About $3.00M to build AI into the curriculum at the University of the Virgin Islands — one record, against a distribution concentrated in California (HBCU-UP)

1Awards do not land evenly

Sorting the recipients of the 120 NSF awards this site holds as of 2026-08-28 by location gives a distribution across 37 states and territories. California leads with 24, a fifth of the total, followed by Texas at 13 and Massachusetts at 8. Looking beyond the mainland, there are two in Alaska, two in Hawaii, two in Puerto Rico, and one in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Research funding gathers where a research record already exists, and that concentration is self-reinforcing. This award sits at the edge of that distribution.

2Building capacity rather than producing findings

The goals listed in the record are a faculty learning community, AI modules and a certificate program, an on-campus AI server, and student research with industry partnerships. The aim is not to produce new discoveries but to build the means of teaching and learning AI inside the institution.

That deploying an AI server appears as a line item is telling: the premise that without compute there is neither teaching nor learning has become a budget item.

3What five years buys

The period runs from October 2026 to September 2031, five years. Faculty learning, a curriculum being built, and students passing through it to graduation take at least one full cycle. That the record builds in a mixed-methods evaluation measuring faculty capacity, student learning, AI literacy, self-efficacy and workforce readiness follows from outcomes appearing as changes in people, which takes time.

The stated intent to create a sustainable model that other institutions can adapt also signals that the work is not meant to end inside one campus.