IISA

We are honored to have Professor Jean Larson from Arizona State University as a keynote speaker on Intelligent Applications at the IISA 2026! Gain valuable insights from an expert in Information Intelligence!

Title:
Redesigning Education for the AI Era: A Systems Engineering Imperative

Abstract:
Artificial intelligence is advancing at an exponential pace, reshaping industries, economies, and the nature of work. Education, however, continues to evolve incrementally, largely within an industrial-age framework defined by standardized curricula, credit hours, and lecture-centered instruction. The widening gap between exponential technological innovation and linear educational reform is increasingly unsustainable. Examining this divergence through a systems engineering lens highlights how educational institutions once adapted to technological transformation and why they must do so again. During the Industrial Revolution, emerging technologies redefined workforce requirements, and the Prussian model of mass education arose as a scalable, standardized response to new societal demands. Education successfully aligned with technological change once before. Today, higher education represents a legacy system operating under constraints misaligned with rapidly evolving AI-driven ecosystems. Education must therefore be reimagined as an adaptive intelligence system: continuous, data-informed, interdisciplinary, and workforce-aligned. A systems approach treats learning as an integrated ecosystem of stakeholders, feedback loops, and co-evolving capabilities. An ecosystem model exemplified by the SenSIP Center integrates NSF-funded Research Experiences for Teachers and Undergraduates, industry collaboration, and authentic research spanning sensors, machine learning, and quantum computing. AI will continue to accelerate. The question is not whether intelligence systems will evolve, but whether our educational systems will evolve with them.

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