Penn State AI Center of Excellence Awards First Round of 46 Instructional Innovation Grants

Penn State's AI Center of Excellence in Teaching and Learning announced the first round of its instructional innovation grants, awarding 46 grants to faculty and faculty teams totaling $384,355 for the 2026-27 academic year to integrate generative AI into teaching and learning. Thirty-eight are microgrants of up to $1,000 and eight are large transformation grants; 25 microgrants went to University Park faculty and 13 to Commonwealth Campus faculty. Projects were selected through a competitive review process and span multiple disciplines and instructional settings.

The grants place decisions about bringing generative AI into classrooms with frontline faculty and allocate resources through competitive review with explicit amounts, offering a trackable sample of how AI teaching adoption unfolds in higher education. For faculty, microgrants lower the barrier to experimentation; for the university, the large transformation grants point to structural changes at the course and program level. Currently only the grant list and amounts are available, with no project outcomes or student result data. Faculty can use microgrants of up to $1,000 to test generative AI teaching within a single course, lowering the cost of individual experimentation. The eight large transformation grants target multi-section courses and degree programs, potentially changing how related majors organize their curricula.