DCU launches Ireland’s first Business School AI Fellows Programme to advance AI fluency across business disciplines

DCU Business School is launching Ireland’s first AI Fellows Programme, a new initiative designed to support academics in exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping their disciplines and embedding AI more meaningfully into teaching, curriculum and assessment.

The new programme will provide selected academic Fellows with dedicated time and funding to redesign a module, integrating AI more fully while developing practical examples and approaches that can be shared across the School.

The initiative reflects DCU Business School’s commitment to ensuring that graduates are equipped with the knowledge, skills and critical understanding needed to lead and work effectively in an increasingly AI-enabled business environment.

The AI Fellows Programme will provide each Fellow with funding to support AI-related training and software and dedicated time to develop and implement their work.

Through the programme, Fellows will explore how AI is transforming their discipline and consider how this can be reflected in curriculum design, teaching and assessment. Their work will also contribute to a wider culture of AI fluency across DCU Business School, providing practical examples and insights that can be shared with colleagues and inform future developments in teaching and learning.

The current Fellows and their projects include:

Prof Maura McAdam – “Practising the Pitch, Rehearsing the Hard Conversations: AI Simulations for Entrepreneurship Education”: exploring how generative AI can be used to create realistic entrepreneurial learning experiences through simulated investor, mentor and stakeholder interactions. The project examines how students can develop creativity, judgement and entrepreneurial confidence while learning to identify and critically challenge gender and cultural biases that may be embedded within AI-generated responses, feedback and decision-making processes.

Dr Julie Bertz – “The AI Junior Accountant: Developing Professional Judgement in an AI-Enabled Accounting Profession”: using realistic AI-generated accounting tasks containing deliberately seeded errors, students will be required to apply their accounting knowledge, professional scepticism and judgement to identify and correct mistakes. Grounded in the Dakan, Feller and Anthropic AI Fluency Framework, the project will explore students’ confidence and ability to critically evaluate AI-generated financial information.

Prof Tim Hubbard – “Developing an AI-first learning system to accelerate Irish education”: an AI-forward learning platform that combines interactive course content, AI tutors and decision simulations with challenge-based project management, enabling students to develop strategic and consulting skills through more immersive, practical experiences.

Dr Mathieu Mercadier – “Developing an AI-Inclusive Executive Education Framework”: helping participants use AI effectively, critically and responsibly through practical activities involving AI assistants, source-grounded AI, no-code tools, agents and workflow automation. The project will also create teaching resources for a wider Executive Education audience.

Speaking about the launch of this Programme, Executive Dean, Prof Theo Lynn said:

“AI is reshaping the way organisations operate, how decisions are made and the skills required by tomorrow’s business leaders. As a Business School, we have a responsibility to ensure our teaching, research and engagement with industry keep pace with this rapidly changing environment. The AI Fellows Programme will give our colleagues the time, resources and space to experiment, innovate and share what works, helping us to build AI fluency across the School.”

The AI Fellows Programme forms part of a broader School-wide investment in building AI expertise. Additional funding has been allocated to support initiatives across teaching and learning, research and industry engagement, as well as to grow AI capacity within academic Groups, among Professional Staff and across the Centre for Executive and International Education.