Teaching Information Technology at the Pace of AI

Featured photo: Artificial intelligence students work on technology in the new automated greenhouse on the Henderson County Campus. (Photo by Rich Keen.)

Emily Gill, Marketing & Communication Dept.

Few technologies today are moving and evolving as fast as artificial intelligence, a force rapidly reshaping how we learn, work, and solve problems. To help students get a foot in the door of this new field, Blue Ridge Community College launched the Artificial Intelligence (AI) associate degree pathway in 2023. The program has grown over the past two years, providing students with the knowledge and skills necessary for employment and growth in the rapidly growing AI profession.

Instructor Tonya Stephens described AI as training machines to do things that require human intelligence. She reported the field changes so quickly that she has to rebuild courses each semester.

“I have to redo these courses every time I teach them because so much has changed that quickly. Usually with an information technology (IT) course, I might get a year, year and a half out of it, but for AI courses, I found I’m having to redo them each semester,” Stephens said. 

The AI program covers subjects including the history and current applications of AI, machine learning, intelligent design, Python programming and more. Stephens described a recent project teaching AI through computer vision.

“Computer vision is often used to identify something, for instance ‘is this a cat or is it a dog?’” Stephens said. “We’ll upload videos and images of cats and dogs to train our model, and then we can use it for classification to ask if it is a cat or a dog.”

Early in the AI program, classes cover important topics surrounding AI, like ethics, when and where AI should be used, and more.

“We teach the students from the ground up. How do we distinguish what is AI? What is not AI? If you have a problem, consider if it could be solved by AI and then consider if it should be solved by AI,” said Stephens. “We’re always looking at things from an ethical standpoint and thinking about our actions. What are the possible impacts, especially if we’re dealing with things like personally identifiable information?”

Stephens is excited by the positive impacts AI can have regarding real world problems, for example, using automated greenhouses to grow fresh crops indoors. 

“A nearby company, Agrifacture in Saluda, can actually do 100% tracking of the mushrooms they grow. They’re using AI to control the climate and the light and nutrients, everything that this particular variety of mushroom may need to reach optimum growth,” said Stephens. “The AI monitors, for example, temperature. The room may be getting a little cold, but these mushrooms need 80 degrees to grow well, so the AI can automatically adjust to what the crop needs.”

Stephens explained this can help address issues getting fresh fruit and vegetables into food deserts. 

“With this, you can set this up inside a building anywhere. You don’t have to have a whole lot of open space,” Stephens said.

The Henderson County Campus recently opened its own automated greenhouse which is used by both horticulture and IT students to study their individual programs.

As Dr. Laura Leatherwood, president of Blue Ridge Community College, said earlier this year, “This cutting-edge technology not only allows horticulture students to experience high-tech production and research, but it also allows our information technology and cybersecurity students to learn how to tackle an ever-growing concern: managing the systems at the heart of automated greenhouses, and protecting them — and the food pipeline overall — from external threats.”

Second semester student Connor Matt is studying IT and AI for that exact purpose – protecting people. 

“Cybersecurity stuff is very interesting. I’m interested in trying to protect people on a personal level through technology,” Matt said.

The Blue Ridge AI Pathway has already graduated its first student and looks forward to launching the careers of many more technology students.

Learn more about Blue Ridge’s IT programs and the new AI Pathway at www.blueridge.edu/it.