UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State College of Education has selected the first cohort of students for its new AI Justice Fellows initiative, a program that provides funding for doctoral student research examining how artificial intelligence (AI) is shaping education systems, policy and academic work.
By supporting graduate student research on the social and educational implications of AI, the fellowship program contributes to Penn State’s broader efforts to prepare scholars, educators and institutions to engage thoughtfully with emerging AI technologies.
Graduate students from across the College of Education were invited to propose projects exploring how emerging AI technologies are influencing teaching, research and decision-making in education. Proposals addressed topics such as graduate writing and academic communication, multilingual student experiences, advising and instructional infrastructure, leadership development and education policy.
The program is led by Leah P. Hollis, associate dean for access, equity and inclusion and professor of education.
“The depth and rigor of the proposals affirmed that our graduate students are approaching AI not as a novelty but as a serious site of scholarly inquiry,” Hollis said. “They are asking important questions about how these technologies influence fairness, accountability and responsibility in education systems.”
As a participant in the program’s first cohort, doctoral student Yi “Eve” Wu said the fellowship offers an important opportunity for emerging scholars to examine AI’s growing role in education.
“As a second-year doctoral student in the College of Education, I was especially drawn to the AI Justice Fellows initiative because it creates an important space for students in our college to engage seriously with the role of AI in education,” Wu said. “As AI tools become more widely used in teaching, research and academic work, colleges of education have an important role in helping future educators and scholars understand how to use these technologies responsibly.”
Wu added that generative AI tools are increasingly affecting teaching, research and academic work in the education field, making it essential for emerging educators and scholars to develop the knowledge and critical perspectives needed to navigate these changes.
The AI Justice Fellows initiative brings students together through structured scholarly development sessions throughout the academic year. Fellows receive financial support to advance their research and work toward a full-length manuscript while participating in a collaborative learning community with other graduate scholars across multiple academic programs within the College of Education.
The spring 2026 cohort includes doctoral students representing programs across the college:
- Ghadir Al Saghir, education policy studies — “Using AI-assisted Methods for Policy Analysis and the Examination of Democratic Education Systems: The Case of Equity-Focused Policies across Pennsylvania.”
- Mekdes Abera, lifelong learning and adult education — “Relational Ethics, Ethical AI, and Indigenous Data Sovereignty: Leveraging Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Betä Krǝstiyan Knowledge for Equity in Graduate Education.”
- Nicole Espinoza, World Campus doctor of education (D.Ed.) program with a graduate certificate in institutional research — “Student Participatory Development of AI Guidelines in Doctoral Programs.”
- Nainika Hira, counselor education — “Custom GPTs in Counselor Education.”
- Anna Eunji Kim, science education — “Generative AI as a Co-Regulation Partner for Supporting Graduate Engagement.”
- Seong "Song" Yeup Kim, educational psychology — “Socratic Questioning in the Age of Generative AI: A Taxonomy for Epistemic Governance in Human-AI Interaction.”
- Suyoung Park, comparative and international education — “Examining Identity Signals in AI-Mediated Feedback: Differential Responses for Multilingual Graduate Students.”
- Asis Wayhudi, curriculum and instruction — “Between Support and Surveillance: A Sociocultural and Motivational Analysis of AI-Mediated Academic Work Among International Graduate Students.”
- Yi “Eve” Wu, education policy studies — “Who Gets to Sound Scholarly? Generative AI, Epistemic Authority and Linguistic Justice in Graduate Education.”
Al Saghir said the program’s focus on fairness and accountability provides an important perspective for education policy research.
“I was drawn to the AI Justice Fellows initiative because it centers questions of fairness and responsibility in conversations about AI development and research,” Al Saghir said. “My project integrates machine learning with traditional qualitative policy analysis to examine policymaking related to fairness and opportunity across Pennsylvania’s 499 school districts.”
Engaging with peers who are experimenting with AI in different research contexts, she said, strengthens the rigor of her work by encouraging scholars to think carefully about both the methodological and ethical implications of using AI in education research.
In addition to supporting individual projects, Hollis said, the initiative establishes a foundation for future programming related to AI and education within the College of Education.
To help guide the initiative’s development, Hollis completed a professional certification program in artificial intelligence offered through Penn State’s Digital Education initiative and continues professional development focused on the role of AI in teaching, research and higher education leadership.
“Our responsibility is not simply to adopt AI,” Hollis said. “It is to ask how we integrate it in ways that are responsible, accountable and aligned with our educational mission.”