Dear Center for Academic Innovation Community,
When President Santa Ono discusses his vision for the future of the University of Michigan, he discusses the need to forge more connections between the university and the people it serves, particularly across the state of Michigan.
“In the future, I believe we should be more than the University of Michigan. We should be the University for Michigan. For solutions, let us look to Michigan,” Ono said at a U-M Congressional Breakfast held earlier this year in Washington, D.C.
At the Center for Academic Innovation, we are proud of our work to extend the reach and impact of our great public university to over 11 million learners worldwide. We are also deeply committed to serving learners at all levels across the state of Michigan. Like Ono, we aspire for our work to be a resource FOR Michigan, whether it is residents aspiring to go to college, a student on our campus, those seeking to learn skills that can help them build or advance their careers in our state, or a Michigan resident seeking to be more informed about a timely topic or societal issue.
Successfully serving the people of Michigan means creating courses and learning experiences relevant to their needs and meeting people of all ages and backgrounds where they are so that they have access to these learning opportunities.
We offer exciting new learning opportunities to pre-college students from under-resourced communities in Michigan as part of the Wolverine Pathways program. Wolverine Pathways provides free college preparatory enrichment programming for 7th-12th graders in Detroit, Southfield, Ypsilanti, and Grand Rapids.
The center is partnering with a group that includes Dr. Simone Charles of the School of Public Health and Dr. Mark Lindquist of the School for Environment and Sustainability to use an extended reality experience to help students learn about community health and sustainability issues.
Pathways students attend several sessions exploring a virtual environment with public health and sustainability challenges. In the immersive virtual experience, participants have money available to make changes to the community. Those changes could add to or decrease their point total. The students work together to determine changes they can make to boost their communities’ sustainability and public health scores within budget, meaning they are grappling with the tradeoffs inherent in addressing public health challenges.
We are also committed to creating courses that address job skills relevant to the people of Michigan, from current college students to those in the workforce. The impact of artificial intelligence and generative AI is an inflection point across industries that is impacting nearly every worker in Michigan in some way. That is why we are continuing to build and launch new online courses exploring the scope of generative AI – including courses on foundational skills, responsible use of the technology, and use cases within specific industries.
Together with the U-M Center for Innovation and the City of Detroit, we are again partnering on the Saturdays in the D summer learning series. As part of the adult learning programs available through Saturdays in the D, selected Detroit residents have free access to select online courses, including courses focused on Python programming, leadership, negotiation, and entrepreneurship.
The adult learners in these sessions meet every Saturday for six weeks to learn together with the help of course facilitators. Between each session, they continue making progress through their course. The courses available in Saturdays in the D were chosen because they provide vital job-ready skills that will help these individuals advance their careers or start new ones.
We are excited to continue supporting pre-college students from southeast Michigan, residential students at U-M, and adult learners in Detroit and throughout the state. As everyone navigates their learning journeys to and through college and beyond, we will be right there. As people begin their careers or pivot to a new career adventure, we will be there, always creating opportunities FOR the people of Michigan.
Go blue!
James DeVaney
Associate Vice Provost for Academic Innovation
Founding Executive Director of the Center for Academic Innovation