connections that got this initiative started. 

Links: 

• Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence

• Sure Start: Getting Ahead on AI

• Halloran Lab

• Colby College Centers AI With Summer Program, Curricular Integration

• 22/23 Davis Institute Annual Report

• SureStart

• KEEN Network

• Fast.AI

• Playlab.ai

• AI4All

• Reinvention Lab from Teach for America

• Teach AI Toolkit