AWS Introduces a New Artificial Intelligence Program for HBCUs, Community Colleges, and Minority-serving Institutions

AWS announced last week it has launched a free online program to help teach database, synthetic intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) concepts to students at minority-serving institutions (MSIs), community colleges, and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs)
AWS Introduces a New Artificial Intelligence Program for HBCUs, Community Colleges, and Minority-serving Institutions
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AWS announced last week it has launched a free online program to help teach database, synthetic intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) concepts to students at minority-serving institutions (MSIs), community colleges, and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). With this program, educational institutions will be provided with an educator-enablement boot camp and a comprehensive curriculum to help them get course content and improve their teaching capacity to deliver courses on new technologies.

The educator enablement boot camp and curriculum are expressly designed to address opportunity gaps in engineering and various technology by supporting historically underserved and underrepresented students in these disciplines. For the educator-enablement component of the program, priority consideration is given to community colleges, MSIs, and HBCUs. Educator-enablement boot camps will begin in January 2023, and curriculum materials will be available in the spring.

AWS Machine Learning University was sparked by a letter from Houston Community College (HCC) professor Dr. Raymond Brown. Brown had previously adapted early versions of Machine Learning University's videos, labs, and notebooks to introduce his students to AI and machine learning.

"After that, HCC also received direct input from a cross-section of AI technology industry leaders, which, together with AWS's Machine Learning University, contributed to HCC having built the best community college AI associate degree program in the country," said Brown. "We are proud and thankful to AWS and their continued support of the program curriculum development, faculty, and students."

As a result of Brown's dedication to his students, AWS developed and built a turnkey teaching solution specifically designed for educational institutions. This solution includes a comprehensive new curriculum and resources developed specifically to help educational institutions increase their teaching capacity. To introduce educators to the curriculum, this program offers a virtual bootcamp that combines live lectures and hands-on projects. AWS will offer six educator-enablement cohorts in 2023. AWS will provide continuing education credits and a stipend to educators who complete the educator-enablement program. Professional development opportunities will be available year-round, including tech talks, dedicated Slack study groups, virtual sessions with AWS instructors, and regional seminars.

Based on AWS's original Machine Learning University, the program provides the same courses Amazon uses internally in training its employees. A variety of educator enablement course materials were developed with input from school systems, including hands-on coding exercises, HCC, lecture slides,  exams, and instructor handbooks. They are designed to meet the requirements for college-level, for-credit courses.

AWS' educator enablement program is part of its broader goal of empowering diverse communities to pursue careers in technology.

"Our goal in launching this program is to make database, AI, and ML education widely accessible to all community colleges and universities across the U.S.—not just elite institutions," said Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Databases, Analytics, and Machine Learning at AWS. "We need the best minds from all backgrounds entering these fields. The educator enablement program is designed to make it easier for any educational institution to start teaching advanced technologies by removing the barriers of cost and educator training."

For more details, read Amazon's complete press release here.

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