Artificial Intelligence Think Tank
Vision
We envision the AI Think Tank as a hub of excellence in AI research and education. It will
• Conduct research in AI and related fields
• Provide students with learning opportunities in AI
• Facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration among faculties and departments
• Engage with industry partners
• Influence policy and ethical guidelines in the use of AI
Baruch Faculty and Staff should please visit the Baruch Ai Resource Hub
News
The CUNY AI Innovation Fund is funding eight AI development projects at Baruch led by faculty, staff, and administrators. These projects will have systematic impact on the integration of AI across research, curriculum, and student success. They serve as an extension and complement to other AI-related efforts currently underway, such as the Copilot Community of Practice and the AI Resource Hub, available on Sharepoint. The funded projects are listed below:
- Ethical AIms: Addressing AI in Contemporary Challenges is an Ethics Week conference co-led by Rhiannon Nielsen (Marxe), Elizabeth Edenberg (Philosophy), and Yafit Lev-Aretz (Law). The funding will enable the expansion of the conference to include follow up dialogues recorded at CUNY-TV and publication of a series of briefs.
- AI Under the Hood – Building AI Literacy Through Customized Hands-On Chatbot Development co-led by Rhomi Kher (Field Dept of Entrepreneurship and Innovation) and Zoe Sheehan (Fine and Performing Arts). This project will develop a modular, scalable curriculum that guides students step-by-step through creating their own custom chatbot. By building AI rather than simply consuming it, students will gain critical literacy skills that transcend their individual disciplines, preparing them for an AI-integrated workforce while fostering responsible and informed AI citizenship.
- AI-Responsive Pedagogy: Collaborative Strategies for Course-Level Assessment led by CTL Director Meechal Hoffman with Associate Deans Kannan Mohan (Zicklin) and Cheryl Smith (Weissman). This project will assist faculty in implementing the Cross-College Curricular Framework developed last year by convening AI-pedagogy working groups, organized by discipline, modality, and/or class size to explore strategies for AI-responsive course-level assessment.
- Baruch Business Academy Transfer Student Guidance: AI-Enabled Support Tools led by Annie Forman, Director of Community College Partnerships in the Zicklin School. The project will support the creation of a student-facing Guidance tool and a staff-facing Academic Progress Data Analysis Tool.
- CUNY on Digital Ethics (C.O.D.E.) Podcast co-led by Yafit Lev-Aretz (Law) and Nizan Packin (Law). Together, they will produce ten high-quality podcast episodes exploring AI’s ethical, legal, and societal implications.
- AI Infusion in the Business Core of Baruch’s BBA and MBA Programs at the Zicklin School of Businessled by Zicklin Associate Dean Mohan and Mahima Hada (Marketing) who will undertake a comprehensive curriculum analysis to identify existing gaps and opportunities for AI integration and then will systematically map AI competencies to core courses, pinpointing areas where students need greater exposure or depth.
- Building Foundational AI Discernment for First-Year Students. Director of New Student Programs Rob Kunicki will develop two learning modules. The first to introduce all new students to Baruch’s Curricular and Support Framework for Learning and Use of AI and the second is to build and test a small pilot intervention focused on AI Discernment.
- Model Coding Partner: AI MCP-Powered Student Pair Programming Environment. Led by Radhika Jain (Chook Department of Information Systems and Statistics) in collaboration with her department colleagues will create a coding partner for students that will use a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server to orchestrate a pedagogy-first AI+human pairing workflow, agnostic of AI client.