College of Education

2023 Impact Report
Our LeadershipCollege FactsOur StoriesOur ResearchOur ProgramsAlumni and Donors Previous Years

New NSF-Funded INVITE Institute Uses AI to Promote Equity in STEM Education

The National Science Foundation awarded $20 million dollars over five years to establish the Inclusive and Intelligent Technologies for Education (INVITE) Institute, based in the College of Education.

H Chad Lane INVITE research broadens engagement and learning of STEM among historically marginalized Pre-K through 12th grade students. More than 96,000 youths across 24 school districts will be engaged in enhanced STEM learning using INVITE platforms designed to promote persistence, academic resilience and collaboration, qualities that research has shown are critical to academic achievement. Schools, universities, community organizations, and museums will provide formal and informal learning opportunities – emphasizing hands-on activities related to real-world challenges.

The NSF’s support enables us to pursue transformative interdisciplinary research in AI, the learning sciences and psychology, and to couple that with aggressive outreach and AI education efforts so we can reach students and teachers at a national scale.

H. Chad Lane

INVITE director and Professor of Educational Psychology, Computer Science, and Curriculum & Instruction
Rodney Hopson Suma Bhat Cheng-Xiang Zhai Jina Kang Robb Lindgren Luc Paquette Colleen Lewis Jessica Gladstone

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) INVITE team includes, top row (L-R) Rodney Hopson, a professor of evaluation in Educational Psychology and INVITE’s evaluation director; electrical and computer engineering professor Suma Bhat; co-principal investigator Cheng-Xiang Zhai, the Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering in the department of computer science; Curriculum and Instruction professors Jina Kang, Robb Lindgren and Luc Paquette; computer science professor Colleen Lewis; and Educational Psychology professor Jessica Gladstone.