How the Ilitch School Is Preparing the Next Generation for an AI-Driven Workforce

Artificial Intelligence has reshaped the way we work, learn, and engage with many facets of life. At the Mike Ilitch School of Business, students are building the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in an AI-driven workforce, with faculty updating course offerings to stay at the forefront of this emerging technology.

"As we connect with employers and companies in our region, we are well aware that artificial intelligence is transforming the business landscape. It is essential that we prepare our students to understand, navigate, and lead through these changes," said Dr. Virginia Franke Kleist, Dean of the Mike Ilitch School of Business. "I am pleased by the deep intellectual work our faculty are doing to bring AI into the classroom in thoughtful and innovative ways. They are helping students explore emerging technologies, understand their practical applications across business disciplines, and recognize the importance of using these tools responsibly and critically. Through their teaching and research, our faculty are at the top of their AI game, ensuring that the Ilitch School remains at the forefront of business education while preparing graduates with the adaptability and skills to succeed in an AI-driven world."

Several courses have been developed to specifically help students explore the intersections of AI and their area of expertise, including marketing, finance, technology and business management.

AI and Marketing

Few industries have been impacted by the advent of AI as much as marketing, and Dr. Archer Yue Pan, assistant professor of marketing at the Ilitch School, wants to make sure his students are prepared for an industry that places a premium on these skills.

"I'm very passionate about marketing because it has a unique position relative to other business subjects," said Pan. "Marketers can use tools all the time to improve their efficiency like codecs and cloud computing, and AI is one more tool to help you generate marketing materials, do data analytics and create dashboards or new applications."

Pan sees AI and marketing overlapping heavily. Marketers can use these tools to generate marketing materials or analyze data, but only when they are familiar with how they work. Otherwise, they can get inconsistent results or find answers they are not looking for.

"Using prompt engineering, marketers can ask AI to generate marketing materials on their behalf," said Pan. "I want students to walk away from this class and be more ambitious and comfortable putting together a prompt so they can efficiently generate whatever materials they're looking for from the program."

He also hopes that, through his class, students become comfortable exploring a wider range of AI tools that can have different functionalities and use cases.

"I think many students are constrained to either one or two types of AI. Some use ChatGPT, others use Claude and just assume they are the best AI tool out there," said Pan. "As marketers we should know that there are lots of AI tools out there and some are better in some regards than others."

Pan views his class, MKT 5900: AI in Marketing as a seminar, encouraging open discussion about AI through three areas of focus.

"First, we review how the business world has adopted AI, and we will have a discussion around it and brainstorm how AI can be used to enhance business functions," said Pan. "The second part will be practical, for students to practice with the major AI programs and get used to using AI to do tasks like generating marketing materials, using AI for predictive analysis, segmentation analysis and some vibe coding to create their own dashboards.

"Finally, we are going to talk about consumers' reaction toward AI, and for that we will read journal articles and research findings and have a discussion about psychological factors that are blocking consumers' receptivity."

Pan hopes that his students can confidently speak about AI in the workforce and feel confident continuing to explore developments in AI.

"I want them to try different AI products, and to know that more and newer ones will be coming out," said Pan. "If you're ambitious you can use AI to help you develop digital applications, ask AI to help you understand the engineers on your team and what they have been coding or designing so you can better communicate these developments with customers and do internal communications."

Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity

While generative AI is typically what first comes to mind when people think about AI tools, there is a wide array of applications outside of generating text, images and video content. Dr. Kwame Porter Robinson, assistant professor of technology, information systems and analytics, teaches these applications in his course TIS/ACC 7290: Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity.

"It isn't all a chatbot, there's so much more than that. There's AI in cybersecurity, there's AI for networks and blockchain too," said Robinson. "You don't know what you don't know, and so by having a rigorous and well-structured classroom plan informed by people who are experts in their field, you are really going to learn a lot more than you really could have imagined."

Robinson explained that the intersection of these technologies creates a new space where consumers and businesses interact with each other in a virtual reality type environment.

"You find a lot of what used to be called the metaverse, and is now rebranded into virtual reality," said Robinson. "The idea is that within a manufacturing supply chain you can look at a plant or a production line and overlay new layers using AI to see what impacts a change may have. From a social branding perspective, you can take the customer and show them what a product might look like within their environment or show them a customization that they could request."

As students experiment with AI, Robinson encourages them to be systematic about their processes and record their attempts to automate processes and generate content.

"Students should create a log of what works and what doesn't work so they can make a personalized plan that's not sucked up into a corporate AI, but rather a record of what works and what didn't," said Robinson. "AI will be in everything. The question will no longer be if AI relates to your discipline but how, and how can I work with it in ways that are different."

This interconnectivity of AI is one lesson that Robinson hopes students take away from his course.

"Everything is interconnected at many different levels," said Robinson. "Security connects different networks and different companies together and using AI to help sit in the middle to mediate these technologies will be how more and more technologies are integrated. As these technologies connect us more, it will become very important to protect your data for any kind of production that is being done, especially using AI."

AI as Venture Partner

Incorporating AI into existing business strategies or building businesses around AI has been a key topic as these technologies grow. Dr. AB Doleh, a part-time faculty member in technology, information systems and analytics, has been using AI to enhance his own business ventures for some time and brings this experience into the classroom.

"I do everything with AI, I use it in my own businesses and my own ventures," said Doleh. "To that end I am quite familiar with the different levels of application of AI, and how AI can help support not only the execution side, but on the decision making and on the analysis side."

Outside of his role as a part-time faculty member, Doleh is a serial entrepreneur, founding enterprises including Examnasium, an education technology platform, Elevate Education Inc., an education technology venture focused on expanding access to personalized learning, Minds @ Work, a media platform hosting conversations with founders, operators, researchers and other practitioners, and MaacVerify, a third-party assessment and certification infrastructure for text-based AI performance.

Doleh says all of these ventures are made possible by applying AI tools in effective and measurable ways.

"The reason most businesses that deploy AI see zero return is because if you add AI to a broken process, the process is still broken but it is much better at being broken," said Doleh. "You have to look at the process itself."

This philosophy for AI integration is at the core of Doleh's graduate-level class TIS 7550: AI Strategies and Operations. In this class, Doleh hopes his students can identify processes where AI can and should be integrated in a precise way, rather than just applying a new tool to the process.

"The central question is how to identify processes that are fit for AI involvement, and once you answer that, the question becomes how do you establish metrics to determine if the deployment is successful. That's the key message," said Doleh. "There's a lot of hype and a lot of noise on AI that people fall into. I wanted to teach students how to identify the processes where you can get the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to applying AI."

Doleh has found that many of his students are hungry to learn more about AI in a structured format, but don't know where to begin.

"Younger professionals want to learn about AI, but they're bombarded by so much information and so much hype, they don't know where to go," said Doleh. "I want to make sure that graduates from Wayne State have the proper 21st century skills needed to use AI the right way."

Going beyond generative AI is important for Doleh as well. He hopes to open students up to the deeper world of work AI that the majority of AI users don't see.

"Today we have Grok Bot and Muse and Hermes and you've got different tools that do different things," said Doleh. "I share with students the challenges that I had to go through and what I've learned building businesses with AI."

While these technologies are moving quickly, Ilitch School faculty are preparing students to thrive in a world where these new technologies become the norm.

-Patrick Bernas, Information Officer III

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