Led by Assistant Professor Joe Faith, students will be able to enroll in Harding’s Artificial Intelligence program starting next fall.
SEARCY, Ark. — Starting next year, students at Harding University will be able to major in Artificial Intelligence in a program that university officials call the first of its kind anywhere in the southeast.
Harding Assistant Professor Joe Faith works in the school’s College of Business, but also has graduate degrees in Engineering and Data Science, which inspired him to start the new major.
“I brought this to [Dr. Dana Steil, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences] and Dr. Spears, our provost and said, ‘Hey, you know, I’d really be interested in making a major out of this,'” Faith told us.
John Brown University in Siloam Springs also recently started an AI major, but Faith said Harding’s will have additional class offerings and be different from other similar programs around the country.
“In terms of undergrad education, this is something really special,” Faith said. “If you wanted to get education in AI, typically, that would be at a master’s, if not PhD level. So being able to do it at the undergrad level is huge.”
The major will be part of the school’s Computer Science program, and in addition to classes that already exist, Faith said there will be seven new AI offerings for students to take.
For Paul Maynard, who’s on the university’s Executive Leadership team, he said the major will be incredibly valuable and is worth a look.
“If you’re interested in cutting-edge knowledge and experience,” Maynard said, “It will prepare you for the job market for decades to come. We think artificial intelligence is really something that you should check out. And if you’re going to do it in this part of the country, it’s going to be at Harvard University.”
Another point Faith emphasized is that Harding won’t just teach students to use AI, they’ll also teach them to do so ethically.
“A lot of the teaching is about, ‘How do we make this bigger, better, faster,'” Faith said, “But not really thinking about what the consequences of that could be. I really know that the future is going to demand having ethical engineers to build these systems.”
In particular, Faith noted that biased algorithms could cause much more harm than a biased individual based on how quickly these algorithms work.
Faith said it’s important that those working with AI in the future install safeguards against bias and build ethically sound systems.
While students will be able to enroll in the major starting in the Fall of 2025, the first class for it won’t be taught until the following Spring.
For school officials, it’s about getting ahead of the curve before they get left behind.
“It’s going to be a part of any job that currently exists,” Maynard said, “And frankly, jobs that don’t exist now but will be new over the next decade.”
“We’re at the precipice of a new age,” Faith added. “You know, the last time I can think of something like this could be like internet, or steam power, or electricity.”
Faith and Maynard both said that Harding has plans to take AI education even further in the next couple of years.
Faith said he’d be interested in a program that adds AI components onto a traditional business education, as a second major or even just an add-on.
“Maybe more of an applied AI,” Faith described, “Instead of all the technical side, how could we have a piece that is more, maybe for someone who just works in a business that wants to utilize these tools or understand how to use them?”
Maynard said he hopes Harding could begin a program like this in 2026 and added that a master’s degree in AI is also in the works.
“We’ll have an AI with a computer science emphasis in the fall of 2025,” Maynard said. “Our plan is to offer an AI degree with a business emphasis in the fall of 2026, followed by a master’s degree in artificial intelligence, which will be one of the few in the southeast region.”
Source: 'This is something really special' | Arkansas university to offer AI major
