Embracing Digital Transformation

Episode #305: "Unleashing AI EmpowerED Higher Education"

Host: Dr. Darren Pulsipher
Guests: Dr. Carm Taglienti (CTO, Insight & Professor) and Anshul Sonek (Intel)
Date: November 13, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode, recorded live from Educause 2025, dissects how AI-driven "EmpowerED" curriculum innovations are transforming higher education, empowering both faculty and students. With expertise from Dr. Carm Taglienti and Anshul Sonek, the discussion explores people, process, and technology changes that support rapid digital transformation in academic settings. Special focus is given to a joint initiative between Lenovo, Intel, and Insight to democratize and operationalize AI education, lowering entry barriers for educators and students across disciplines.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The People-Centric Approach to AI in Education

• Empowering Faculty, Not Replacing Them
  • True change centers faculty as the agents of transformation, not just passive recipients of new tools.
  • Anshul emphasizes, “The true power has to be in the hands of faculties.” (00:00, 20:20)
  • There’s a deliberate move away from “Here’s my tool, it will solve everything” toward supporting faculty autonomy.
• Faculty Concerns and Evolution
  • Fear among educators that agentic AI may make them obsolete, but the reality is that “high tech” must go hand-in-hand with “high touch” mentorship.
  • “You can’t really teach agentic AI to a nursing school by saying, Go and watch a one-hour video.” (16:38)

2. Curriculum Design and Ease of Deployment

• Scalable, Modular, and Accessible Content
  • The joint Lenovo-Intel-Insight initiative offers a library of over 1,100 modular, industry-specific, and role-targeted materials (quizzes, assignments, Jupyter notebooks, etc.) designed for flexible deployment.
  • Anshul Sonek: “We are offering a range of AI skill sets for people to meet where they are… not just for AI developers, but also AI power users and industry professionals.” (05:42)
  • The content is packaged so faculty can adapt it easily to their classroom and needs.
• Rapid Curriculum Deployment
  • Dr. Carm Taglienti: “It took me like half a day. Now everything—I have four modules, I upload into Canvas… It was super easy.” (10:10)
  • Dr. Darin: “I spent five minutes and I had an incredible course. Thanks Carm” (11:34)

3. Lowering Technological Barriers

• Local, Private AI Labs
  • The platform can run AI labs locally on standard laptops (e.g., Lenovo with Intel inside), supporting Jupyter Notebooks and even large models without requiring costly, cloud-based resources.
  • Carm Taglienti: “It makes it so much easier for a student to run disconnected if they really wanted to, or for us to create maybe a low-cost mechanism for educators to teach these concepts without breaking the bank.” (12:27)
• Personal/Private GenAI
  • Students are introduced to the benefits of private/personal GenAI models, reducing reliance on costly public AI services and safeguarding data privacy.

4. Enabling Real-World Application and Lifelong Learning

• Beyond Memorization to Practical Problem-Solving
  • The new approach shifts away from rote recall to hands-on application in specific domains—agriculture, healthcare, business, and more.
  • “You don’t have to become an AI expert… you can start leveraging it for your domain expertise.” (09:46)
• Fast-Changing Content
  • “Shelf life of content is changing very fast… soon it’s coming down to less than a year.” (07:36)
  • Faculties are supported to keep pace with technological change, and the curriculum is designed for continual refresh.

5. Rethinking Roles, Assessment, and Learning Modalities

• From Lecturer to Coach/Mentor
  • The faculty role evolves into mentor or coach, focusing on fostering individualized critical thinking and real-world skills.
  • “As a faculty, you’re a coach instead of a didactic instructor.” (25:12)
• High Touch, Personalized Learning
  • True learning is relational: “The learning happens in the brain when there is some friction... a good faculty will make sure student and faculty have deep interaction so the student discovers the purpose.” (16:38, 19:11)
  • Different students learn differently—AI-powered tools enable more personalized education and support for a variety of learning styles.
  • “We have a big huge problem here… I think AI can deliver education for all the different modalities of learning.” (28:49)
• Assessment Must Evolve
  • Classical, standardized testing may become irrelevant; assessments become more personalized, based on student interaction and understanding, enabled by AI-powered tools.
  • “Does answering the question really tell me you understand the topic? Probably not. Maybe now we have the opportunity to do this with new techniques.” (21:46)

6. Transforming Institutional Processes and Integration

• Unified Solutions for Leadership
  • Instead of fragmented decision-making for curriculum, training, IT infrastructure, and data privacy, this solution packages all into a single, manageable initiative.
  • “Now what this model allows you as a leader is really bring all together—faculty development, content, training, integration, infrastructure modernization, and private AI data.” (32:33)

7. The Imperative for Change

• Cultural and Organizational Shifts Required
  • “We’re talking about a fundamental cultural shift.” (26:07)
  • If academia fails to transform, it will become irrelevant: “If we don’t cross the chasm, we’ll fall into it. …It will become more about those that understand and those that don’t. And that’s a problem for society.” (26:16)

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “The true power has to be in the hands of faculties.”
  — Anshul Sonek (00:00, 20:20)

• “Most of the higher education professors go through the stress because people come and say, ‘Hey, my AI solution is very good, sign up for this and I’ll solve all your problems’… It doesn’t work like this.”
  — Anshul Sonek (05:42-07:36)

• “You don’t have to become an AI expert… you can start leveraging it for your domain expertise.”
  — Dr. Darin (09:43-09:47)

• “It took me like half a day. So now everything, I have four modules, I upload into Canvas… super easy.”
  — Carm Taglienti (10:10-11:30)

• “No more two or three weeks of your students going, ‘I can’t get it to compile, I can’t get it to run…’ That’s gone. Now the students can focus on learning how to leverage these new tools more effectively.”
  — Dr. Darin (12:27)

• “Technology can be very revolutionary while people are very evolutionary. People behavior takes time.”
  — Anshul Sonek (25:13)

• “If we don’t cross the chasm, we’re going to fall into it.”
  — Carm Taglienti (26:16)

• “You have to remind university leaders that ultimately the faculty will bring the change. …Faculty empowerment is the right step.”
  — Anshul Sonek (28:12)

• “I really think that this model will give us more humanity in education in the future. I think the future is bright.”
  — Dr. Darin (31:52)

Important Timestamps

• 00:00 Introduction; Faculty empowerment, not tool-centricity
• 04:19 The joint initiative: Intel, Lenovo, and Insight’s AI curriculum
• 05:42-09:22 Modular curriculum design; serving diverse roles/industries
• 09:43-10:10 Domain-specific application: You don’t have to become an AI expert
• 11:30-12:37 Rapid curriculum deployment; easy setup for faculty and students
• 12:37-13:42 Local AI environments; affordable, private, and accessible
• 16:38-20:20 Agentic AI, “high tech” with “high touch,” and the evolving role of faculty
• 21:40-23:08 Shifting from classical assessments to personalized, interaction-based evaluation
• 23:57-26:07 Scaling high touch education; people transformation vs. tech transformation
• 26:11-28:49 The imperative for cultural shift in academia; crossing the chasm
• 32:33-33:39 Unified solution for leaders; integrating all facets of transformation

Takeaways for Listeners

• The next generation of AI curriculum will empower teachers to focus on mentorship, higher-value engagement, and individualized learning.
• Modular, customizable, and immediately deployable content will drastically lower the burden on both faculty and IT.
• Educational institutions must treat digital transformation as a holistic, people-first change initiative—not just a technology upgrade.
• The future of learning in higher education will be more personal, interactive, and equitable if academia embraces the challenge.