AI in Teaching and Learning at Stanford: Thought Leadership Open Track
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” – Albert Einstein
Thought Leadership: Open Track, hosted by VPUE’s AI Meets Education at Stanford (AIMES) initiative, addresses pressing issues in generative AI and Stanford education by inviting Thought Pieces (essays, video, other media) from members of the Stanford community that consider the educational mission in its most expansive sense, including issues of academic integrity, mental health, evaluation, admissions, and more.
The Why
Directly or indirectly, AI impacts everyone in the Stanford educational community, from faculty to students to staff; therefore, everyone has a stake in identifying best practices when it comes to design, development, and deployment.
To that end, an important priority is to broaden opportunities for our Stanford educational community – that includes faculty, students, and staff – to surface and showcase its wealth of knowledge and experience: a whole-of-Stanford approach. Designed specifically to boost more inclusive university-wide engagement with, and ongoing democratic deliberations about, AI in education, Thought Leadership is a distinctively Stanford effort to tap wisdom across our community.
To elicit the widest possible range of exciting, evocative, and creative explorations of education in relation to AI, Thought Leadership: Open Track intentionally extends invitations across disciplines, schools, and fields of study, including the humanities, arts, social sciences, and STEM fields. Topics can engage with AI as a tool or as a topic of critical inquiry, or both.
The What: Open Track Thought Piece Awards
In fall 2026, we will invite applicants to submit a “Thought Piece” in response to an open call. Applicants should identify a pressing need, problem, challenge or aspiration related to AI and education from their unique perspective and perch in the university. The award program makes no distinction between “early adopters” or “resisters,” nor between degrees of use. Instead, it invites responses from individuals or a team to a simpler question: where do I/we see an important need in the educational space? and where/when/how/if AI might serve a purpose?
Thought pieces should:
- define the educational need, problem, issue, or aspiration relative to AI and undergraduate or graduate education, grounded in Stanford experiences
- propose a solution or reframing of the problem/issue/aspiration
- meaningfully discuss potential benefits, risks, and harms involved in the problem and its solution or reframing
- propose, where applicable, a specific next step /identify what you would need to achieve it (e.g. further research/practice/policy).
Thought pieces may take a wide variety of formats, including but not limited to:
- op-eds
- essays
- dialogues (real or imagined)
- videos
- audios (e.g., podcast, radio show)
- alternative multimedia
Thought pieces must be able to be shared in a discrete digital format via upload or shared file that can readily be read, viewed, or played by competition reviewers in standard and widely used formats (i.e., they cannot be a live performance or an experience that is not shareable via a digital file).
The When: Call for Submissions
Submission instructions will be posted here in September 2026, with thought pieces due for the first competition in November 2026.
Thought pieces will be reviewed based on the clarity of the identification of an educational need; compelling representation of the problem or issue; assessment of the benefits or risks of proposed solution(s) or reframings; and creativity, feasibility, and thoughtfulness of proposed next step (where applicable).
Creators of outstanding thought pieces (approximately 20 to 25) will receive an award of up to $2,000* and will be published by AIMES.
*Note: All awards may be subject to taxation and may also impact a student’s financial aid.