Kansas State University
KS · AI Readiness #178 of 227
AIREDEX™ Score: 5.5 /10
K-State's BS in Machine Learning and Autonomous Systems at the Salina campus is one of the few undergraduate AI degrees of its kind in the country, and the Beocat is the largest academic supercomputer in Kansas.
A university-wide AI task force, with the support of the Provost's office, runs with five working groups, and CAIDS and ID3A, both directed by Pascal Hitzler, coordinate research spanning computer science, agriculture, and engineering. The College of Business Administration is embedding new for-credit AI courses into every undergraduate business major this year, building on five existing AI microcredentials. No one at K-State holds AI strategy as their actual job the way Mississippi State's Julie Jordan does, and none of K-State's federal AI grants come close to the size of the big multi-institution awards other schools are landing.
Pillar grades
- Commitment: B-
- Curriculum: D
- Partnerships: C-
- Research: B+
A(I)ttitude™: cautious
Selected Highlights
- University Task Force on Responsible Use of Generative AI established November 2025 with named co-chairs (James Wiser, Melanie Derby), five working groups, and Provost Jesse Perez Mendez as executive sponsor - strong cross-campus governance structure.
- Two named cross-disciplinary AI institutes confirmed: CAIDS (Director Pascal Hitzler, multiple affiliated labs across CS) and ID3A (Director Hitzler, co-director McCornack, spanning Agriculture, Engineering, Arts & Sciences, Education, and Salina campus).
- BS in Machine Learning and Autonomous Systems at K-State Salina is a standalone undergraduate AI degree, described as one of the few of its kind in the US, available on-campus, online, and hybrid with dedicated Tesla V100 GPU hardware.
- Beocat HPC cluster provides free access to all Kansas educational researchers and students, featuring Nvidia A100 GPUs, 10,000 processor cores, and 3.3 petabytes of storage - currently the largest academic supercomputer in Kansas.
- CAIDS meets the $1M+ external funding threshold via NSF Proto-OKN subawards ($1.03M to Hitzler and McGinty) and prior KnowWhereGraph grant (~$1M), with 3+ affiliated faculty named publicly.