AI in Teaching and Learning at Stanford: Thought Leadership Open Track

The Why

This competition invites submissions that consider the educational mission in its most expansive sense, which might include issues related to ethics, academic integrity, creative expression, mental health/wellbeing, interpersonal relations, learning and teaching, admissions – whatever issues you think are impacting campus life and our shared academic enterprise. Directly or indirectly, AI is impacting everyone from faculty to students to staff; each of you bring insight, experience and perspectives to the table, whether or not you consider yourself an AI expert. 

To that end, an important priority of the AI Thought Leadership competition is to broaden opportunities for our Stanford educational community 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, the competition is an effort to tap, elevate, and honor the wisdom across our community. 

To elicit the widest possible range of exciting, evocative, and creative explorations of education in relation to AI, the AI Thought Leadership competition 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 and/or as a topic of critical inquiry.

Stanford is at such a pivotal moment: Artificial intelligence is influencing debates and, in some cases, practices about how we learn, teach, discover, advise, create, and connect. The choices we make now can help ensure these technologies best serve our highest educational aims and strengthen our university community.

This competition is an invitation: In this age of AI, what role do you think these exponentially powerful technologies should (or not) play in higher education? In the life and educational mission of Stanford? 

The Open Thought Leadership Competition: AI & Higher Education encourages Stanford faculty, instructors, staff, and students to share their ideas, questions, and aspirations. Whether you are energized by a new possibility, seeking to address an unmet need, or raising an important concern, your experience and insight can help guide the university’s next steps.

We welcome thought pieces that explore how AI could, should – or should not – influence higher education. Draw from your own insights and lived experience at Stanford to examine a meaningful opportunity or challenge in undergraduate or graduate education. What needs to change? What should be protected? nourished? What could become possible with the right ideas, practices, and policies in place?

The What: Open Track Thought Piece Awards

Applicants are encouraged to identify a pressing need, problem, challenge or aspiration related to AI and education from their unique perspective and perch in the university. 

Strong submissions will:

• Ground an AI-and-education question in a real Stanford experience or need.
• Advance an original idea, practical response, or fresh framing.
• Engage thoughtfully with the promise, tradeoffs, ethical risks, and harms involved – both in the problem and the possible response.
• Point toward a next step that could move the conversation into action.

There is no single format for a compelling idea. Submit an op-ed, short essay, fiction, product design proposal dialogue, video, podcast or other audio piece, multimedia project, or select a format of your choice that you believe best represents your perspective.

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

Submit your Thought Piece

Thought piece competition submissions are due November 6, 2026.

Thought pieces will be reviewed by Stanford community members based on:

• the clarity of the identification of an educational need/concern/aspiration
• compelling representation of the challenge/idea/provocation/issue
• assessment of the ethical benefits or risks at stake
• originality, feasibility, and thoughtfulness of proposed next step (where applicable).

Creators of outstanding thought pieces (approximately 20 to 25) will receive an award of $2,000* and will be published by AIMES. Awardees may also opt to participate in a winter 2027 speaker series panel on AI honoring recipients.

*Note: All awards may be subject to taxation and may also impact a student’s financial aid.