At Georgia Tech we feel it is imperative that we continue to explore and evaluate new, innovative approaches to higher education models that reduce costs, improve the processes and approaches we employ, and increase accessibility for lifelong learning. Georgia Tech is well positioned to address these challenges, and we are pursuing several key initiatives so that we can better serve people from across the state, the nation, and the world.

 Commission on Creating the Next in Education: Our Commission on Creating the Next in Education is a coordinated effort to adopt innovative educational methodologies and lifelong learning initiatives. The commission is an 18-month effort that began in January 2016. It is designed to help us grow, support, and expand the educational experience at Georgia Tech. It has a broad charter to imagine all the ways that a Georgia Tech education might be more effective, accessible, and affordable.

Georgia Tech has partnered with AT&T to offer an Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMS CS) and an Online Master’s in Analytics (OMS Analytics) to help address the nation’s growing shortage of qualified workers in STEM fields and provide promising career opportunities to thousands of students.

Artificial Intelligence: In College of Computing Professor Ashok Goel’s artificial intelligence class in spring 2016, Jill Watson was one of nine teaching assistants. “She” is a computer created by a team of graduate students using IBM’s Watson platform. Every time Professor Goel offers the class, he estimates his 300 students post about 10,000 messages in online discussion forums, too many for him and his eight teaching assistants to handle. He added Jill Watson to provide faster answers and feedback. She had 97 percent confidence in her answers and received good reviews from the students. In fact, she was nominated for best TA.

MOOCS: One of the ways we are reaching people throughout the world is through Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. We offer 64 courses, with 2.4 million students. We’re taking concepts that we have learned from MOOCs to develop online degree programs. Faculty say it improves classroom teaching, taking components from online learning into the classroom.

 Globalization: Georgia Tech is a global university. Our faculty are engaged in research in more than 100 countries. Our students come from 117 countries. Fifty-four percent of our undergraduates have a study-abroad experience before they graduate.

For 26 years, we have had a campus in France, Georgia Tech-Lorraine. In December 2016, we signed an agreement to establish the Georgia Tech Tianjin University Shenzhen Institute. It is a partnership between Georgia Tech, the Shenzhen government, and Tianjin University.