This is Ozarks at Large. I'm Kyle Kellams. NorthWest Arkansas Community College and MIT PATH are thinking about an artificial intelligence curriculum. MIT PATH is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Pathways for AI Training and Hiring. Officials from both NWACC and MIT PATH met for two days in Bentonville last week for discussions about developing AI curriculum for professional skills training. Chris Lynch is NWACC's executive director of workforce and economic development. He's with me via Zoom. Welcome, Chris.
Lynch: Hi, Kyle. Thanks for having me.
Kellams: You bet. Before we talk about what the discussions were like last week, I know that NorthWest Arkansas Community College is already talking about and teaching about AI, right?
Lynch: Yes, sir. We have several different options for learning in artificial intelligence, both on the professional skills side and on the credit-bearing side for those who want to get a degree in artificial intelligence.
Kellams: What does it take to have a degree in artificial intelligence?
Lynch: So right now we have an 18-hour certificate of proficiency in artificial intelligence. And it consists of three courses in artificial intelligence and data science, a communications class. And I think it also has a math class involved in that certificate of proficiency, although we are working towards an A.S. We still have a few steps left to go in the bureaucracy of higher education to get there. But we are very close to offering that to our students as well.
Kellams: All right, so the two days of discussions with MIT PATH last week. First, how did this come together? How did NWACC and MIT sort of combine here?
Lynch: So this conversation was facilitated by our president, Dr. Dennis Rittle, in cooperation with MIT PATH. And we started talking about four months ago about opportunities to collaborate and how we might move forward in developing a curriculum that is of value for our ecosystem, and could also possibly be scaled up and offered in other places that are similar to Bentonville around the country.
And so through those conversations, we determined that we really need business and industry input before getting started on a project like this, because that is our end user. We plan on this being something that business and industry can take to their local business and use it to upskill their employees, come to us for training, and we'll leverage MIT PATH's world-class, forward-thinking artificial intelligence experts to help develop that curriculum. But we want it to be informed by our business and industry partners explicitly, so we know exactly what they need and can create something that is very valuable for them.
Kellams: And during those two days of talks last week, local business leaders were involved?
Lynch: Yes, sir. We had a very, very engaged, robust group of business and industry leadership from our local community. And kind of the structure of the two days: the first day emphasized retail supply chain and logistics. And we had two sessions that day, two different sessions with different participants. And the next day, on the 23rd, we hosted in the morning our health care partners. And in the afternoon we hosted our automation and robotics partners. So it was a very lively discussion.
And Kyle, we have in Northwest Arkansas, it's like a place that I've never been, that the enthusiasm and the participation from our business and industry partners is amazing to me. And I'm so grateful and thankful to them for coming out and helping us with this project.
Kellams: What sort of things did you hear from the business partners? Were there specifics that they were looking for for a future workforce in Northwest Arkansas when it comes to AI?
Lynch: And that is a moving target. We have been dealing with that at NWACC for about two years with our own professional skills trainings in artificial intelligence. And that is that most businesses are at different levels, and even within their own organization, they may have AI expertise, they may have folks who have not used AI yet or may be a little bit anxious to bring that technology on board. So it was kind of similar with our business and industry partners last week.
However, in my research and working with our MIT friends, we've realized that Northwest Arkansas is actually in a very, very good spot for implementing artificial intelligence, particularly in those areas we discussed: retail, health care for sure, and automation and robotics.
So, wide variety. Some common themes that I could just off the top of my head talk about would be, of course, optimizing prompt usage and workflow usage and making sure that artificial intelligence systems are being used efficiently, which shows you the level of thought that our environment are already thinking about with artificial intelligence. Some other themes that arose, of course, were governance, trust, and of course infrastructure for developing a training. And each business and industry partner is going to look at it in a different way. And they have different needs. And that's why this was such a great convening, to really talk about and dig down into those skills. I'm still disaggregating some of the data that I received from our partners. It's going to take me a day or two, but really good, rich, robust conversations throughout the whole week.
Kellams: So where do we go from here? If you're looking for curriculum and it's a moving target, I'm imagining with AI it's going to remain a moving target for some time. So how do you get your arms around developing a curriculum?
Lynch: So we've already been working in that space for about two years. NWACC has developed a system of workshops for AI. And the way we handle that is we set it up in different levels of workshops. So we have an AI beginner-friendly workshop. We have an AI intermediate workshop, which focuses on workflow and beginning to build agents. And then we have advanced workshops that move into specific business use cases. For example, software development, which is one of our first advanced classes that we put out.
And based on feedback from our business and industry partners, I developed a prompt optimization workshop, which is a smaller, quicker how-to-be-more-efficient, how to get what you want out of an LLM and how to use the technology efficiently. So that's how we've been handling it. But you are absolutely right. It's a moving target, which is why it's so important for us to talk to business and see where they are using it, and see how we can help them optimize their own use of AI.
Kellams: And I imagine the convergence with MIT PATH will continue.
Lynch: Yes, we expect that. And we expect that exploration to continue. And hopefully we build that into a collaborative program where we can utilize their world-class, AI-forward-thinking expertise. We use our expertise with business and industry training, and hopefully come up with something of high value for our supplier community, for our health care community. And I hate to be a nerd, but I really want to see the robotics part lift off as well.
Kellams: How do you, Chris, stay abreast of AI developments?
Lynch: I keep my hands dirty, I guess I could say. I use it every day in some form or fashion. And I like to use it to optimize my own workflows during the day. Every morning when I get up, instead of clicking on Facebook or one of the socials, I immediately search what's new in AI. And as you know, every day it's something new. Every day it's something a little more shocking.
I would put a plug out for some of my friends up here in Bentonville who host an emerging tech breakfast every Tuesday morning at 8:30. And that's hosted by Triton Ventures. Bill Akins and Zach Morris host that. And I highly recommend that. Those guys are on top of the cutting edge and cutting trends in AI. So that's one way. Always something shocking at that meeting, shocking for me, something new for me.
So those are some of the ways I stay up. Of course, I read the newsletters that come across my email feed. I try to keep an ear to really what business and industry is doing. I go out and talk to my friends and see how they're using AI. Honestly, as I'm providing training to both students and our business and industry partners, I learn new techniques, new models, new ways of doing things. And so it's been a very fast and dynamic environment up here in Northwest Arkansas with artificial intelligence.
Kellams: If someone is interested in what NWACC offers toward the AI certificate, just go online to the website.
Lynch: Yes. You can go on our website at nwacc.edu. We also have a new workforce-facing enrollment platform, and you can find that at workforce.nwacc.edu. And we will be building out those offerings throughout the year. We're still working on that to get it up to speed and up to date with all the classes we're going to offer. But anyone that goes to that web page should look for extremely robust offerings of AI throughout the whole year. We plan on getting at least 100 of those up and where people can register for them and come to us and we'll get you started.
And if you have specific business needs, we also will come to your place of work. We'll come help you at your place of work, help you find those things that you might need AI to help with to make more efficient. We also do other training in business. For example, Excel training is one of our most requested trainings. I guess people are still struggling with Excel out there in some places. So we offer those trainings as well, and in different modalities. You can come to us or we'll come to you. NWACC's here to help the community.
Kellams: Finally, let's say I'm still having problems or challenges with Excel. Can I understand AI? I mean, I think there are some people who, I'm afraid the bullet train is passing me by.
Lynch: Yeah. And I would say don't be afraid. At this point we're not to that Terminator stage yet with AI. If that does happen, which I'm not scared of, but I think my best advice to people when they ask me, how do I get started, how do I get my employees started, is curiosity. And these systems, I mean, you can't break them. I do recommend not uploading your personal data or any customer data or anything like that, but I think questioning, being curious and just getting started with AI is the best step forward for most people. And then obviously NWACC is here to help you and guide you. And if you need higher-level skills training in artificial intelligence, we're ready for that. That's my advice to people. Just start playing with it. Pick an LLM of your choice. Start with the free version.
And then if you find that it's useful for you, and it may or may not be useful for you, I think some people also spend a lot of time with AI when they could have just done the task themselves and got it done and moved on. So I think that's key too, is finding those areas in your workflow and in your daily life where it can help you, and then leaving it alone for the things you know that you're going to do yourself.
We are really trying to make an impact and create something of value for all of our business and industry partners and our traditional college students as well. I don't want to leave that out. We also have degree programs and credit programs in artificial intelligence. So if you're looking for artificial intelligence training, come see us.
Kellams: Chris Lynch is executive director of workforce and economic training at NorthWest Arkansas Community College. NWACC and MIT PATH are collaborating toward developing official artificial intelligence curriculum for professional skills training. Chris, thanks for your time.
Lynch: Thank you.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
