FARMERS BRANCH, Texas. Learners spent five days last month building websites, job-search tools, and personal advisory councils, all with the help of artificial intelligence, in the first pilot of a new program known as the Agentic AI Academy.
The program, developed by the Mark Cuban Foundation, ran Aug. 17 to 21 at Dallas College’s Brookhaven Campus. It is the first of several planned pilots meant to test a curriculum built around agentic AI, a term for AI systems that can carry out multistep tasks with limited human direction.
Wren Hoffman, the organizer and facilitator of the course, stated that the schedule ran from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. As Hoffman explained, the learners spent over 80% of the week on building, testing, and sharing their own work rather than on watching demonstrations.
By the end of the week, participants had put together a professional brand kit, a working website, and a personal job search assistant, among other projects, according to promotional materials distributed ahead of the event. Each learner approached the material through the lens of their own profession or the industry they hoped to enter.
Three students collaborate on a laptop during the Agentic AI Academy, a weeklong pilot program hosted by Dallas College at its Brookhaven Campus in Farmers Branch, Texas. (Credit: Mark Cuban Foundation)
As Hoffman pointed out, for many participants, the week was their first proper encounter with agentic AI and their first experience using the tools for anything beyond simple prompting. The academy had a wide variety of learners, including people returning to the workforce, those who had been made unemployed and wanted to retrain, and others trying to improve their skills to perform better in their existing jobs. A number of them had young families, and for some, English was not their first language.
On the last day of the program, Dr. Madeline Burillo-Hopkins, who is president of the Brookhaven Campus of Dallas College, addressed the group and stated that AI provides educators a new means of fostering the way people think and ask questions, as well as the fact that today’s workers need to continue their learning throughout their careers to keep up with the changing job market.
“The idea that once you’ve got your degree, you’re finished is long since over,” she said. “If I were to go back to school at the moment, I would certainly have a degree in this subject.”
According to Burillo-Hopkins, Dallas College started integrating AI instruction into its curriculum two years ago and has since extended this initiative to its Workforce Continuing Education division, which she now manages. She said that every one of the fast-track academies the college offers, whether in welding, mechatronics, or certified nurse aide programs, will include an AI fluency course.
Burillo-Hopkins also received advice from an executive based in the Dallas area, who stated that in his hiring interviews, he now places less emphasis on resumes and instead asks candidates to walk him through a problem they solved using AI and what they learned from the outcome, even if the attempt failed.
“You may be at the early stage of learning AI,” she told the group. “This is just the beginning.”
Madeline Burillo-Hopkins, president of Dallas College’s Brookhaven Campus, addresses students during the Agentic AI Academy, a weeklong pilot program hosted by Dallas College in partnership with the Mark Cuban Foundation, in Farmers Branch, Texas. (Credit: Mark Cuban Foundation)
To conclude, she congratulated the group on finishing the program and urged them to continue their training at Dallas College.
Hoffman stated that the most impressive moment of the week occurred at the closing session when the various groups presented what they had constructed. However, it was difficult for them; some of the quieter learners in the room took the opportunity to speak, and the rest of the class noticed and offered their support.
“The pilot was about more than just AI,” Hoffman said. “It was about people.”
That attitude was also evident elsewhere during the week. A participant left an anonymous sticky note on what Hoffman referred to as the group’s parking lot, a continuous record of the comments and questions gathered over the five days. The note said, “I appreciated the example you gave about bias concerning the wedding dress.”
The Mark Cuban Foundation awarded participants a certificate of completion for completing the week and held in conjunction with Dallas College’s Small Business LaunchPad program.
Hoffman stated that the entire Mark Cuban Foundation team contributed to the pilot’s success and that it would have been impossible to achieve it without their partnership with Dallas College.
The Foundation plans to include several more pilots as it tests the Agentic AI Academy curriculum.
“Stay tuned to see it at your local community college,” Hoffman said.
Community college administrators interested in bringing the Agentic AI Academy to their campus can email [email protected] for more information.