Computer science teacher Marie Johnson was one of ten high school teachers in South Carolina who were accepted into the AI Research Experience for Teachers (RET) Program through ADAPT.

ADAPT stands for AI-Enabled Devices for the Advancement of Personalized and Transformative Healthcare.

Johnson is excited about her acceptance and looks forward to participating.

“It sounded like a very cutting-edge program centered on AI,” she said. “What more would a computer science teacher want to learn about?”

The RET program contact is Christopher Korey, an associate provost at the College of Charleston.

The program is for high school teachers and is centered on AI and biomedical research; it takes place in the summer, starting the week of June 9 and lasting six weeks.

It is a hybrid experience and participants will spend two days, one at the beginning and one at the end of the program, at the College of Charleston. The rest of the program will be remote research.

Each week will focus on a different topic: Artificial Intelligence Foundations, AI Ethics and Acceptance, Biomedical Data for AI, Large Language Models (LLMS) – ChatGPT, AI for Solving Real World Problems and finally the Culmination Project.

Teachers will be paid $5,000 after completing the RET Program and will receive a certificate in Generative AI and Large Language Models. 

“It’s the latest technology that is out there, and it will give me more knowledge to bring back to the classroom for my students,” said Johnson.