Meet Empire State University’s Inaugural AI Fellows
(SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY — April 23, 2025) As the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) continue to advance, opportunities for its use in higher education abound. That’s where Empire State University’s inaugural AI Fellowship comes in. First announced by the Office of Academic Affairs last fall, the new program aims to champion projects that promote AI innovation in teaching, research, or administrative practices, or which support the development of AI tools and programs. After soliciting applications from full-time faculty and staff, a selection committee ultimately chose nine proposals for the fellowship, which includes a stipend.
“These projects will play a critical role in shaping the future of AI within SUNY Empire and across academic disciplines,” said Rai Kathuria, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs, in a March statement announcing the fellowship recipients. “I look forward to seeing how they help to advance our strategic priorities and their impact on the university.”
Read on to learn more about this first class of AI Fellows, who describe in their own words the work they’ll be completing over the next six to 12 months.
About the Fellows:
Bidhan Chandra, professor
Project Title: Navigating the Future: AI-Enhanced Mentorship for New Faculty
“The project focuses on coaching and equipping newly hired faculty mentors with appropriate generative AI tools and training, such as custom GPT models, to enhance their mentoring capabilities. The goal is to streamline critical tasks like educational planning, Credit for Prior Learning (CPL) advisement, and career counseling so new faculty mentors can devote more time to meaningful student engagement. By integrating generative AI into mentorship, we aim to boost mentoring success, expand faculty engagement, and align closely with SUNY Empire’s strategic goals for innovation, inclusivity, and student success.”
Valeri Chukhlomin, professor
Project Title: AI-Enhanced Academic and Career Planning: Transforming iCPL Readiness
“This new fellowship project leverages advanced AI tools to empower students to efficiently document and apply their prior college-level learning. The project unfolds in two phases. In Spring 2025, the iCPL office will receive specialized AI training and updated resources, while a pilot educational planning course is developed specifically for Business, Management, and Economics students. This course is designed to help students identify, document, and effectively present their past academic experiences. A second phase, tentatively scheduled for Fall 2025, will expand the program based on initial feedback and results, aiming to streamline workflows for mentors and administrators, ultimately accelerating degree completion and enhancing SUNY Empire’s leadership in innovative learning strategies. This initiative underscores the university’s commitment to academic excellence and student success by integrating cutting-edge AI into educational planning and mentorship.”
Nathan Gonyea, professor, with Christine Paige, executive director of Empire Online, and Alena Rodick, director of Learning Design and Solutions
Project Title: Creating a Rubric Grading Custom AI GPT Utilizing the Rubric Interview Technique
“[We] aim to train/develop an AI tool that can provide valid and reliable grading of students’ constructed response assignments, with detailed feedback for students. The project leverages a rubric grading technique co-developed by Nathan Gonyea that has shown promise for increasing the reliability of grading. If the project aims are achieved, the resulting tool will help to improve the speed and reliability of feedback received by students and efficiency for faculty.”
Heather Horowitz, assistant professor
Project Title: Enhancing Student AI Literacy through Universal Design for Learning
“I am conducting this project in collaboration with my colleagues Dr. Jeff Foulkes, [an external education consultant], and Pam Doran, SUNY Empire’s digital accessibility coordinator and a higher education Ed.D. doctoral student. With AI becoming more integrated into education and society, it is essential that students are equipped with the tools to engage meaningfully and responsibly with AI technologies. However, as institutions rapidly move to educate students about AI, it is important not to overlook the science of teaching and learning. This project seeks to enhance AI literacy by creating an inclusive, accessible, and scalable learning experience grounded in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. Our overarching goal is to advance equity in AI literacy education by supporting all learners and giving them the opportunity to engage with and showcase their understanding of AI in a variety of ways.”
Tom Mackey, professor
Project Title: Embedding Metaliteracy and AI in the Digital Media Arts: Creating and Sharing Innovative Models for Online Education
“This project aims to enhance the integration of AI and the metaliteracy framework within the Digital Media Arts (DMA) program. The initiative will focus on revising several core courses in the DMA program—including Digital Storytelling, Ethics of Digital Art and Design, Information Design, and Capstone in Digital Media Arts—to update AI policies, assignments, rubrics, and course content. AI-generated videos will be produced for the courses to enhance the presentation of dynamic elements and to teach students the ethics of AI content creation. These revisions will demonstrate the potential of AI tools for artistic and ethical digital content production while fostering active learning and collaborative engagement. Additionally, two Coursera massive open online courses (MOOCs) developed as part of two previous Innovative Instruction Technology Grants (IITGs) awarded to [me] by SUNY will be updated to replace outdated video content with new, relevant materials, including videos generated using AI tools.”
Sophia Mavrogiannis, director of Academic Support, and Anne McDonough, interim senior director of Academic Support
Project Title: From Static to Dynamic: Using Generative AI to Transform Existing Academic Support Resources into Just-in-Time Micro-learning Resources with an Integrated Chatbot
“For our project, we will convert existing static academic support resources into high-quality microlearning units (3-5 minutes) with an integrated ‘Study Buddy’ AI chatbot to answer questions about the content and related academic support needs. By pairing these microlearning resources with a real-time chatbot, our goal is to replicate elements of the dynamic and engaging experience of synchronous academic support and to make it equitably available to all learners in an asynchronous format.”
Tom McElroy, executive director of Prior Learning, with Carl Burkart, director of Prior Learning Evaluation Review, and Amy Giaculli, assistant director of iPLA Services
Project Title: AI-Driven Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) Support Channels
“CPL is a defining aspect of SUNY Empire’s academic programs. Helping incoming students determine whether their training or professional credentials have been evaluated or if any of their experiential learning could be evaluated for credit can be rewarding. At the same time, the process can be time consuming for advisors and faculty and frustrating for students. This fellowship will allow the Office of Prior Learning to create AI-powered channels that will inform the work of advisors and mentors by providing insights into each student’s potential to earn credit through CPL. Our goal is to develop an AI-enhanced resource to sort through a student’s background to identify potential iCPL titles and associated learning objectives and to provide details about already-evaluated credentials and training, tailoring recommendations to distinct fields of study, academic programs, and career paths where appropriate.”
Mazdak Zamani, assistant professor
Project Title: Empowering Education with AI: Transforming Assignments and Practices
“My project focuses on enhancing teaching, learning, and administrative efficiency through AI. The goal is to support faculty, students, and staff in adopting AI tools by offering workshops, individualized consultations, and hands-on training. We aim to transform traditional assignments into dynamic, AI-integrated formats, introduce ethical AI use, and explore innovative approaches to improve educational outcomes across the university.”
Sahand Ziabari, assistant professor
Project Title: Adaptive AI Fairness for Advancing Research and AI Curriculum Development
“I’m working on a project called Adaptive AI Fairness, aimed at developing innovative tools and frameworks to make AI systems fairer and more ethical. The focus is on addressing biases that appear when different social categories (like gender, race, and age) interact and building adaptable solutions for various real-world applications, such as health care and educational systems. The goal is not just to advance AI research but also to create hands-on learning experiences for SUNY Empire students through interactive labs, case studies, and capstone projects.”