VCU’s business school preps students for AI economy

It’s the human factor that’s key to the acceptance and success of artificial intelligence in the marketplace, says Cesar Zamudio, a Virginia Commonwealth University professor who researches brand perceptions.
For consumers to buy in, he explains, “there always has to be a strong human element. The mileage may vary, [but] no human in the loop is wrong.”

As most people in the workplace are aware, generative AI adoption is on the rise in nearly every industry. But for those in the marketing field, artificial intelligence tools are all but inescapable.

The 2024 State of Marketing AI Report, which surveyed 1,800 marketing professionals, reported that 99% say they’re personally using AI in some fashion, “and the level of AI usage is rising significantly. Thirty-six percent of respondents say that AI is now infused into their daily workflows,” up from 29% who said the same in 2023, according to the report.

Brian P. Brown, dean of the VCU School of Business and a marketing expert, says that the speed with which AI-powered tools are developed and updated means that he and his faculty colleagues have to work hard to stay on top of the innovations.

“Almost by the day there’s a new technology, a new application,” he says. “We’ve been aggressive. We have new courses, a new AI minor. We have a number of labs.”

But also, faculty members are excited about new opportunities and information to pass along to their students, Brown says.

“They love learning new things. They love experimenting with it.”

Of course, AI is also making many people nervous, especially those who are concerned about being replaced by Claude or Copilot in their jobs.

Brown gets it. A VCU marketing professor who was named interim business dean in 2024 and permanent dean in April, Brown worked in marketing for The Coca-Cola Co. and Snapper Power Equipment before entering academia.

Years in the corporate world helped prepare him for the AI explosion, he says. “I was in the dotcom space. AI reminds me of that boom. That has allowed me to realize that change is inevitable. You have to embrace it.”

‘Everywhere, like electricity’

Since the advent of ChatGPT in 2022, AI has become “a general-purpose technology. It shows up everywhere, like electricity,” says Carol Scotese, the business school‘s interim associate dean of academic and faculty affairs. An associate professor of economics, Scotese says that the newness of the technology gives her and her colleagues a great deal to think about in terms of what to teach their students.

“A lot is in the experimentation stage,” she says. “We’re a business school, so we want to prepare our students for how AI is being used in the workplace” and give them the skills they most need in the future.

That means developing multiple programs and labs, like VCU’s Human-AI ColLab, which opened in September 2024. The lab’s focus, says director Victoria Yoon, is on finding solutions in cybersecurity, health care data, digital transformation and AI ethics.

Inside the lab, faculty and students are working on complex national security challenges that require AI to collect and process vast amounts of data, while others are figuring out ways to use chatbots and generative AI for health care services.

The AI for Transformative Business research program takes on larger questions about using machine learning, social media and other analytics to reshape business models, and participants in the ethics program are working to eliminate bias and untrustworthy results in AI tools.

Another goal, says Yoon, an information systems professor, is “to show students what they can do by themselves, how they can excel beyond the AI system. We want to give them a sense of accomplishment.”

Associate marketing professor Zamudio agrees that student buy-in hinges on showing them that “you have given them a valuable tool. Our curriculum has evolved to not just show how to use AI, but how to enhance your work. It’s not just knowing the tool but knowing when and how to use it.”

Scotese notes that respecting their students’ time is important as well. “We try not to duplicate what’s being done at the university level. You didn’t hear me say we have introductory classes on the basics [because] the university provides basics on AI.”

Seeking better jobs

Alejandro Porrata is a student in VCU’s decision analytics master’s program, which he pursued after earning his bachelor’s degree in information systems at the university. He says he was ready to “to dig a little deeper.”

The information systems department, home of the decision analytics master’s program, is where “we produce people who serve as bridges between technical expertise and business acumen,” says professor and department chair Paul Brooks.

Faculty prepare students to understand a wide variety of tools and “to decide which tools are appropriate for the problem and the job,” Brooks says. Student teams, under faculty supervision, get experience in real-life projects, like using AI to analyze trends and recommend investments or sports bets.

The master of decision analytics program takes place on weekends and attracts experienced professionals who are looking to make career changes.

“They’re in class on the weekend. Then they go into work on Monday and use what they learned,” says Brooks, who specializes in machine learning and decision analytics. The program, for example, has been popular with nurses who want to learn to analyze health data.

Porrata has had the opportunity to use tools like LangChain, an open-source framework for building applications based on large language models, and Hightouch, a data and AI platform for marketing and personalization.

As part of the program, students work directly with businesses on live projects. Porrata’s team has been building a chatbot for a car repair business, he says. “It’s a tool operator mechanics can use for unplanned maintenance. It’s a tool they use as a first line of defense before having to escalate the issue.”

The team is doing testing and development this fall, and Porrata expects to deliver the product to the company’s executives before he graduates in December.

With degree in hand, Porrata hopes to parlay his analytical skills into a new job at the bank where he works.

“I’m looking for something in the data science and the machine learning space,” he says. “I want to provide business value.”

Students also take part in the annual Business Analytics and AI Challenge, sponsored by Altria Group and hosted by VCU’s departments of information systems and supply chain management and analytics.

Now in its sixth year, the challenge asks students to leverage analytics and AI tools to solve real-world business problems. More than 160 students signed up for this year’s semester-long challenge, forming 50 teams. Of those, 38 submitted final proposals.

Altria’s judges selected three finalists to visit the company’s Richmond headquarters for a day of workshops, networking and final presentations. The winning student team took home $3,500 in prize money.

Ups and downs of AI

With Brown’s expertise in branding and marketing, as well as Zamudio’s deep research into AI-based ad design, VCU’s business school and its award-winning Brandcenter, where the school’s graduate programs in advertising are based, are well positioned for students entering the AI marketing economy.

Zamudio, who helped develop VCU’s AI Ad Design Lab, says that these tools help businesses advertise without spending much of their own capital.

“If you want to put an ad in social media and you don’t have the design skills, you can look around and create your own ad. It costs from nothing to $20,” he says. “There are easy-to-follow instructions and tutorials for small businesses.”

Users can even get ChatGPT to help, Zamudio adds. “It can be used as a sounding board to critique your ideas.”

But Zamudio and his colleagues are not 100% rah-rah about the technology. The use of artificial intelligence raises several ethical red flags regarding data privacy, cybersecurity, fairness and bias, as well as cheating at the university level, Scotese says. “It’s a real challenge all over.”

The American Civil Liberties Union has warned that AI tools perpetuate housing discrimination in tenant selection and mortgage qualifications, as well as hiring and financial lending discrimination.

The Washington Post reported on police departments using AI-powered facial recognition to make arrests that often lead to prosecution, even though the results are less accurate than traditional detective work. And AI résumé-screening programs sometimes discriminate against Black male names, a 2024 University of Washington study found.

It comes down to societal bias that seeps into the training data for such tools, UW’s researcher said.

Zamudio acknowledges that he hears a lot of concern about AI algorithms that “carry some of the biases” that humans have, and “we don’t have a good way to remove them,” he notes.

There’s also the environmental impact of AI and the hyperscale data centers being built to support increased data usage.

According to projections published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory last year, by 2028 more than half of the electricity going to data centers will be used for artificial intelligence. At that point, AI alone could consume as much electricity annually as 22% of all U.S. households, which means more data centers and water used to keep them cool.

Power demand is expected to grow 5.5% annually over the next decade in Virginia and North Carolina, and double by 2039, according to a regional forecast by PJM, which runs the electrical grid in Virginia.

Ed Baine, president of Dominion Energy Virginia, said last fall that the state is currently experiencing “the largest growth in power demand since the years following World War II,” partly fueled by increased use of artificial intelligence.

All of these issues must be raised during discussions about AI training and use at VCU and other institutions, Scotese says. “We’re working on the guardrails.”

VCU at a glance

Founded
Virginia Commonwealth University was founded in 1838 as the Medical College of Hampden-Sydney and was later renamed the Medical College of Virginia. In 1968, MCV merged with Richmond Professional Institute to form VCU.

Campus
VCU has two campuses in downtown Richmond covering a total of 198 acres. The Monroe Park Campus houses most undergraduate students and classes. VCU’s five health sciences schools, the College of Health Professions, VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center and VCU Health are located on the MCV campus.

Enrollment
Undergraduate: 21,563
Graduate: 5,800
First professional: 1,468
International: 1,165
In-state: 85%
Minority: 57%

Faculty
Full-time faculty: 2,441
Full-time university and academic professionals: 3,841

Tuition and fees
In-state tuition and fees: $17,240*
Tuition and fees (out of state): $40,404*
Room and board and other fees: $15,128**
Average financial aid awarded to full-time freshmen seeking assistance: $19,919

*Based on 15 credit hours per semester and 30 credit hours for the 2025-26 year. This does not include program fees, which vary based on a student’s major.
**Room charge is based on a double occupancy in Rhoads Hall, and the dining rate is for the 200 swipes with $225 dining dollars meal plan for the 2025-26 year.