Cochise Newsroom

New FIPSE-funded project brings together students, educators, and community members to shape how AI education takes root in the region.

 

Cochise College has launched AI-Powered Success, a new initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), designed to prepare students across Cochise County for a workforce increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence.

 

Whether you're a parent wondering what skills your child will need after graduation, a business owner trying to figure out how AI fits into your operations, a teacher looking for guidance on how to talk about this technology in the classroom, or simply a resident curious about what's coming next, this project has a place for you. Southern Arizona sits at a crossroads: a rural, border region shaped by agriculture, defense and aerospace anchored by Fort Huachuca, healthcare, cross-border trade, and a tourism economy built on our history and landscape, now facing the same technological shifts transforming industries nationwide. AI-Powered Success is about making sure our region isn't left to adapt after the fact but is actively shaping what AI readiness looks like here, on our own terms and with input from the people who call this region home.

 

At the heart of the initiative is a simple but often-overlooked idea: the people closest to a challenge should help design its solution. Rather than importing a one-size-fits-all curriculum, Cochise College is building this work from the ground up, through structured listening sessions that welcome a wide range of perspectives, from educators and families to community organizations and local government, each with something to offer this conversation. Among those many voices, two stand out as especially vital to getting this right: the voices of industry and the voices of the people in the classroom, teachers and students alike. Local employers and workers understand, better than almost anyone, how AI is already changing day-to-day work, from agriculture and healthcare to manufacturing and small business, and their insight helps ensure that what students learn in the classroom reflects what they'll encounter on the job. As Crystal Wambach, Director of Curriculum for Sierra Vista Unified School District, put it during the project's first listening session, the goal is to “recognize and honor that AI is becoming a part of the new workplace our students will enter, rather than treating it as a cheating issue.” Teachers, too, are not simply expected to implement whatever comes next; their daily experience in the classroom makes them essential voices in shaping how AI is taught and used responsibly. And students themselves are not just the beneficiaries of this work, but participants in shaping it: their questions, concerns, and ideas about AI directly inform how the initiative develops, so that it reflects what young people in this region actually want to know and need to be ready for.

 

This work falls under Key Initiative 3 of the grant, known as the K-Industry Partnership Pipeline, an effort to build lasting connections between K-12 education and the employers and industries that will hire tomorrow's graduates. The first listening session under this initiative was held via Zoom on September 9, 2026, bringing together teachers, IT staff, and school leaders from across the county for an open conversation about where AI is already showing up in their classrooms and where it still worries them. As Dylan Thompson, a history teacher at Bisbee High School, told the group, AI is “a transformative tool when used correctly; a very destructive one when used arbitrarily or carelessly,” a line that captured the balance organizers hope to strike as the initiative moves forward. A companion listening session convening local industry and business stakeholders is planned for this fall, extending that same dialogue to the employers who will ultimately hire these students. Together, these sessions mark the start of an ongoing conversation that organizers hope will grow to include voices from across the county.

 

Through AI-Powered Success, Cochise College aims to build sustained partnerships between K-12 schools, higher education, and regional industry; ensure that AI-related curriculum is informed by real workforce needs and real student input; create a model for rural and border-region communities navigating AI integration in education that other communities like ours can learn from; and strengthen the pathway from K-12 education into postsecondary and career opportunities in Cochise County.

 

Organizers describe this as an early and evolving effort, one intentionally built to grow through community input rather than handed down as a fixed plan. There is something hopeful in that approach: in a region that has always found strength in knowing its neighbors and looking out for one another, the future of AI education here won't be written by any single institution or industry. It will be written together, one conversation at a time.
 
Additional listening sessions and partnership-building opportunities are planned in the months ahead, and the door remains open for anyone who wants to be part of shaping what comes next.

 

Eric Meyer serves as the AI Grant Partnership Coordinator at Cochise College.