Episode 76: Brad Fuster on Redesigning Gen Ed by Embedding AI into Experiential Learning
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What are the competencies employers want and students need? How can you redesign your general education curriculum to deliver on those? As you do, how might you integrate AI, foster experiential learning, and engage with industry? We talk about all this and more (like a 90 credit hour degree!) with Brad Fuster, Provost at San Francisco Bay University where they are really reimagining what a university can and should be.
In a world where technology moves at the speed of light, higher education often feels like it's stuck in slow motion. Traditional general education—frequently dismissed by students as a "box-checking exercise"—is overdue for an upgrade. San Francisco Bay University (SFBU) is answering that call by dismantling the old "distribution model" and building a curriculum designed for the modern workforce.
Brad Fuster, Provost at SFBU, recently sat down on the Connected College Podcast to discuss how they are "restarting a university from scratch." By leaning into agility, industry validation, and the holistic integration of AI, SFBU is creating what Fuster calls "Liberal Arts 2.0."
Redefining Student Success: Beyond the Graduation Rate
For decades, higher education has accepted a 50% national graduation rate as the status quo. Fuster argues that in any other industry, a 50% success rate would be considered a failing grade. He defines student success not just by the degree, but by the efficiency and cost of obtaining it.
True success means the highest possible percentage of students graduating on time with little to no debt. To achieve this, SFBU is pioneering 90-credit undergraduate degrees—abbreviated programs that get students into the job market faster without sacrificing the core tenets of a robust education.
The Agility Praxis Pathway: Learning "How To"
The centerpiece of this reimagined experience is the Agility Praxis Pathway. Instead of traditional subjects like "Social Science 101" or "Introduction to Art History," students take 10 required courses with "How To" titles. This shifts the focus from passive content consumption to explicit, measurable outcomes.
These courses were developed by mashing up traditional disciplines into interdisciplinary powerhouses. For example:
How to Tell Your Story: Blends composition and rhetoric with professional storytelling.
How to Design Your Life: Uses Stanford-style design thinking to help students map their personal and professional journeys.
How Your Brain Works: Combines behavioral psychology with neuroscience.
By making the outcomes explicit, students no longer wonder why they are taking a class; they see the direct link between their coursework and their future careers.
AI Integration: From Afterthought to Architecture
While many institutions are currently scrambling to write "AI policies" to prevent cheating, SFBU has built AI into the very fabric of its curriculum. These courses weren't adapted for AI—they were designed with it.
Students learn to use AI ethically and responsibly as a partner in the creative process. Beyond the classroom, SFBU utilizes AI tutor bots trained on specific course content. These bots act as Socratic tutors, asking students questions and guiding them back to specific textbook pages rather than simply providing answers. This "closed system" ensures accuracy while providing 24/7 personalized support.
Closing the Gap Between Education and Industry
Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, SFBU has a unique advantage. They validated their five core learning outcomes—Tenacious Leader, Interpersonally Gifted, Global Navigator, Tech Trendsetter, and Enlightened Thinker—with neighbors like Google, Apple, and Meta.
When employers were asked what they wanted in a graduate, they didn't ask for specific historical dates or abstract theories. They asked for people who could lead movements, work in intercultural teams, and think critically about data. By building the curriculum around these needs, SFBU is ensuring that their "Liberal Arts 2.0" is exactly what the modern economy demands.
Episode 76 Transcript
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Elliot Felix: Brad, welcome to the Connected College podcast.
Bradley Fuster: Thanks, Elliot. It's great to be here with you. It's been a wild year here, and I'm excited to jump in with you.
Elliot Felix: Tell us a little bit about how you got started in higher ed and what you're up to these days.
Bradley Fuster: So originally I was a music professor. All three of my degrees are in percussion performance. I played with orchestras all over the world, recorded in Hollywood, and toured with major orchestras. And then eventually I moved upstairs and became the chair of the department and then just kept going. I landed as a provost of a small liberal arts college in upstate New York called Keuka College. Very traditional. And then just last year made the move to the West Coast and joined the folks at San Francisco Bay University for a really interesting opportunity to restart a university from scratch. We're in this position where there really are no rules right now and we have really tremendous resources to execute on our strategy.
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Bradley Fuster: If you look at the outcomes nationally that higher ed's having, about 50% of the students who enter higher ed are graduating. This is a failing grade. You would not get on an airplane that 50% of the time took your money and left you in some random airport. For me, how to define student success is the highest possible percentage of graduates graduate with little to no debt, and they do it in a timely way. Only in higher ed does six equal four.
Elliot Felix: Yeah, with opportunity costs too. The opportunity cost is huge in those two years, or more. It seems like time for a fresh perspective, which you all are taking.
Bradley Fuster: SFBU is working with our accreditor to be one of the first schools on the west coast to issue 90 credit undergraduate degrees. When you break it down, 30 of those credits are general education and 60 are major content.
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Bradley Fuster: Our gen ed looked very traditional when I arrived. It was the normal distribution model that frankly looks like high school to the student. It's a box-checking exercise. So what we did at SFBU is we developed this agility praxis pathway. There are five global outcomes: to be a tenacious leader, interpersonally gifted, a global navigator, a tech trendsetter, and an enlightened thinker.
Elliot Felix: I really like that approach, beginning with the end in mind.
Bradley Fuster: We have 10 courses that look unlike any other gen ed. They all start with "how to" titles, making outcomes explicit. We've mashed up the traditional liberal arts and sciences in an interdisciplinary way. For example, "How to Tell Your Story" mixes composition with storytelling. "How to Design Your Personal and Professional Life" uses design thinking. All 10 of these courses from the design phase up have AI incorporated into them. It's not an afterthought.
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Bradley Fuster: We have a Center for Empowerment and Pedagogical Innovation with a Chief Learning Officer who ensures faculty have a tightly coupled pedagogy called the PERS model: Personalized, Experiential, Relational, and Student-centered. We also have AI tutors that have been trained in the entirety of the content of the gen ed.
Elliot Felix: How does that work in practice for the student?
Bradley Fuster: You can go home after class and open up your AI tutor and it'll ask, "What did you learn today?" It's Socratic; it doesn't give you the answers. It just keeps asking you questions and looking for key concepts. If you miss something, it tells you to go back to a specific page in the textbook. It's a closed system, so it won't hallucinate. It just knows what we fed it. What we get on the back end is data on what concepts students are struggling with so we can hit those again in class.
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Elliot Felix: How are you going to maintain the magic as you scale up?
Bradley Fuster: Right now, what we're doing here is really proof of concept. We are extremely affordable. We want to show that we can have better outcomes for students who are either unserved or underserved by the typical model—neurodivergent students, at-risk students, first-generation students. We're retaining fall-to-fall at closer to 90% compared to the 30% often seen in these populations.
Elliot Felix: And what's the delivery model for that growth?
Bradley Fuster: We are moving toward online asynchronous pretty rapidly. We have a partnership for 2,000 students in Indonesia in a three-plus-one model that will be online. We're putting the products together, and AI is a big piece of it. We believe it's the future and we're leaning all the way into it.