The University announced the creation of the School of Data Science on Tuesday. The school, containing the first academic unit in Alabama focused on artificial intelligence, will officially open in the fall 2027 semester.
UA President Peter Mohler said that the school will ensure that faculty, staff and students will be able to interpret data and utilize artificial intelligence competently and responsibly.
“We will be one of the first universities in the country to engage in artificial intelligence at the full enterprise level as the state’s flagship university,” Mohler said.
He said the School of Data Science will have certificate, undergraduate, masters and doctoral programs “to integrate technical experience, ethical, social and economic considerations.”
Mohler said the University will seek final approval to create the school from the UA System Board of Trustees in June, followed by approval from the Alabama Commission on Higher Education and a national search for the school’s dean in the fall. According to a timeline on the school’s website, the School of Data Science would open for undergraduates in the fall of 2027 and for graduate students at an unspecified date after spring 2028.
“Employers are looking for students that have AI competency,” Mohler said, citing the need for AI competency in various fields such as nursing, social work, business and healthcare. “This is a major effort to combine our expertise in all these disciplines to respond to the needs of the state and, frankly, the nation.”
The School of Data Science is the second new school announced by Mohler during his nine months as UA President, following the School of Leadership and Policy, also slated to launch in the fall 2027 semester.
Earlier in the month, the University also announced The UA AI Experience, a free five-module course to establish “a standard of excellence for AI use,” including ethical and responsible usage, “effective prompting strategies” and protection of academic integrity. All students will be automatically enrolled in the course via Blackboard, which will launch in the fall 2026 semester, but all faculty, staff and “members of the UA community” will be “encouraged to complete the UA AI Experience.”
“This is to provide a framework of basic AI competency of literacy across our enterprise system,” Mohler said. “But what we will add to that are curriculums that have already been developed by our faculty across our incredible colleges.”
In a promotional video for the UA AI Experience, Mohler said that “artificial intelligence is redefining how the world learns, works and discovers.”
The AI Experience will be hosted in collaboration with the Office of Teaching Innovation and Digital Education, the UA Teaching Academy and UA Online. Claire Major, the faculty director of the UA Teaching Academy, said that the new program would enable “shared vocabulary and common expectations” for appropriate use of AI in a promotional article. The UA Teaching Academy hosts videos instructing faculty in how to grade and generate written feedback using AI.
Major did not respond to a request for comment.
Mohler said the construction of the University’s high-performance computing data center, set to open in early 2027, will give the University a single hub to operate out of regarding AI usage.
“I want to make sure we’re using our resources very efficiently because these are taxpayer dollars,” he said. “So instead of having every single one of our colleges to build out 12 data centers, we need to be able to think about having one central hub.”
Experts have expressed concern about the environmental and infrastructural impact of data center projects like the one at the University, which is projected to consume power equivalent to a small city once fully built out. Noman Bashir, a postdoctoral researcher in artificial intelligence at MIT and fellow with the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium, told The Crimson White that data centers running on residential power — like the new UA HPC — can distort consumer electricity, increase water and energy bills and impact the health of the local population through pollution.
“The School of Data Science represents a historic investment in Alabama’s future,” Mohler said. “It aligns directly with our goal to position The University of Alabama as a national academic leader.”
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