Director of Applied AI Academic Initiatives

## Director of Applied AI for Academic Initiatives Apply:
Eligible for Hybrid Work:
Worcester, MA:
Full time:
Posted 3 Days Ago:
JREQ-000812

At Holy Cross, we are focused on creating a world-class workforce by attracting and retaining employees dedicated to fostering a culture of professionalism, pride, mutual trust, and respect—one that values appreciation and recognition, empowering each of us to flourish both individually and collectively. We seek candidates who are inspired by our mission and values, and who are eager to make a meaningful difference on our campus.

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The Director of Applied AI for Academic Initiatives leads the College's applied use of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies across research, teaching, learning, and student development. The role is deliberately cross-disciplinary: it works with a chemist evaluating whether agentic systems can open new experimental avenues as readily as with a colleague in student affairs studying how these tools affect student development.  

With a designee of the Office of the Provost, the Director helps establish and lead a new AI Exploration Lab. The Lab is not only a teaching and learning space. A central part of its purpose, and of this role, is to shepherd and curate student-led research: helping students scope viable questions, pairing them with faculty mentors and appropriate tooling, and bringing their work to a standard worth showing.

The Director also tracks external funding in this domain and helps faculty pursue it.  The Director works in close partnership with the Learning Design team and the Center for Inclusive Excellence in Teaching, contributing applied artificial intelligence expertise to the work they lead. It is a role for someone as credible in a faculty research conversation as in a technical one, and who understands that the most useful answer is sometimes to recommend against the technology.
** Job Description
**** Major Areas of Responsibility
**** Research enablement and domain acceleration
*** Partner with faculty across disciplines to evaluate where artificial intelligence, including agentic systems, can genuinely advance research, from literature synthesis and experimental design through data analysis and interpretation.
* Assess feasibility in laboratory and computational disciplines, such as whether agentic approaches can open new avenues in biochemical research, and design pilots with the faculty who would use them.
* Advise on research computing needs, tooling, data handling, provenance, and reproducibility in artificial-intelligence-assisted scholarship.
* Support faculty and staff studying the impact of artificial intelligence on student development and co-curricular life, contributing to the design of that inquiry and to the interpretation of its findings.
** AI Exploration Lab and student-led research
*** Help establish and lead the AI Exploration Lab in partnership with a designee of the Office of the Provost, including its purpose, operating model, and terms of responsible experimentation.
* Shepherd and curate student-led research: help students scope viable questions, pair them with faculty mentors and suitable tools, guide method, and bring completed work to a standard worth presenting or publishing.
* Curate the Lab's models, tools, and environments, maintaining a clear-eyed assessment of what each is and is not good for.
* Move promising projects from idea to prototype, drawing on engineering capacity within Information Technology Services.
** External funding and partnerships
*** Identify and track grant and fellowship opportunities in artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, and bring credible fits to the attention of individual faculty and departments.
* Support proposal development with technical narrative, architecture, data management plans, and realistic computing budgets, in coordination with the College's sponsored research and advancement colleagues.
* Build relationships with peer institutions, consortia, funders, and vendors, including institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities.
** Teaching and learning, in partnership
*** Partner with the Learning Design team and the Center for Inclusive Excellence in Teaching, contributing applied artificial intelligence expertise to the course design, pedagogical practice, and inclusive teaching work they lead.
* With the Center for Inclusive Excellence in Teaching, examine how these tools affect students…