The City College of New York and MIT join forces for AI + Entrepreneurship Certificate

The new certificate, targeted for undergraduate students, will help develop their skills in artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship, connect them with industry mentors, and set them up to be more competitive for internships and in the job market. 

NEW YORK, Oct. 15, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Zahn Innovation Center at The City College of New York is working with the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship to deliver a new Artificial Intelligence and Entrepreneurship Certificate targeted at undergraduate students. Experts at CCNY and MIT are creating videos, in-person workshops, and course content designed to help CCNY students solve business problems using AI applications. 

"CCNY's Zahn Innovation Center has, for more than a decade, helped students develop both an entrepreneurial mindset and concrete business ventures through a rigorous incubation and launchpad program," said CCNY President Vincent Boudreau. "Our new collaboration with MIT mobilizes the Zahn Center experience into a larger effort to develop students' AI skills in the service of entrepreneurship, using the combination of the two to solve pressing business and organizational problems. I'm thrilled to be able to open the combined resources of CCNY and MIT to our students, and with the prospect of building on this initial collaboration in the future." 

The MIT team from the Trust Center, a hub for entrepreneurship education and collaboration at MIT, performed market research with dozens of companies learning how they are using AI and what they expect new hires to know. Through their research, they learned that even companies that have developed great AI capabilities in-house have struggled to feel the benefits across different departments, but these companies expressed that they expect their new hires to have a comfort level with AI. 

The certificate program will meet these needs by having CCNY students work with expert mentors using AI to answer real-world questions and solve business problems for the program's partner organizations with the goal of setting up students to be more competitive in the job and internship market. 

"MIT Sloan is very excited about the launch of the AI and Entrepreneurship Certificate in collaboration with the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and CCNY. We believe it will provide participants with great opportunities for growth – both academic and economic," said Georgia Perakis, John C Head III Dean (Interim) at the MIT Sloan School of Management. "I am grateful to colleagues at both CCNY and MIT for their commitment to this very important collaboration and am excited that MIT's thought leadership in entrepreneurship and AI will be made available to even more people." 

Both CCNY and MIT are known for their economic mobility and a rich history of entrepreneurship including Andy Grove, CCNY alumnus '60, and Robert Noyce, MIT alumnus '53, who co-founded Intel. The entrepreneurship focus of the certificate program will help students identify problem and opportunity areas at the first companies they work at, and they'll have a toolkit and mindset to make an impact quickly.  

"This collaborative has been carefully crafted — using detailed market study — to accelerate innovation in AI and entrepreneurship," said Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of MIT's School of Engineering and chief innovation and strategy officer at MIT. "The curriculum will provide students with the necessary tools to solve a variety of business challenges across AI disciplines and set them on a path towards leadership in careers related to AI and entrepreneurship." 

About The City College of New York

Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Lightcast puts at $3.2 billion CCNY's annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the "for dollar" return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. In 2023, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign, ever. The campaign, titled "Doing Remarkable Things Together" seeks to bring the College's Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.

Contact: Ashley Arocho, aarocho@ccny.cuny.edu

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SOURCE The City College of New York