Crystal Dobratz named Fryrear Chair for Innovation and Excellence

Crystal Dobratz, associate teaching professor of economics and business and director of the Engineering and Technology Management Program, has been selected as the Fryrear Chair for Innovation and Excellence at Colorado School of Mines. 

Endowed by Mines alum Ben Fryrear ‘62, the chair recognizes and supports highly accomplished Mines faculty members working to further the vision and mission of the university, for a term of three years.  Each chair receives $25,000 in discretionary funds to fund their work. 

Dobratz will spend her three-year Fryrear term focused on artificial intelligence in teaching and learning, and how to best integrate AI into the classroom through faculty training and curriculum development across the university.  She will work in conjunction with the Office of Undergraduate Studies, Trefny Center and industry partners to develop a structured plan that best prepares Mines undergraduate students to enter a workforce that is rapidly adopting AI practices.  

“When approaching the integration of AI, students will start see it as another sophisticated tool that they learn how to strategically use when appropriate,” Dobratz said. “We will continue to change as AI continues to grow and get more sophisticated, and if students can walk away from Mines feeling as though they can assess and really validate AI outputs, they will be prepared for those advances.”  

As director of the Engineering and Technology Management Program, Dobratz said incorporating an understanding of AI into the student experience has already been a priority of theirs. “We are here to teach STEM students about business, and AI is a part of that,” she said. So far, about 86 percent of coursework in the Engineering and Technology Management Program has been modified to address AI issues. 

“We’ve seen integration of AI into coursework as an action item for a while now, given the rapid movement toward AI that is happening in industry,” Dobratz said.  

Collaborating with industry partners and the Trefny Center is how the Engineering and Technology Management program made decisions on what and how to teach students about AI. She plans to use a similar approach for university-wide recommendations on AI and curriculum. 

Across Mines, AI integration will depend on the specific needs of each department and major. 

“The idea is that all departments will develop industry advisory boards to identify the core of what training needs to be done, but departments will construct what is unique to their majors,” Dobratz said. “There’s not one way to do this because industries are all changing in different ways, some more slowly than others. We need to put structured training in place to help support our faculty to be able to explore what is changing and then allow them the space to decide what is the most appropriate, intentional way in integrate AI into their coursework.” 

Mines faculty with comprehensive knowledge of AI will also be part of the integration effort. 

“We will have a faculty advisory board whose members specialize in AI topics and have societal awareness of AI integration, departmental champions that will be the bridge between departmental faculty and the university, and student ambassadors to come,” she said. “The wonderful thing is that departments are all involved, as well as the Office of Undergraduate Studies and the Trefny Center, and we’re all eager to move forward to get this integrated in the most appropriate way.”  

The faculty advisory board will also include representation from the Office of Graduate Studies to ensure students who plan on pursuing graduate degrees also have a smooth transition to understanding AI in their future academic work. 

Once integration is underway across departments at Mines, faculty will be able to specifically identify the different ways they’ve changed their curriculum and how it reflects changes in their related industries. Dobratz said faculty training, feedback and integration will always put the student experience first.