SJSU Receives Four AI Educational Innovations Challenge Awards

SJSU faculty members have received four 2025 California State University (CSU) Artificial Intelligence Educational Innovations Challenge.

Four faculty-led San José State University projects were recognized by the California State University (CSU) as winners of the first-ever Artificial Intelligence Educational Innovations Challenge (AIEIC). The projects were selected for their potential to enable transformative teaching methods, foster groundbreaking research and address key concerns about AI adoption within the academic environment.

The awarded projects are:

Creative Futures: Integrating AI with Purpose in Design Education

This interdisciplinary project pursues the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into design education through thoughtful, ethical, and creative means. Faculty from Graphic, Industrial, and Interaction Design departments at San José State University will collaborate to update foundational and intermediate course content, focusing on hands-on, project-based learning. The goal, according to Dana Ragouzeos, assistant professor of design in the College of Humanities and Arts, is to establish shared learning outcomes, concrete ethical guidelines, and case studies for student work and classroom instruction that prepare students to be leaders in future applications of generative AI in the design field.

Time, Integrity, and Innovation: Critical Thinking and AI Integration in English Curriculum and Faculty Development

This project advances a two-part initiative led by Sherri Harvey, an English lecturer in the College of Humanities and Arts, to integrate generative AI into writing instruction at San José State. Part 1 involves the redesign of two foundational GE writing courses — English 1B and English 2 — to embed AI literacy, critical thinking and ethical authorship through assignments that include AI-human co-writing and multimodal digital storytelling. Part 2 offers a faculty workshop series, “Teaching AI for Writing Instructors” – Leveraging ChatGPT, Grammarly, and Google Gemini,” which trains 20–30 instructors across disciplines to responsibly integrate AI into their courses. All modules, assignments, and policy templates will be shared across the CSU system. The project prepares students to be reflective digital citizens and supports faculty in creating equity-minded, scalable instruction grounded in ethical AI use.

Integrating Generative AI into Business Strategy Education and Creating a CSU-Wide Case Study and Prompt Repository

This project integrates Generative AI (GenAI) into BUS3 189, the undergraduate business capstone course at SJSU, and proposes a CSU-wide repository of AI-generated and searchable case studies. The course component uses GenAI to generate multiple unique fictional business cases tailored to weekly strategic management topics. Students analyze AI-generated case responses and refine prompts, enhancing their understanding of both strategic theory and GenAI’s capabilities and limitations. An experimental design will assess the learning impact across three class sections with varying exposure to GenAI and prompt design. If the results show promise, Simon Rodan, professor in the Lucas College and Graduate School of Management, proposes helping the Chancellor’s Office Academic Technology Services team create a searchable repository of AI-generated cases and associated prompts hosted at the CO and accessed through the CSU AI Commons webpages.

Generative AI For Writing Instructors

This is a collaborative project between the San José State University Writing Across the Curriculum program and the University Writing Center. Thomas Moriarty, professor of English in the College of Humanities and Arts,  proposes to develop and deliver a faculty professional development workshop on the potential uses of AI in writing and writing-intensive classrooms. In the first part of the workshop, participants will learn how to use a variety of AI tools and then use them to complete a short writing assignment. In the second half, participants will critically reflect on their experience using those tools, then revise course syllabi and develop new and innovative writing assignments that teach students how to ethically and productively integrate AI into their own writing processes. This project will directly impact more than 1,000 students over the one-year course of this project.

“I am thrilled to see the outstanding projects from SJSU move forward under this new system-wide initiative,” said Vincent Del Casino, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. “Faculty at SJSU are innovators and creators developing cutting-edge curriculum and teaching practices. These projects complement other efforts on campus as we prepare our students for a future that will be deeply intertwined with the workings of artificial intelligence. Our role is not just to teach them how to use such tools but to understand the impact of those tools on everyday life and that is always an ethical and critical thinking question.” 

These awards underscore SJSU’s commitment to advancing AI education and its role in shaping the future of higher education through innovative, student-centered initiatives.

For more information about these projects and SJSU’s AI initiatives, please visit the CSU’s website.