How AI Is Creating Faster Pathways Into High-Demand Careers

Wesley Smith (03:02.072) Henry, thanks so much for joining the President’s Forum podcast today.

Henry Griffith (03:20.082) Thank you for having me, Wesley. I really appreciate it.

Wesley Smith (03:23.054) We will get right into the AI topics. So when we talk at the President’s Forum, we talk about everything in the measurement of student success. Innovation is only innovation if it leads to student success. So with that background, where are you seeing AI make a real difference for students?

Henry Griffith (03:45.936) I think a lot of my experience regarding that question comes from the current role that I sit in as Dean for Academic Success at Northwest Vista College. Although a lot of the conversation at the national scale at the moment seems to be centered around the disruptions in a negative fashion that AI is having on the job market, we’ve been very fortunate here at Northwest Vista College and more broadly across the Alamo College.

in order to really be able to see some concrete examples where AI has lowered barrier to entry for a lot of STEM-oriented occupations. So just to give a little bit of background, I know we’re going to talk about this a little bit later, but we’ve been integrating AI within our STEM courses and STEM sequences for about three to four years from now. And one of the best initial examples that I can give you from that is the introduction of an intro to AI module within our introduction to engineering course. And I think back when we originally integrated that in 2000,

2024, I should say, using material in partnership with Amazon Web Services, Machine Learning University. We had a student that semester that was transitioning. She already had a bachelor’s degree in art history, and she was intending to take the introductory course just to get a little bit of a flavor of what an engineering career may look like. And she reached out to me at the beginning and she said, I just want to see if this is for me. I realize I’ll probably have to take a lot of courses before I could actually get any tangible benefit from pursuing this pathway.

But fortunately, after completing that course, particularly referencing the skill set that she gained in data science and artificial intelligence at the time, she was actually able to transition into an internship at a local battery manufacturer. Clarios is the name of that company, with only a semester of courses. And not surprisingly, the thing that they were most interested in with respect to her background were those kind of AI awareness and competencies that she developed as part of that introductory course.

Wesley Smith (05:34.946) Yeah, I can imagine that that would be really important to most employers today. Are you finding that that introductory course is like pretty applicable to almost anybody in higher ed right now?

Henry Griffith (05:45.318) Definitely, and I think it’s kind of driven the broader AI strategy that we’ve had across the Alamo colleges. A lot of the success stories that we had integrating kind of introductory AI modules within our STEM sequences were instrumental in the development of our dedicated associates of applied science degree in data science and artificial intelligence. And then more recently within the past year, the broader work that we’ve been doing across the district to try to ensure that all graduates from any Alamo college, regardless of their pathway,

have the capability to demonstrate kind of fundamental AI competencies.

Wesley Smith (06:18.018) Right, right, right. It makes sense. mean, at a near point in the future, I think every graduate for every credential and every degree is going to have to have baseline skills within the AI domain. I mean, it’s just becoming so much part of our life that we’re going to have to get there. you mentioned some of your programs.

like data science and AI, and you’re doing some stackable micro-credentials as well that include some of this training. Tell us about these pathways, but specifically, I’m interested in how these pathways serve students, especially working learners.

Henry Griffith (07:01.554) Yeah, so with respect to the pathway that we have, the Associates of Applied Science and Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, we actually started the design work on that in about 2023, at about the same time that I mentioned the integration of that module within the Introduction to Engineering course. And when we did that, the thing that excited us the most is we realized that a lot of jobs were coming in line that required those AI competencies, only a fraction of what we see now, as you mentioned. But we realized that in order for those to be

Wesley Smith (07:18.808) Okay?

Henry Griffith (07:31.47) accessible to most students, the only educational pathway that they at least had within the South Texas or San Antonio market involved going into a degree sequence that involved having to complete a three-course sequence in calculus and maybe some additional mathematics even beyond that. And that was problematic for several reasons, the primary of which, as you mentioned, is if you’re an adult learner, do you really have that much time to kind of devote to upskilling or career transitioning?

Wesley Smith (07:46.883) Uh-huh.

Henry Griffith (07:57.682) or something like that. So when we designed the new pathway in artificial intelligence, the first thing that you mentioned, the kind of what we call an in-ramp micro-credential in partnership with a micro-credential that Google offers, is really what we feel a novel pathway and model that we want to move to for all of our workforce programs. And the idea behind that is, if you think back to when maybe a traditional student applies for college, they send in an application and it’s a multiple month waiting period and they get a letter in the mail and then

they enroll in classes and maybe six months later from that point of where they express interest to the point that they’re enrolling in their first course and they’re getting some of that content.

So we know that we compete in a market where a lot of the content that we offer is really a commodity with respect to different platforms that are available on the internet and things of that nature. So what we’re doing with the Grow with Google program is using Google’s micro-credential introduction to AI as an in-ramp indoor program where when a student actually completes their application for the degree, that next day they get an invitation to join the Coursera course. So they start making progress on day one. So really shortening that latency, I think that’s incredibly

important for an adult learner. They don’t have time to waste and this gives them the ability to start making progress on their degree immediately.

Another thing that we’re really excited about is the way that the degree is structured with integrated occupational skill awards and workforce certificates is as students progress throughout the program, their value in the market is continuously enhancing. They don’t have to wait to complete the entire degree. We’ve seen a lot of evidence of that so far, largely in the door at this point, but after completing the first course in the sequence, we get emails from many of our students, about a quarter of whom already have a bachelor’s degree or a master’s degree,

Henry Griffith (09:44.72) in another discipline, just really reflecting on how those foundational AI competencies that they built as part of that course have provided them value in their job already. And we’re serving amazing adult learners, some are working for the city of San Antonio, and they’re not only from the San Antonio market, but across the state and even a few across the country.

Wesley Smith (10:03.288) That makes so much sense to me that the credentials within the credential, the mile markers within the larger credential add value to an individual in the workforce before you actually finish everything. can imagine that especially in AI where there aren’t a tremendous amount of

of established pathways, especially past an associate’s degree. mean, I think it’s very rare at an institution that there are bachelor’s degrees and then beyond in AI specific training. But I would imagine that this is one of the first opportunities that employers have to see an actual credential for AI at any level is coming out of your program. Is that your experience?

Henry Griffith (10:58.642) I think that’s incredibly accurate. The majority of this work kind of developing dedicated pathways in workforce artificial intelligence really started around the 2022 timeframe. And a lot of that, what was wonderful, it was really driven by industry partners. Intel had a dedicated program to advance that, AWS as well as we spoke of earlier. And a bunch of programs were kind of spun out under that additional model, Miami Dade College, Houston Community College, all of those were just incredible motivations for us to stand up our pathway.

I think we had an excellent advantage at Alamore colleges in the sense that we entered the market about a year and a half later. So we kind of aligned directly with the rollout of generative AI. So when we look at our pathway, we do think that we call it a DS AI 2.0. We think that just based upon our timing that we were able to capture and integrate a lot of the advancements in generative AI, agentic AI, and so on, it really give us a unique value proposition to the employer market.

Wesley Smith (11:58.178) Yeah, that makes sense to me. Well, a big reason that we’re talking to our institutions about AI and how it’s making a difference in the lives of students is this March meeting we had in Washington, DC, where we took the presidents to visit with Hill, members of the Senate and members of the House. So Congress talking about

hey, what does the policy for higher ed look like? And what are the ways that we can collaborate with you? And what we received from those meetings was significant interest in what are our institutions doing in AI and how is it impacting students? So one of the questions that I want to ask you, and I want to conclude with this, if you had five minutes to talk to a group of

of bipartisan Hill staffers that are engaged in education issues that are driving a lot of the work behind the scenes. What would you want them to understand about responsible AI and higher ed? What would you want them to know about safeguards and other policies that would help your institution and other institutions scale these kind of benefits without creating new risk?

Henry Griffith (13:18.0) Yeah, I think that’s an excellent question.

If I had five minutes, I’d probably take three to four minutes and just highlight all the incredible work that students, faculty, and stakeholders more broadly are doing in higher education at the moment to really drive value out of artificial intelligence. So we spoke a lot about our dedicated kind of pathways on the STEM side of things, but I’m just continuously amazed. I really want to thank Dr. Mike Flores, who’s the chancellor of Alamo College’s district, for the work that he’s doing to really scale artificial intelligence competencies across all five colleges and across

across all five pathways. Really a wonderful byproduct of getting to serve on that committee is just seeing all the incredible things that faculty and administrators are doing. Just to highlight one specific example here at Northwest Vista College, for quite a while we’ve been a Microsoft data center and academy and trying to build ideal workforce pipelines to the emerging data center workforce here in South Texas. And we have recently partnered with a tool that is known as Goldie. It is a conversational AI agent that’s built on top of

And what that has given us the capability to do is to really scale kind an onboarding experience for Microsoft that directly aligns with the competencies that they’re looking for.

So I think immediately you’re starting to see just all these different ways that AI is kind of impacting the entire learning experience. If I did have some time with staffers on the Hill, I’d like to just thank them for all the work that they’ve done recently in order to really modify the kind of funding streams in higher education to focus more on community colleges, particularly all the work in workforce Pell has just been amazing in unlocking opportunities when we stand up rapidly, these kind of upscaling pathways and advanced technology like AI, that’s really enabling learning.

Henry Griffith (15:00.24) to have affordable access to those programs. I think that if I could suggest anything in addition, as we’re starting to build out our own unique policies at the college level, we’re looking at benchmarks and kind of exemplars at universities across the state level. It’s always easier to build on policies that are established at the federal level. So just any kind of guidance, I think our students and faculty, they’ve been incredibly innovative with respect to their applications of AI, but like anyone, they’re a little bit concerned about the

potential disruptions on the job market, about what the implications may be on privacy as well. So just any kind of establishment of recognizing the tremendous potential of this technology and kind of developing firm guidelines for education at the national level that we can build on as we work to kind of establish our unique institutional policies.

Wesley Smith (15:51.394) Yeah, there’s no question that this is a high priority for members of Congress right now, figuring out how AI impacts society generally. And a lot of good thinkers are thinking about how can we use AI to personalize education, to be able to enable students to move at their own pace, be able to just essentially fuel innovation that can have a tremendous impact.

amount of disruption, but good disruption in our current system to lead individuals to opportunity. So I can see that they’re working on that. We really appreciate your thinking on this. And we hope that this series and this conversation can help members of Congress and their staff wrap their arms around this in a way that they can provide value for the institutions that are looking.

to responsibly develop AI.

Thanks for joining us today, Henry. We appreciate your time and we’ll be in touch with more on this. Would love to check back in with you at a later date, but as for right now, we appreciate your input.

Henry Griffith (17:05.744) Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for the opportunity, and I look forward to seeing all the wonderful innovations that come out of this work.