Equipped to Lead and Succeed
Equipped to Lead and Succeed
USF Leads AI Summit for Jesuit Universities
The University of San Francisco hosted 32 higher-education leaders from the nation’s Jesuit universities for a three-day immersion into the rapidly evolving AI landscape in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
The group from the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) institutions visited Apple, Adobe, Salesforce, Verizon, and Prolific and explored how artificial intelligence is reshaping higher education.
USF Provost Eileen Fung convened the summit, held June 25–27, to explore the latest AI technology and discuss questions surrounding AI and higher education, including how Jesuit universities and colleges can embrace AI responsibly.
“USF sits in the heart of the AI revolution in a city where the possibilities and the hard questions of this technology are on everyone's mind,” Fung said. “That proximity is both a privilege and a responsibility, which we take seriously.”
Fung engaged with other university provosts, deans, chief technology officers, faculty, and senior leaders on the ethics of AI, how to prepare students for workforce readiness, and ways to support faculty.
"USF is actively exploring how to integrate AI literacy and outcomes across our curriculum — in the core, in our majors, and in our professional schools — always with an eye to ethical and responsible use,” Fung said. “We are also creating space for critical dialogues with faculty, staff and students about AI in the contexts of ethics, the humanities, and the common good.”
The AJCU network developed several shared priorities, including ethical governance, faculty support, student preparation, and Jesuit values, said Thomas A. Maier, USF’s associate vice provost of professional education and business partnerships.
“Our students deserve to graduate ready for an AI‑integrated world,” Maier said. “By convening Silicon Valley leaders from Apple, Adobe, Salesforce, Prolific, DeepMind, and Asana, USF is helping AJCU institutions understand what employers expect and how Jesuit universities can prepare students to thrive.”
Opinder Bawa, USF’s chief innovation officer, said the summit was a starting point for the AJCU colleges and universities to work together and come up with the best solution for integrating AI into higher education.
“No single Jesuit campus should have to solve AI alone,” Bawa said. “By acting as a network — shared procurement, common guardrails, a shared case repository — we give every AJCU institution enterprise-grade capability without an enterprise-grade budget. Equitable access is a mission question, not just a technical one.”
