PUEBLO – Pueblo Community College hosted nearly 200 educators, industry leaders and technology partners from throughout the region Nov. 14 for its SoCo & AI Conference on the Pueblo campus.
PCC President Chato Hazelbaker welcomed attendees before turning over the conference to presenters from PCC, Front Range Community College, Pikes Peak State College, Arapahoe Community College, CSU Pueblo and the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. Speakers explored the current and anticipated impacts of artificial intelligence on higher education, health professions, and workforce development in southern Colorado. Their topics included AI ethics and literacy, streamlining administrative processes, personalizing AI, and the effects of AI on financial aid fraud.
Keynote speakers for the event were France Hoang and Dr. Evelinn Borrayo. Hoang is the founder and CEO of BoodleBox, a collaborative AI operating system for higher education. PCC recently partnered with BoodleBox to offer its services to all PCC students and employees.
Borrayo is a professor at the Colorado School of Public Health and associate director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center at CU-Anschutz. She is co-leader of the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity (AIM-AHEAD) established by the National Institutes of Health.
Following the successful daylong conference, regional business leaders attended an on-campus dinner and heard from a panel of PCC educators about AI’s impact on area businesses and how PCC is utilizing AI to prepare the workforce of the future. Members of PCC’s AI committee have been leading these efforts for more than a year.
BoodleBox, Zoom and HP sponsored the conference.
