Leading the Way on AI in the Classroom

The Sawyer Business School has gone all in on AI.

As AI has become a dominant technology over the past few years, the Sawyer Business School (SBS) is actively harnessing the opportunity. In 2024, SBS launched the Sawyer Business School Artificial Intelligence Leadership Collaborative (SAIL), with a goal of redefining business education and leading the charge in community-based AI innovation.

“Just teaching students how to use AI tools fails to develop the critical human competencies needed to lead in an AI-augmented world,” says Dean Amy Zeng. “Students must learn to use AI strategically while honing vital human qualities, such as judgment, critical thinking, and ethical reasoning.”

For its work in this area, the Sawyer Business School received an award this June from the Eduventures Innovation Awards Program. Now in its ninth year, the award program is sponsored by Encoura, a technology and data company that helps connect students and higher education institutions. The award honors individuals and organizations committed to advancing innovation and improving outcomes in higher education.

How it works

The Sawyer Business School has developed an AI-Human Educational Synergy (AHES) Framework, which encompasses four key competency areas:

• AI Literacy, which examines how AI works
• Cognitive Elevation, which encourages deeper reflection and critical thinking
• Social Intelligence, which asks how AI can enhance connections
• Ethical Leadership, which weighs the technology’s moral implications

Using that framework, the Business School launched a series of innovative initiatives during the 2024-25 academic year:

• Freshman AI Foundation: A course for 450 freshmen introducing AI’s business applications and ethical use, empowering students to harness these technologies responsibly to solve real-world business challenges.
• Faculty Hackathon: Faculty-formed teams matched with AI tools to prototype teaching innovations addressing learning challenges.
• Student Competition: The “Prompt Alchemy” competition challenged students to build prompts to extract insights from a real-world e-commerce dataset.
• Case Teaching Notes: Faculty employed generative AI to streamline the creation of customized teaching materials.
• Marketing Meets AI: Students designed campaigns and analyzed markets using AI tools, bridging theoretical learning with practical applications.
• AI Minor: The Business School designed a new minor with three courses focusing on machine learning, natural language processing, and robotics, equipping students for AI-driven business roles.

Impressive results

This transformative curriculum is yielding impactful outcomes, says Dean Zeng. She points to student surveys showing that 85% of participants reported increased confidence in using AI tools, with 90% showing improved prompt quality. The initiative also strengthened faculty capacity to teach effectively in an AI-augmented environment, and the AHES Framework now informs curriculum development across multiple courses and programs. Finally, she notes, Suffolk’s reputation as a leader in innovative business education has been bolstered.

“The Eduventures award is the result of the hard work by numerous faculty members and students,” she says. “We have laid a fantastic foundation and are thrilled to be recognized for those initial efforts. Given a record number of submissions for this year’s program, the award indicates our leadership in shaping the future of business education in an AI-powered world.”