Schedule
FacultyHack@Gateways 2026 runs as six virtual training sessions in August, followed by the in-person Gateways 2026 Conference in Washington, D.C. in September. All virtual session times are Eastern Time (ET).
Virtual Training Sessions
Six sessions, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, August 3–14, 6:00–8:00 PM ET. Every session below joins on the same Zoom link — add the recurring event to your calendar (.ics) so you don't have to look it up each time. Click a date to collapse it. See "Standard Daily Flow" below for how each session's two hours are broken down.
Mon, August 3 6:00–8:00 PM ET Join Zoom
Announcements 6:00–6:30 PM
Welcome & Introductions
Mentor Time 6:30–7:00 PM
Logistics
Training 7:00–8:00 PM
Mentoring Tips & Next Steps — Je'aime Powell and Linda Hayden
Session Recap
Session 1 Recap: Kickoff, Program Expectations, and SGX3 Overview (August 3, 2026)
The 5th Annual FacultyHack@Gateways 2026 officially launched with a virtual kickoff session that brought together organizers, technical mentors, and faculty participants from across the country.
Session Highlights
- Welcome & Introductions: Organizers Je'aime Powell, Dr. Linda Hayden, and Charlie Dey welcomed the cohort. Participants and mentors introduced themselves, sharing their diverse academic backgrounds, research interests, and preliminary plans for course modifications.
- SGX3 Center of Excellence Overview: Dr. Hayden presented on the mission of SGX3, detailing how science gateways serve as vital full-stack bridges connecting researchers, educators, and students with advanced cyberinfrastructure and high-performance computing (HPC) resources.
- Deliverables & Honorarium Guidelines: Je'aime Powell outlined the seven key deliverables required for participants to earn their $500 honorarium. These include Gateways 2026 conference registration, a travel support application, a bio/headshot, a Gateways poster, a GitHub project repository, a short blog post, and a NAIRR education account.
- Mentor-Mentee Pairings & Breakouts: After reviewing expectations, participants broke out into dedicated virtual rooms with their assigned technical mentors. Teams established their preferred communication channels and began collaborating on their Course Goals slides ahead of Wednesday's training.
Resources
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Slides for the Day 1 SGX3 Overview training.
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Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI)
National organization that provides training, consulting, software, and community support for developing and sustaining Science Gateways.
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Apply for travel support to attend Gateways 2026 in person — indicate that you are presenting a poster.
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The seven deliverables for this program and what's due when.
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Template for your final GitHub repository's README.md.
Wed, August 5 6:00–8:00 PM ET Join Zoom
Announcements 6:00–6:30 PM
NAIRR — Dr. Oyebade Oyerinde
Mentor Time 6:30–7:00 PM
Breakout rooms (1-on-1)
Training 7:00–8:00 PM
Course Goals (1-slide, 2-minute pitch) and AI Deconstruction Deep Dive — Charlie Dey
Session Recap
Session 2 Recap: NAIRR Allocations, Cloud Resources, and Google Notebook (August 5, 2026)
The second virtual session of FacultyHack@Gateways 2026 provided participants with critical pathways to acquire high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) allocations for their classrooms.
Session Highlights
- The Google Notebook Showcase: Organizer Je'aime Powell kicked off the session by demonstrating a powerful workflow utilizing Google's newly updated notebook tool (formerly known as NotebookLM). He showed how dropping session transcripts, meeting chats, and program slides into a dedicated notebook builds a highly targeted, scoped Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) assistant. This allows participants to instantly query program details, deliverables, and lecture materials.
- NAIRR Pilot Portal & Classroom Allocations: Dr. Oyebade Oyerinde (Clark Atlanta University, 2026 NSF NAIRR AI Education Fellow) led an in-depth training on the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot. He highlighted key educational resource providers including Jetstream2 (which offers JupyterHub interfaces and virtual GPU instances like NVIDIA A100s) and CloudBank (offering customized, lightweight JupyterHub environments featuring Python, R, and C++). Dr. Oyerinde shared his personal success deploying a customized CloudBank hub for CAU undergraduate students over the summer.
- The ACCESS and NAIRR Connection: Guest expert Agbeli Ameko provided an essential structural overview. He explained that ACCESS-CI is a national consortium of supercomputing centers pooling hardware resources, while NAIRR is a specialized, NSF-supported subset explicitly dedicated to democratizing national AI training, tools, and research.
- Proposal Requirements & Scoping: Instructors learned how to write a successful NAIRR Classroom Allocation proposal. Requirements include a registered ACCESS ID, an NSF-style CV, and a 3-page Main Document detailing course logistics, per-student GPU/CPU compute estimates, storage requests, and team preparedness. Dr. Oyerinde noted that failing to properly scope per-student resources is the most common stumbling block during the 1-month review process.
- ACCESS Account Troubleshooting: Some participants, such as Kristine Christensen, ran into registration hurdles due to unrecognized institutional domains when creating ACCESS accounts. To resolve these roadblocks, Dr. Linda Hayden scheduled a dedicated ACCESS and NAIRR troubleshooting work session on Friday, August 7 at 5:00 PM Eastern.
- Mentor Collaboration & Course Goals: The session concluded with participants transitioning into virtual breakout rooms with their technical mentors. Teams spent the final block refining their Course Goals slides and preparing for active curriculum adaptation.
Resources
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Course goals slides for this session.
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The National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource pilot portal managed by SGX3 for the NSF to share computing and AI resources across the research community.
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AI-powered "personal research assistant" that lets faculty and students build notebooks from course readings, then ask grounded questions, generate summaries, and create study materials; integrates with Google Classroom for class-specific notebooks and assignments.
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ACCESS portal page where instructors request CloudBank Classroom or other cloud credits, enabling JupyterHub-based computing environments for courses (Python, R, data science, cloud/HPC exercises). Useful for provisioning hands-on computing for a class.
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Main entry point for Jetstream2, a research and education-focused cloud platform where faculty can deploy VMs, JupyterHub, containers, and other environments to support computational labs, online demonstrations, and classroom projects.
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Information and application page for NAIRR Pilot education-focused opportunities, where faculty can propose courses or training activities that use national AI and data resources to support classroom instruction and curriculum development.
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Gateway to national cyberinfrastructure resources and services (including training, allocations, and classroom-oriented platforms like CloudBank and Jetstream2), useful for faculty to discover and connect students to HPC and cloud resources in courses.
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Overview of the ACCESS program's mission and services; helps faculty understand how to leverage ACCESS for course-related computing, training, and student access to national research infrastructure.
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Web-based platform providing data, tools, and simulation capabilities for natural hazards engineering; faculty can use it to bring real research data and analysis tools into civil/structural engineering courses and project-based learning.
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Microsoft MakeCode for micro:bit
Browser-based block and JavaScript coding environment for the BBC micro:bit; enables faculty to run introductory programming, electronics, and STEM activities with students using interactive simulations or physical micro:bits in the classroom.
Fri, August 7 5:00–8:00 PM ET Join Zoom
Pre-Session 5:00–6:00 PM ET
ACCESS-CI and NAIRR account creation support.
Announcements 6:00–6:30 PM
Breakout rooms (group)
Mentor Time 6:30–7:00 PM
Breakout rooms (3 groups)
Training 7:00–8:00 PM
AI Deconstruction Deep Dive — Charlie Dey
Session Recap
Session 3 Recap: ACCESS/NAIRR Troubleshooting, Disciplinary Subgroups, and AI Paradigms (August 7, 2026)
The third virtual session of FacultyHack@Gateways 2026 combined a hands-on troubleshooting pre-session with a restructured mentoring format and an introductory deep dive into how modern AI systems actually work.
Session Highlights
- 5:00 PM ET ACCESS & NAIRR Troubleshooting Session: Prior to the official kickoff, organizers and mentors hosted an optional, highly productive MFA and account setup work session. Kristine Christensen celebrated successfully acquiring her ACCESS account after confirming her institution was recognized, noting that her registration confirmation had likely slipped into her spam filter. Dr. Joseph Aneke was guided through logging into the ACCESS CI portal, downloading and configuring the Duo Mobile MFA application, and setting up a secure Windows Hello passkey. Dr. Joshua Gbadebo was walked through using Mac Touch ID for his MFA passkey, successfully accessing his account, and navigating to the ACCESS allocations portal to prepare an "Explore" or "Discover" project request. Returning participant Dr. Cheryl Swanier briefly popped in from an external conference to confirm she had updated her Course Goals slide in the shared deck.
- Disciplinary Subgroup Collaboration: To start the official two-hour block, Dr. Linda Hayden restructured the mentoring format, transitioning from individual breakout rooms to three disciplinary subgroups — Biology/CS, CS/CS, and CS/ENG — designed to foster cross-disciplinary peer feedback and let mentees draw on the expertise of multiple technical mentors. Participants expressed overwhelming support for the format: Dr. Mary Beals, Dr. Tanganika Johnson, and Antigone Francis-Anthony noted that the subgroups felt highly engaging and allowed them to collect diverse resource suggestions from mentors beyond their primary matches. Because Dr. Olabisi Ojo was absent, Dr. Hayden shifted Joshua Gbadebo into the CS/CS mentoring room for the evening to ensure he received immediate technical support.
- AI Paradigms & The Data Revolution: Charlie Dey led the training hour with an introductory deep dive into how modern AI systems actually work. He mapped out AI's evolution from the 1950s Turing Test through 1980s neural networks, the 2012 deep learning revolution (spurred by AlexNet), to the 2017 pivot to Transformer architectures and self-attention. He explained that AI's sudden explosion isn't new mathematics but three modern factors — Scale (massive data sizes), Ubiquity (data collected everywhere), and Means (cheap, high-performance GPU hardware) — then illustrated Supervised Learning (labeled "flashcards"), Unsupervised Learning (finding hidden patterns/clusters), and Reinforcement Learning (reward-based trial and error), before breaking the AI Stack into three layers: Infrastructure (raw compute/hardware), the Model (a generalist "brain" like Llama or Gemini), and the Application (the specialist interface or agent).
- Responsible AI in the Classroom Discussion: The training sparked a lively discussion on incorporating AI responsibly in the classroom. Dr. Mohamed Elbakary suggested assigning students to solve a problem on their own, generate an AI solution, and write a comparative analysis between the two. Sajida Faiyaz shared her method of having students design logical Entity-Relationship Diagrams (ERDs) and hold "logical diagramming sprints" to critique where the AI's logic succeeds or fails. Je'aime Powell and Charlie Dey discussed "K-Drama Challenges" — assigning highly complex, oversized projects on incredibly short timelines, which naturally forces students to adopt AI as a collaborative conceptual partner rather than just a tool to copy answers from.
- Reminders & Next Steps: Dr. Hayden and Je'aime Powell closed the session with key dates. Monday, August 10: Charlie Dey hosts a 5:00 PM ET hands-on AI training session (participants should have an active LLM open and Google Colab ready), followed by the 6:00 PM kickoff with returning faculty Dr. Tanganika Johnson, Dr. Cheryl Swanier, and Dr. Mary Beals leading an overview of the Science Gateways Resource Catalog (Gateway Central), then subgroup disciplinary mentoring continuing from 6:30–7:30 PM ET. All participants must review their slides in the shared Course Goals deck — Dr. Hayden left red-text feedback on slides needing updates and posted sample Science Gateway Goals in Slack for reference. First drafts of Gateways 2026 posters are due in one week, on Friday, August 14.
Resources
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ACCESS-CI Organization Request
Form for requesting that an institution or organizational domain be added to the ACCESS-CI system when it is not currently recognized.
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Apple App Store page for downloading Duo Mobile, a multi-factor authentication application commonly used to secure institutional and research computing accounts.
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CRA NAIRR Pilot Expansion Resources
Computing Research Association resource page for the NAIRR Pilot Expansion AI Education Research Coordination Network, including webinars, recordings, and educational resources.
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FacultyHack@Gateways26 page listing participating faculty, mentors, teams, subgroups, and pairings for the 2026 FacultyHack program.
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Main portal for the ACCESS ecosystem, which connects researchers and educators with advanced computing, data, networking, training, and support resources.
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Main portal for the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Pilot, providing access to AI-focused computing resources, datasets, models, software, training, and research opportunities.
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NAIRR Pilot Allocation Request
Direct application page for starting a request for computing or other resources available through the NAIRR Pilot allocation process.
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ACCESS-CI New User Registration
Registration portal for creating an ACCESS ID, which is used to access participating ACCESS-CI services and computing resources.
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Jetstream2 Training — Indiana University
Indiana University training resources for learning how to use Jetstream2, a cloud computing environment designed for research and education.
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Jetstream2 — Creating Your First Instance
Official Jetstream2 documentation providing step-by-step instructions for launching and accessing a first virtual machine instance.
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Schedule from the 2023 MS-CC Codeathon featuring activities and training associated with developing an SIR epidemiological modeling project.
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Event website and repository for the 2022 Big Data Hackathon, containing information about the event, teams, projects, schedules, and resources.
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JOCSE — "Coding Through Storytelling"
Journal article exploring an approach to teaching coding and computational concepts through storytelling and narrative-based learning.
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Howard University — Dr. David Harold Blackwell
Howard University feature examining the life and legacy of mathematician and statistician Dr. David Harold Blackwell and the relevance of his work in the age of artificial intelligence.
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IMDb — Colossus: The Forbin Project
IMDb page for the 1970 science-fiction film Colossus: The Forbin Project, which explores the consequences of giving an advanced computer system control over national defense.
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NCyTE — Teaching AI Security Webinar
Webinar resource for "Teaching AI Security: Hands-on LLM Hardening with Docker Desktop and Security Gateways," focused on practical methods for teaching AI and LLM security.
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AI and Education: Balancing Innovation and Integrity
Article discussing how educational institutions and instructors can balance the benefits of generative AI with academic integrity and responsible classroom use.
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Framework educators can use to define how much generative AI is permitted in an assignment, ranging from no AI assistance to extensive AI-supported work.
Mon, August 10 5:00–8:00 PM ET Join Zoom
Pre-Session 5:00–6:00 PM ET
AI Hands-on Session.
Announcements 6:00–6:30 PM
Science Gateways Catalog Overview — Dr. Tanganika Johnson, Dr. Cheryl Swanier, & Dr. Mary Beals
Mentor Time 6:30–7:00 PM
Breakout rooms (3 groups)
Training 7:00–8:00 PM
AI Deconstruction Deep Dive — Charlie Dey
Session Recap
Session 4 Recap: Gateways Catalog, Disciplinary Breakouts, and AI Readiness (August 10, 2026)
The fourth session of FacultyHack@Gateways 2026 kicked off Week 2 by focusing on gateway navigation, collaborative subgroup sprints, and hands-on data modeling.
Session Highlights
- Science Gateways Catalog Overview: Returning faculty members Dr. Mary Beals, Dr. Cheryl Swanier, and Dr. Tanganika (TK) Johnson led the opening half-hour to share practical tips for using the Science Gateways Catalog (Gateway Central). Dr. Beals demonstrated how typing specific keywords like "ecology" helped her narrow down a massive catalog into accessible tools, such as HPC Carpentry, Jetstream, and Jupyter Notebooks. Je'aime Powell explained that because the catalog pulls data from an external Globus database via an API, searching can be overwhelming, and direct catalog links can sometimes trigger a "403 Forbidden" error — to avoid this, participants should always navigate to the catalog by first clicking through the Gateway Central welcome page. Je'aime also highlighted that the catalog relies on manual updates rather than automated web-scraping, so some links might point to legacy versions (such as the original Jetstream instead of Jetstream 2).
- Disciplinary Subgroup Collaboration: Mentees and technical mentors split into three distinct virtual breakout rooms for 25 minutes to review curriculum integrations and align their semester structures. In the Biology/CS room, mentors Mohammed Elmellouki and Subil Abraham worked with Dr. Beals, Dr. TK, and Antigone Francis-Anthony to refine their course syllabi, focusing on narrowing their integrations down to 3 or 4 highly specific gateway topics rather than overwhelming students with too many tools. The CS/CS room addressed general setup bottlenecks, discussed the poster drafting process, and reviewed machine learning datasets. In the CS/ENG room, Dr. Mohamed Elbakary and Agbeli Ameko mapped out the structural sections of their conference posters and focused on refining their course syllabus to center around a single, cohesive dataset that students can actively build on throughout the entire semester.
- AI Deconstruction & Data Readiness Training: Charlie Dey led the technical hour by illustrating how to teach data literacy, visualization, and basic machine learning using Google Colab and an open dataset of Austin Traffic Incident Reports. He showed how to inspect raw data profiles to spot dirty data, pointing out errors like longitude reading as a float while latitude was incorrectly formatted as a string. Students learned abstract relationships by plotting raw longitude and latitude points, which visually traces a recognizable map of Austin's city streets, then saw how K-means clustering naturally divides traffic data into geographic sectors (North Austin, downtown, West Austin), revealing hidden patterns like persistent construction zones. The training concluded with an overview of building knowledge graphs using triples (subject, predicate, object) — Charlie demonstrated using ChatGPT to parse raw Wikipedia text into structured JSON datasets, and explained that LLMs understand context because words are converted into multi-dimensional vectors (word embeddings) that naturally group together by semantic meaning.
- Critical Reminders & Next Steps: Mentees must immediately review their slides in the shared Google Slides deck and address any red-text feedback left by Dr. Linda Hayden regarding their Science Gateway Goals — sample goals have been posted in the Slack channel for reference. First drafts of the Gateways 2026 posters are due this Friday, August 14, and must be uploaded directly to your public GitHub project repositories. For Wednesday's session (August 12), the cohort voted to use one-on-one mentor breakout sessions so everyone can receive direct, dedicated feedback on their poster layouts before Friday's presentations.
Resources
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Searchable directory of Science Gateways across many scientific disciplines. Useful for discovering existing gateways and classroom examples.
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Science Gateways Resource Catalog
The Science Gateway Catalog is a collection of gateways and gateway-building technologies that offer a searchable way for developers and users to find existing resources.
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Science Gateways Catalog / Gateways Central
The primary entry point for Gateway Central and the Science Gateways Catalog, used during the session's opening presentation to browse resources.
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Science Gateways Search Portal
An alternative link shared by Kristine Christensen that allows users to search the gateway catalog directly.
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An undergraduate student project designed specifically to help improve and streamline the search interface of the Science Gateways Catalog.
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The beta search portal for HPC-Ed, which indexes national High-Performance Computing and cyberinfrastructure educational resources.
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The cloud-hosted notebook platform recommended for participants to run Python scripts and follow along with the hands-on coding demonstrations.
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Austin Real-Time Traffic Incident Reports Dataset
The open dataset from Austin, Texas, that Charlie Dey used to teach data cleaning, visualization (plotting coordinates to map out city streets), and K-means clustering.
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SGX3 Coding Institute 2025 Repository
The website hosting the code files and datasets used for the session's hands-on machine learning exercises.
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FacultyHack Gateways 2026 Poster Template
The direct download link for the official PowerPoint poster template, which is required for designing the conference posters.
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The official program deliverables page outlining the requirements, deadlines, and templates for the virtual and in-person components of the hackathon.
Wed, August 12 6:00–8:00 PM ET Join Zoom
Announcements 6:00–6:30 PM
Quantium — Kristine Christensen
Mentor Time 6:30–7:00 PM
Breakout rooms (1-on-1)
Training 7:00–8:00 PM
AI Deconstruction Deep Dive — Charlie Dey
Session Recap
Session 5 Recap: GitHub Mechanics, Quantum Resources, and LLM Semantics (August 12, 2026)
The fifth session of FacultyHack@Gateways 2026 combined logistics reminders with a hands-on GitHub tutorial, a deep dive into classroom-ready quantum computing resources, and a continuation of the AI deconstruction lecture series into how LLMs represent language mathematically.
Session Highlights
- Friday Deliverables & Poster Reminders: Je'aime Powell and Dr. Linda Hayden reminded the cohort that draft posters, revised Course Goals slides, and initial GitHub repositories are due to be presented on Friday, August 14. Dr. Hayden noted she has reviewed the slide deck and left red-text feedback on everyone's slides, requiring a specific, actionable Science Gateway Goal, and posted sample goals from past years in Slack for guidance. Je'aime emphasized that all participants must email him their public GitHub repository links as soon as possible. Regarding the final posters for the in-person conference, Dr. Hayden clarified that she only needs the official poster titles by Friday to submit them as a group — the printed posters themselves (maximum size of 30" × 45") are the participants' responsibility to print and hang prior to the Gateways 2026 reception.
- Hands-On GitHub Walkthrough & Pro-Tip: To support participants setting up their public repositories, Je'aime Powell led a live, step-by-step tutorial on creating a repository the "easy way": creating a new public repository with a README file, copying and pasting the official README.md template, using an AI model (like Claude or ChatGPT) to quickly populate the template with personalized biographical and syllabus details, and dragging and dropping required PDFs directly into the repo to commit them. Je'aime shared a pro-tip for quick edits: changing the .com in any active GitHub repository URL to .dev (e.g., github.dev) instantly spins up a web-based VS Code editing environment.
- Classroom Quantum Computing Resources: Kristine Christensen presented a comprehensive suite of free, vetted educational resources to help faculty introduce quantum concepts without requiring advanced math and physics prerequisites. She highlighted the growing national urgency for quantum readiness, specifically noting NIST's upcoming 2030 post-quantum cryptography standards and the security threat of "harvest now, decrypt later." Key resources shared included Quantum for All, National Q-12 Education Partnership, QuantumCT, and EdQuantum. She also noted that IBM Quantum provides free classroom accounts granting students 10 minutes of real QPU compute time per month, while Google Quantum AI offers rich instructional units.
- One-on-One Mentor Breakouts: Per the cohort's preference, participants split into dedicated one-on-one virtual breakout rooms with their assigned technical mentors for 30 minutes to advance their curriculum and poster designs. Alumnus Hector Santiago (Senior Software Engineer at Nationwide and returning adjunct professor at Winston-Salem State University) joined the mentoring team to support Dr. Cheryl Swanier with her AI course adjustments. Given the limited time, multiple mentor-mentee pairings — such as Dr. Ahmad Al-Omari and Antigone Anthony — scheduled follow-up work sessions for Thursday to finalize their poster drafts.
- AI Deconstruction: Language, Tokens, and Spatial Context: Charlie Dey continued the AI deconstruction lecture series by breaking down how LLMs represent and process language mathematically. He explained that computers process text by shredding words into mathematical fragments called tokens rather than syllables or grammatical units — using the word "Avengers," he showed how the AI tokenizer breaks it into highly reusable dictionary parts (AV, ENG, and ERS). Words are translated into multi-dimensional numbers (word vectors) plotted in a vector space; he used a party analogy to illustrate "contextual pull," where stranger words start out randomly scattered but, as they're used together, "scoot their chairs closer," forming tight semantic clusters. Charlie reminded the cohort that LLMs are ultimately massive data compression and next-token prediction engines — they hallucinate because they are mathematically optimized to generate likely continuations and maintain conversational engagement rather than retrieve static facts.
Resources
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The seven deliverables for this program and what's due when.
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Template for your final GitHub repository's README.md.
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Background music played at the start of the session.
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Primary landing page for GitHub.
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An example repository structure set up to guide mentees.
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Guide for formatting markdown text (.md files) for GitHub.
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Prompt interface platform shared for testing AI prompt configurations.
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Teams and project overview directory from ADMI26.
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Download link for the PowerPoint conference poster template.
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Direct link to Antigone Anthony's initial curriculum goal slide.
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Brand logo assets and official hexadecimal color palettes for posters.
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Shared Google Slides deck for updating Course and Gateway Goals.
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Resource clearinghouse for introducing fundamental quantum mechanics.
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National Q-12 Education Partnership learning material repository.
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"Bringing Quantum into the Classroom" resource catalog for teachers.
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Access and configuration instructions for IBM Quantum Classroom Accounts.
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General resources, tools, and learning libraries from Google.
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Downloadable teacher resources from the Institute for Quantum Computing.
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Educational courses specializing in quantum-ready training.
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Funding details for NSF Advanced Technological Education programs.
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Consortium developing undergraduate courses in quantum information.
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Chicago Quantum Exchange / EPiQC training and coursework index.
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NIST documentation portal on Post-Quantum Cryptography standards.
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Cybersecurity curriculum and learning hub homepage.
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Direct browse page for released quantum/cybersecurity training modules.
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"Bringing Quantum Concepts into Classrooms" video podcast episode.
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NSF press release regarding the launch of Project TRIAD for quantum tech.
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Briefing on "Ushering in the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation".
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Article covering Quantum Machines' $170M raise following breakthroughs.
Fri, August 14 6:00–8:00 PM ET Join Zoom
Announcements 6:00–6:30 PM
Breakout rooms (group)
Mentor Time 6:30–7:00 PM
Breakout rooms (3 groups)
Training 7:00–8:00 PM
Draft Poster Presentation and Closing
Session Recap
Session 6 Recap: Poster Presentations, AI Pedagogy Debate, and D.C. Send-Off (August 14, 2026)
The final virtual session of FacultyHack@Gateways 2026 brought Week 2 to a highly collaborative close. Organized as a dynamic presentation sprint and roundtable, the session served as the program's virtual graduation, where participants presented their revised course materials, demonstrated their public GitHub repositories, and reviewed travel logistics for the upcoming in-person conference in Washington, D.C.
Session Highlights
- Disciplinary Presentations & Course Redesigns: Each participant presented a draft of their conference poster, outlining how they've re-envisioned their course syllabi to integrate advanced cyberinfrastructure and cloud-based science gateways. Agbeli Ameko (Howard University) presented his upcoming course, Introduction to an Open Source Future, centering on open-source tools, automation, and environmental justice, leveraging Jetstream2 and JupyterHub to let students analyze local datasets through Python and Metabase. Dr. Joshua Gbadebo (Voorhees University) outlined his redesigned Computer Architecture syllabus, integrating Jetstream2 as a cloud platform to teach modern cloud architecture side-by-side with traditional computer architecture, giving students hands-on experience measuring real CPU, memory, and networking allocations. Dr. Tanganika Johnson (Southern University) presented her Environmental Science course, which introduces a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) activity centered on urban heat and environmental resilience in South Louisiana, using CloudBank and Jupyter Notebooks to explore, visualize, and analyze local Louisiana climate data. Dr. Cheryl Swanier (Voorhees University) showcased her Introduction to AI course, whose redesigned curriculum integrates Jetstream2 cloud computing infrastructure to let students program, debug, and solve real-world problems with generative AI. Antigone Francis-Anthony (Southern University A&M College) shared updates to her Human Anatomy & Physiology Lab, which serves a large cohort of nursing majors — to support visual learners, she's incorporating science gateway computational tools like BioDigitalHuman and interactive Jupyter notebooks. Dr. Joseph Aneke (Hampton University) walked through his updated Python Programming course, with a highly praised visual "Course Redesign Workflow" that clearly contrasted the traditional course structure with his new, gateway-integrated, project-based model. Yohn Parra Bautista (Florida A&M University) presented his redesigned Artificial Intelligence syllabus, utilizing the National Research Platform (NRP) as a low-barrier cyberinfrastructure tool to teach unsupervised machine learning models, letting students deploy and benchmark LLMs across CPU and GPU hardware.
- The Great AI Pedagogy Debate: A central highlight of the session was an energetic roundtable on the ethics, logistics, and realities of integrating artificial intelligence into collegiate classrooms. Dr. Joseph Aneke introduced an innovative grading framework where a major percentage of project grades is allotted to the quality of the prompts students submit, rather than just the final code output, ensuring students are actively learning to code and debug collaboratively with AI rather than simply copy-pasting answers. Dr. Mary Beals shared that she openly embraces AI in her classes with explicit "guardrails" — citing her professional development presentation "Prompt Play Slay," she teaches students that knowing how to craft precise prompt constraints is what makes AI an effective academic partner. Sajida Faiyaz noted that because AI cannot be trusted 100% of the time, instructors must shift their focus toward teaching systems analysis, logical architecture design (such as ERD diagramming sprints), and rigorous application security/testing. Organizer Je'aime Powell cautioned the cohort against the common student pitfall of using single prompts for complex tasks, such as generating an entire poster at once, and demonstrated how breaking down a project section-by-section and feeding localized context (e.g., matching a syllabus to a poster template) dramatically improves AI output quality.
- Technical Pro-Tips & Advanced Tools: To help faculty finalize their deliverables, organizers demonstrated several high-efficiency development tools. Je'aime showcased how changing .com to .dev in any active GitHub repository URL instantly opens a browser-based VS Code editing environment, making repository updates seamless. Mermaid.js was highly recommended for creating dynamic, editable flowcharts and system diagrams in GitHub README files using simple markdown text, and Napkin.ai was highlighted as an excellent text-to-visual storytelling tool that converts written text blocks into clean, customizable graphics for posters and slide decks. The group also recommended Perplexity.ai (which validates chat responses with direct source citations) and AnswerThis.io (focused on mapping scholarly literature) for academic writing and curriculum planning.
- Next Steps: Gateways 2026 in Washington, D.C.: Dr. Linda Hayden and Je'aime Powell concluded the program by laying out the final steps before the cohort meets in person on September 23–25, 2026. Dr. Hayden requested that all final, official poster titles be submitted immediately so she can compile and submit them to the conference organizers as a group. Faculty are reminded that they are personally responsible for printing and bringing their physical posters to the conference — the maximum poster size is 30" wide × 45" high. All final, updated materials, including the original syllabus, the revised syllabus, the poster PDF, and the draft blog post, must be committed to participants' public GitHub repositories. Acceptances and travel instructions will be sent out early next week; San Diego Supercomputer Center agents will coordinate lodging and billing, but participants must book their own flights.
Resources
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The seven deliverables for this program and what's due when.
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Template for your final GitHub repository's README.md.
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A multimodal AI research engine that validates its results; recommended by Je'aime for research.
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An AI tool specialized in research papers and academic writing.
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A resource directory providing free educational AI assets.
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Portal compiling student-specific offers and deals for AI and machine learning tools.
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Student discount offer page for accessing free LLM APIs.
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Google's prototyping platform for building applications with Gemini models.
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The GitHub Student Developer Pack, which provides students free access to premium development tools.
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Cloud service offering high-speed AI inference and model execution.
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An AI-powered flow chart and diagram generator that outputs editable code.
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A text-to-visual diagram storytelling tool praised for its rapid graphics generation.
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The live application/game developed by Capsule Corp CoderZ using AI-extracted Wikipedia data.
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The AI Assessment Scale (AIAS) homepage, utilized to establish clear boundaries for permissible student AI use.
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Registration page for a Computing Research Association webinar.
Files
Gateways 2026 Conference (In-Person)
September 23–25, 2026 in Washington, D.C. Travel support is provided — see the Gateways 2026 Conference site for full conference details.
Sept 23–25
Gateways 2026 Conference Attendance
Faculty participate in conference sessions, workshops, and networking to fulfill honorarium requirements.
Thu, September 24 · 2:00–3:30 PM
Main Poster Session
Faculty hang printed posters (max 30"x45") prior to the event. One author must be present during the reception to answer questions and present their curriculum updates. Awards voted on by attendees.
Standard Daily Flow (6:00–8:00 PM ET)
| Time | Segment | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| 6:00–6:30 PM (30 min) | Announcements | Administrative updates, daily objectives, spotlighting previous wins, and general Q&A. |
| 6:30–7:00 PM (30 min) | Mentor Time | Faculty and technical mentors break into teams to review progress, troubleshoot roadblocks, and map out how the upcoming training applies to their specific curriculum. |
| 7:00–8:00 PM (1 hr) | Training | Intensive instruction on HPC/AI tools, curriculum integration, and deliverables preparation. |