Seattle University has partnered with the national nonprofit organization AI4ALL to offer a summer residential program for high school students in grades 9-11 who want to learn about artificial intelligence through the lens of criminal justice and ethics.

Thirty of the 60 spots in the program are full scholarships for youth of color with demonstrated financial need, in keeping with AI4ALL’s mission to increase diversity and inclusion in AI education, research, development and policy.

Seattle U will be the only residential summer program in the Northwest and is the first Jesuit university in the nation to join AI4ALL’s cohort of 15 participating higher education institutions that includes Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley.

AI4ALL provides three years of seed funding for scholarships and resources and training for faculty to work with high school students of color. Additionally, they offer support for partner universities in the program management aspects, such as student recruitment, guest speakers and experiential learning trips. AI4ALL is a national advocate for diversity in AI and provides partners with access to faculty, industry and policy leaders committed to increasing diversity in artificial intelligence. The Seattle U AI4ALL course itself is focused on the impacts of machine learning and innovation in the field of criminal justice.

The Seattle U AI4ALL will be July 11-July 23, 2021. Details and application information can be found on the Summer Programs website.

The academic course students participate in as part of the program will be taught by Seattle University faculty and guest speakers from the Seattle tech industry, nonprofit and government sectors. The Seattle U Initiative in Ethics and Transformative Technologies, funded by Microsoft, has provided supplementary financial support for the program to launch.

Students will learn basic data analysis, machine-learning tools, programming languages and visualization models, with the goal of empowering students to continue to develop and implement these technical skills. The course also focuses on how these tools could be used to solve basic problems in the field of criminal justice and students will develop a project by the end of the course applying AI solutions.

“We are so thrilled to be in partnership with AI4ALL. Our Seattle U mission of teaching excellence and our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is in perfect alignment with this incredible organization,” says Geneva Sedgwick, JD, LLM, associate professor of business law at Albers and director of University Summer Programs. “There are so many faculty and staff across our campus who united to participate in collaborating with the AI4ALL team…and this partnership is the commencement of a wonderful opportunity to engage with youth from underrepresented communities in deeply meaningful ways of teaching and mentorship. It is an opportunity for us to learn and grow, too.”