Local colleges ready students for a workforce laden with artificial intelligence
Local colleges ready students for a workforce laden with artificial intelligence
Publish Date: 2026-04-03 05:00:00
Source Domain: www.wxxinews.org
Local colleges are preparing students to enter a job market increasingly transformed by artificial intelligence.
“We think about not just like the bits and bytes and the algorithms and things like that, but we’re also thinking about the human factor,” said Jeffrey Allan, director of the Institute for Responsible Technology at Nazareth University.
How AI can affect individuals, and the risks, power and ethical considerations of the technology, is a recurring theme in curriculum at Nazareth as well as at Rochester Institute of Technology and University of Rochester.
The coursework has evolved over years, even decades, but taken on greater urgency of late as college students are rethinking and even changing their majors and enrollment decisions because of how AI is or might impact particular job markets and industries. The newly released Lumina Foundation-Gallup 2026 State of Higher Education Study found one in six students changed their field of study based on AI.
Whether it means learning how to work with AI agents as coworkers and liaisons, or building large language models with a mess of data, local education leaders say students need the skills to navigate a workforce and economy increasing shaped by artificial intelligence.
The program wraps together computer science, software engineering and data modeling to equip students to design systems.
Nazareth began offering AI coursework in 2020 and now has four programs: ethical data science; technology, artificial intelligence and society; and two business courses, one at the master’s level.
“We think about not just like the bits and bytes and the algorithms and things like that, but we’re also thinking about the human factor,” Allan said.
“The folks who are implementing this now are oftentimes technical people,” he said. “They might come out of…
