Apr 25, 2025

Advancing AI for California’s Community Colleges through Collaboration Across the CENIC Membership

It’s been eight months since CENIC announced that the San Diego Community College District (SDCCD) had become the first community college district in California to connect to the CENIC AI Resource (CENIC AIR).

This was a critical step forward to enabling California's Community Colleges (CCC) to fulfill their Vision 2030 roadmap which emphasizes their central role as primary engine of social and economic mobility in California. After all, the CCC offers not only its own degrees and certificates but enables student transfers to four-year institutions in the University of California and the California State University systems.

Furthermore, Vision 2030 lays out what it calls a "ninth grade strategy" in which all California high school students enroll in community college transfer, career, or apprenticeship pathways and complete high school with at least 12 units of dual enrollment credit.

This roadmap effectively places the CCC system at the heart of a major decision point for all Californians who choose to pursue careers that require a post-secondary credential—and it also places them at the heart of the entire CENIC membership.

Thus, participation in CENIC AIR and CENIC itself enables community colleges to become the epicenter of the state’s AI-enabled workforce transformation.

The Largest Community College Districts Share Important Lessons at the Sixth National Research Platform Workshop

During the Sixth National Research Platform Workshop (6NRP), SDCCD Associate Vice Chancellor and CIO Peter Maharaj discussed how the district and its four campuses are advancing AI for students, faculty, and administration thanks to opportunities and partnerships made possible by their membership in the CENIC community.

Presenting alongside him were Rose Parsoonthorn, District Director of Operations at SDCCD and Carmen Lidz, Vice Chancellor and CIO of the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD).

Taken together, the SDCCD and LACCD comprise 13 colleges and a third of a million students, faculty, and staff, so the lessons they are learning about connecting to CENIC AIR and making use of it are valuable for any other districts keen to participate.

The CENIC 2024 Biennial Conference: Where It All Began

At CENIC’s 2024 Biennial Conference in Monterey, CENIC honored the SDCCD's project to move their enterprise resource planning to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with the 2024 Innovations in Networking Award for Network-Enabled Cloud Applications: Education and Administration.

While at the conference, Maharaj was able to speak with UC San Diego Professor Emeritus and global networking luminary Dr. Larry Smarr, who presented on CENIC AIR and together with colleague Dr. Tom DeFanti, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and Research Scientist at UC San Diego, took questions from attendees in an afternoon workshop about CENIC AIR, its infrastructure, and the communities using it.

After speaking with Smarr, who was very enthusiastic about connecting community colleges to CENIC AIR and the National Research Platform (NRP) and full of advice on the National Science Foundation’s Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CC*) program, Maharaj then returned to his district office. There, he raised the topic of participating in CENIC AIR with SDCCD Chancellor Gregory Smith in a meeting that also included Smarr, DeFanti, and representatives from the San Diego State University.

Thus, the CENIC conference in Monterey proved to be pivotal to the SDCCD, providing Maharaj and Parsoonthorn with the chance to learn about CENIC AIR and NSF funding opportunities, and to become part of a San-Diego-wide conversation with fellow CENIC member institutions at the University of California and the California State University.

Several months later, the SDCCD became the first community college district to connect to CENIC AIR, with the LACCD currently in the planning and implementation stages.

CENIC AIR Enables Community College Student Transfers to Other CENIC Member Institutions

LACCD Vice Chancellor and CIO Carmen Lidz observed the importance of community colleges’ role as jumping-off points for students transferring to CENIC member UC and CSU campuses, and how connection to CENIC AIR can ensure that their graduates enter these institutions with good foundations in AI and machine learning. “By providing shared, practical tools to our students via CENIC AIR and NRP,” Lidz stated, “we can enable them to be more fluent and progress much more quickly through their studies when they transfer to other institutions.”

Maharaj agreed, pointing out that community colleges often cluster around UC and CSU campuses, as illustrated to the right, to enable easier student transfers. And as a further enabler of transferability, CCC participation in CENIC AIR plays a role in the Student Centered Funding Formula (SCFF), a measure of metrics that tie into state-level funding for community colleges.

The SCFF ensures that community colleges are funded, at least in part, on how well their students are faring, including rates of student transfers to four-year colleges and universities. “And this shared platform,” he observed, “means [our students] can transfer into an undergrad program ready to get cracking on day one.”

Moreover, a shared platform also allows a student to create a portfolio of work that follows them throughout their entire academic career.

Winning Over Faculty and Leadership with Efficient Instruction and Processes

However, one of the major transformations underway thanks to AI and machine learning is that of instruction itself. Students aren’t the only ones who need preparation for rapidly changing careers; faculty and leadership must also to some extent be reskilled and given opportunities to learn how new tools can enhance their effectiveness as well.

Winning this buy-in can be a challenge but one that must be overcome as, once faculty enthusiasm has been harnessed, they become the biggest champions of the instructional use of AI and machine learning not only by students, but by their colleagues and departments as well.

Such helpful innovations can include bespoke AI-enabled tutors, tools to help faculty and staff complete paperwork, and even tools to provide program and institutional facts and other important information on demand to campus leadership.

In the end, as Maharaj puts it, what starts at community colleges changes California, which changes the world—and that change is easier to drive as part of the CENIC membership team. “It paints a picture that this is an opportunity for us to embrace together,” he said.

If you’d like to watch Maharaj’s entire presentation, you can find it at the Qualcomm Institute on YouTube.

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How CENIC AIR Enables Secure AI and Machine Learning Innovation

How CENIC AIR Enables Secure AI and Machine Learning Innovation

CENIC AIR and Your Campus: From Concept to Connection

Learn more about how to get started thinking about how your campus can connect to and use the CENIC AI Resource.