The Center for Advancing Human-Machine Partnership

CAHMP Summer 2025 GRA Fellowship Now Open for Applications

Call for Applications: CAHMP Summer 2025 GRA Fellowship   

We are inviting applications for a limited number of summer GRAs from Mason doctoral students who do not already have Mason summer funding. If accepted, each awardee will receive a stipend of $9,000 this summer. Applying students should provide a short summary of what project they will be working on over the summer. While we will consider all projects concerning human-machine partnerships, special consideration will be given to transdisciplinary projects centering around CAHMP thematic thrusts: 

  • Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, Inclusion, and Equity in AI 
  • AI Policy and Governance  
  • Human-Computer Interaction (human-machine teaming) 
  • Assistive Technology  
  • Learning Technology 
  • Community Informatics  
  • Generative AI and applications 

 (including AR/VR, computer vision, wearable tech, robotics, cyber, data science, digital humanities, etc.) 

Recipients of this summer funding may be invited to present their projects at a CAHMP social event during the next academic year. 

Application Instructions 

Applicants, please submit the following here – https://forms.office.com by 11:59pm Thursday, March 27th, 2025:

  1. A project title and a 250-word proposal that describes your project.
  2. A CV.
  3. One of the faculty mentors must be a CAHMP faculty member. Applicants are encouraged to have more than one mentor from different departments. 
Eligibility requirements 

–Applicants must be Mason doctoral students listed in university records as full-time during Spring 2025 and must plan to return as a doctoral student in Fall 2025.  

–GPA 3.0 and good standing  

–Receive no other funding from Mason over the summer. Faculty mentors will be asked to provide confirmation that the applicant has no other funding at Mason over the summer.  

–This fellowship is more for doctoral students who are well on their way in their degree completion.

  

AIEP October 8, 2024 Event Presentation Slide Deck

Learning Resources for AIEP October 8th, 2024 Event

Here are some learning resources suggested by organizers and speakers of the October 8th, 2024 event on AI and Data-Driven Decision-Making for Education Policy and Equity.

https://ospi.k12.wa.us/student-success/resources-subject-area/human-centered-artificial-intelligence-schools

  • The Psychosocial Impacts of Generative AI Harms, Thema Monroe-White, Associate Professor, AI and Innovation Policy, GMU

https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI-SS/article/view/31251

  • BiasDora: Exploring Hidden Biased Associations in Vision-Language Models, Ziwei Zhu, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, GMU

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.02066

  • Evolving Teacher Education in An AI World, Jered Borup,  Associate Professor, Learning Tech, GMU

https://info.iste.org/openai-white-paper

New Pilot Study on Specialized AI Assistant Tools to Enhance Research-Based School Improvements

 

K-12 education has entered a new frontier where educators are exploring the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in innovative ways to enhance student outcomes. While many human-AI collaborations focus on efficiency, some venture into uncharted territory, exploring qualitatively new and improved decision-making. Dr. Seth B. Hunter, Assistant Professor of Education Leadership and Senior Fellow of EdPolicyForward, the Center for Education Policy at George Mason, has embarked on one such venture by exploring how AI can assist aspiring and current educational leaders in making better school improvement decisions based on current, rigorous, and technical education research.

School leaders nationwide regularly engage in school improvement planning, setting performance goals and designing action plans to achieve them. While the degree to which school leaders explicitly base their plans on rigorous research may vary, it is crucial for all school leaders to consult relevant research to design the most effective plans. K12 educators do use research for decision-making and practice; however, they often overlook rigorous, technical research written for academic audiences, which could provide the best recommendations for school improvement.

Dr. Hunter is exploring novel ways to bridge the gap between technical academic research and its use for school improvement via AI-enabled tools. These tools focus on finding the most rigorous academic research and translating it for lay audiences. In a recent pilot study, Dr. Hunter randomly assigned these tools to a Northern Virginia cohort of aspiring principals enrolled in Mason’s Education Leadership MEd program; the control group was in the same program, but it found and made sense of research using traditional means. The MEd students reported that using the specialized AI tools was significantly easier than using conventional means; those using AI-enabled tools were also much more likely to reportthat finding and making sense of research would be helpful in their jobs as future leaders. These pilot study results suggest that AI-enabled tools can shrink the gap between rigorous and technical academic research and K12 research use.

In future work, Dr. Hunter will scale up this intervention with current principals and central office administrators, explore how AI tools use changes to school and district improvement plans, and see if those changes affect student outcomes.

2024 Transdisciplinary Center Summer GRA Fellowship now Open for Application

Call for Applications: CAHMP Summer 2024 GRA Fellowship   

We are inviting applications for summer research assistance funding from Mason Master’s and doctoral students who do not already have Mason summer funding. If accepted, each awardee will receive a stipend of $6,500 (Master’s) or $8,500 (Doctor’s). Applying students should provide a short summary of what project they will be working on over the summer. While we will consider all projects concerning human-machine partnerships, special consideration will be given to transdisciplinary projects centering around CAHMP thematic thrusts: 

  • Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, Inclusion, and Equity in AI 
  • AI Policy and Governance  
  • Human-Computer Interaction (human-machine teaming) 
  • Assistive Technology  
  • Learning Technology 
  • Community Informatics  
  • Generative AI and applications 

 (including AR/VR, computer vision, wearable tech, robotics, cyber, data science, digital humanities, etc.) 

Recipients of this summer funding may be invited to present their projects at a CAHMP social event during the next academic year. 

Application Instructions 

Applicants, please submit the following here – https://forms.office.com/r/QQKJVUR4hx by April 14th, 2024:

  1. A project title and a 250-word proposal that describes your project; 
  2. The student’s level of study (Masters of doctoral), home department, and faculty mentor(s), one of whom must be a CAHMP core or affiliate faculty member; 
  3. A CV. 

Mentors, please provide your quick endorsement here – https://forms.office.com/r/RTiRimH1k3 by April 14th, 2024. The endorsers must confirm that there are no alternative means of supporting the applicant over the summer.  

Eligibility requirements 

–Applicants must be Mason students listed in university records as full-time during Spring 2024 and must plan to return as a graduate student in Fall 2024.  

–GPA 3.0 and good standing  

–Receive no other funding from Mason over the summer  

–We will give preference to new applicants who have not received previous CAHMP GRA support.  

  

 

Greg Stein