Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the business landscape, creating the need for professionals who are well-versed in this powerful technology. That’s where Daniel Bauer comes in. As senior associate dean for programs at the Wisconsin School of Business, he’s leading the school’s integration of AI in several key areas.
After arriving at WSB in 2018, Bauer was tapped for a task that only someone with his statistical and teaching expertise could tackle: design and build out WSB’s data-focused master’s programs. Now, the Hickman-Larson Chair in Actuarial Science is leveraging his technical background to position WSB as a leader in the AI space—an exciting opportunity to create lasting impact for students.
WSB: How are you integrating AI into school programs?
Daniel Bauer: Updating our curricula to be at the cutting edge is one way we’re doing this. We have these more technical degree programs—such as our Master of Science-Business: Analytics and our Master of Science-Business: Data, Insights, and Analytics—where we expect the graduates to have a deep understanding of AI models to help firms implement this technology into their own processes. Our curriculum in that space now has even more focus on these large-scale, deep learning models, including foundational and advanced machine learning courses. We’re also helping our instructors integrate AI technology into their courses through an AI-Enabled Teaching Excellence Workshop Series.
WSB: What about undergraduate students who likely won’t build AI models—but will still need to know basic AI fundamentals to stay competitive in the workforce?
DB: We are infusing AI throughout the undergraduate curriculum, starting with a required class that introduces students to what these models are, how they work, and how to use them. It teaches students how to utilize large language models for writing improvement and brainstorming, while also making them aware of their limitations.
A key component of this class is a set of podcasts called UNsupervised: AI in Business, where professors from different departments discuss how AI is impacting their field. Additionally, we’re integrating AI components in all our undergraduate core classes and building AI courses in our majors.
“Being able to use AI, talk about it, and be on the forefront is extremely important.”
—Daniel Bauer
WSB: How will an AI-infused curriculum benefit students’ leadership capabilities?
DB: From a leader’s perspective, students need to be able to answer questions like: How do I realize the benefits of AI? How do I integrate it into our processes? How do I think about managing this new ecosystem with AI and human agents? In response, we’re developing some new classes, starting with our professional graduate programs. One class is about psychology and AI, which focuses on how people use the technology to come to optimal decisions, and what that means for the design of these systems.
WSB: What excites you about the new AI Hub for Business?
DB: The AI Hub for Business gives WSB one central location for strategic interactions between departments and our various partners—including our students, who formed a new AI student organization with the hub’s support. So, if we’re already doing something on the teaching side, but there’s also a corporate appetite for it, we can leverage what’s happening in one area to help in another. The AI Hub for Business allows us to learn and realize synergies that come in from these different activities along these different vectors—which is really exciting.
If you think about what we do as a school, there’s the teaching mission for sure. But we also want to push the frontiers of research. Being able to use AI, talk about it, and be on the forefront is extremely important. There’s also a big mission we have in view of our corporate partnerships, public partnerships, and our impact on the state of Wisconsin. AI is so important to these areas in terms of upskilling, reskilling, and knowing how to benefit from the technology, and the AI Hub for Business helps us get there.
WSB: How do these efforts align with campuswide initiatives?
DB: RISE-AI is a big initiative at the campus level to upskill AI knowledge and familiarity on the research side by hiring many new faculty members at UW–Madison. WSB is hiring half a dozen researchers who will push forward our abilities and footprint in this space. The great thing about hiring these faculty members within the same year is that it creates a cohort that unites them across their respective departments. The ability for them to learn from each other and collaborate will allow them to tackle some really big questions.