The NCCU AI institute launched by Siobahn Day Grady is trying to make artificial intelligence training a campus-wide requirement, rather than a perk reserved for computer science students. Grady, an associate professor in North Carolina Central University’s School of Library and Information Sciences, started the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Research in January 2025. NCCU says it is the first AI research institute at a historically Black college or university.
The bet is blunt: employers are asking graduates to understand AI, while the money and industry access needed to teach it are not spread evenly across higher education. Grady has framed the work as a shift from basic digital skills toward AI literacy, saying the old escape hatch of “I don’t do tech” no longer works for students entering the labor market.
What is NCCU's AI institute?
The Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Research, known as IAIER, is a university-wide program meant to support AI teaching, research and workforce training across disciplines. That matters at NCCU because the university does not yet have a dedicated computer science program, although it is developing a computer science major and an AI minor.
The institute grew out of Grady’s earlier Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Research, which she started at NCCU in 2020 to give students hands-on experience with AI projects. After a Google.org grant opportunity emerged in 2024, Grady expanded the idea from a faculty lab into an institute intended to serve the whole university.
Google.org has backed the institute with a $1 million grant. Since its launch, IAIER has reached more than 2,800 students, faculty members and community residents through training and research programs, according to NCCU. Grady described the team’s pace as startup-like, which is one of the few acceptable uses of that word when a university program is building curriculum, grant programs and industry events at the same time.
How is NCCU teaching AI outside computer science?
NCCU now requires all freshmen to complete an introductory AI course built with IBM. The course is designed to teach basic prompting skills, giving students a baseline understanding of how to use AI tools rather than treating them as magic boxes with chat windows.
IAIER is also working with faculty development teams so instructors can add AI to their own courses. On the research side, the institute has awarded seed grants of up to $10,000 to faculty members studying AI uses in fields including social work, digital archiving, health care and information science. NCCU says the first cohort funded 11 projects, including an AI lab where social work students can practice client interactions through simulations.
The institute has also brought in outside companies and researchers. NCCU says IAIER has held events with Deloitte, FICO and Anthropic, and that partnerships with Google and IBM give students access to certificates and credentials. Last year, the institute hosted an OpenAI Academy Summit at an HBCU, with 444 participants from more than 40 institutions.
Why funding is the hard part
The funding problem is bigger than one campus. A 2025 report from the Center for American Progress and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund found that HBCUs make up about 3 percent of four-year U.S. institutions but receive less than 1 percent of federal research and development funding. The report also found that 17 of the 43 federal agencies that distributed university research funding in 2023 gave no funding to HBCUs.
Grady has said funding is the largest barrier to keeping IAIER sustainable as demand rises. That is the unglamorous part of AI literacy: servers, staff, faculty time and student programs need money long after the conference banners come down.
NCCU has attracted additional support. In collaboration with Howard University and two other institutions, IAIER received nearly $500,000 through a National Science Foundation research coordination network program to study emerging AI jobs, identify needed skills and shape future credentials and curricula. Grady says the institute will open its first dedicated physical space on campus this fall.
Grady plans to expand academic programs, launch the computer science major and AI minor, add faculty research opportunities and work more closely with industry partners. She has also said she wants IAIER to become a framework that other HBCUs and universities can adapt for their own AI education efforts.
This story draws on original reporting from IEEE Spectrum.
