UVA Darden Makes AI Use Part of the Assignment in Its First-Year MBA Strategy Course

This article was originally reported in November 2025. See the “Latest update” section below for developments since then.

At the University of Virginia‘s Darden School of Business, using generative AI in the first-year MBA strategy course is not treated as cheating — for some work it is required. UVA Today reported in November 2025 that all 359 first-year MBA students in the required strategy course may use ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or any other chatbot for research, assignments and exams, and must also hold conversations with an AI discussion agent on part of the course’s cases (UVA Today, Nov. 17, 2025).

What the course requires

The course is led by Jared Harris, the Samuel L. Slover Research Chair and academic director of Darden’s Institute for Business in Society. “We’re diving all the way in,” Harris told UVA Today, describing the course’s first-day message to students as “Have at it!”

Open use of chatbots: students may use the AI tool of their choice for research, assignments and exams.
Required AI conversations: students must talk with an AI agent called CAiSEY on five of the semester’s 14 cases. These conversations count toward a small percentage of the course requirements.
Full disclosure: students must state which chatbot they used, what they used it for and how, the prompts they wrote and the results they got, how they checked the output for hallucinations, and how their own thinking improved on what the AI produced.

The work still falls under UVA’s student honor code. Harris stressed that the course’s focus remains analytical mastery and that Darden’s discussion-based case method stays at the center of the classroom: “It’s crucial that students develop mastery about the subject, not just about how to write a ChatGPT prompt” (UVA Today).

CAiSEY, the “polite but adversarial” discussion agent

CAiSEY (Classroom Artificial Intelligence Studio for Engaging You) was developed by Professor Dan Wang of Columbia Business School, which was piloting it in a similar course at the same time. Students hold realistic, voice-based conversations with the agent about course material. Harris described the exchanges as “polite but adversarial”: the agent challenges students’ assumptions and analysis so they can test their arguments before in-class case discussions. After each conversation, students receive automated feedback that summarizes the exchange and points out strengths and weaknesses.

Why Darden made the change

Before redesigning the course, Harris and colleagues spent several months studying how MBA students were already using chatbots and what employers expect from new hires. They concluded that students were already using AI and expected to be taught how to use it well, and that employers want graduates who can apply AI from their first day on the job. Harris noted that students will be expected to be AI-literate as early as their summer internships.

AI also appears elsewhere in the first-year core. In the required Leadership Communication course taught by Professor Brian Moriarty, every first-year student works with an AI “speech coach” that records their presentations and gives immediate feedback; students can also build custom AI interfaces to rehearse conversations such as job interviews. The school’s broader AI work runs through the LaCross Institute for Ethical Artificial Intelligence in Business, established in 2024 with a gift from UVA alumni David and Kathy LaCross (UVA Today; see also our earlier report on the LaCross AI ethics institute). Vice Dean Yael Grushka-Cockayne, the institute’s academic director, said the momentum “lets us embed responsible AI across the curriculum and into practice.”

Another example: Wright State and Intel

Darden is not the only business school building AI into required coursework. In October 2025, Wright State University‘s Raj Soin College of Business in Dayton, Ohio, announced a partnership with Intel and said it was only the second four-year public institution in the U.S. to join Intel’s Digital Readiness Program. Faculty can use and adapt Intel’s AI course materials — facilitator guides, presentation decks, student workbooks and open-source software — at no cost, and students can earn Intel certifications. Intel held orientation sessions in early 2025 for faculty across accounting, finance, economics, entrepreneurship, management information systems, marketing, human resources and supply chain management, and the college has also introduced a minor in business artificial intelligence (Wright State Newsroom, Oct. 16, 2025).

Latest update

October 2026: Darden joined Verizon’s AI Skills for America initiative, a $70 million program offering free online AI courses to U.S. adults 18 and older. Darden’s contribution is a self-paced course, “Artificial Intelligence in Marketing,” taught by Professor Rajkumar Venkatesan, who is also academic director of the LaCross Institute (Darden News, Oct. 1, 2026).
MBA curriculum: Darden’s full-time MBA now lists an “AI, Data Analytics and Decision Sciences” concentration that draws on the LaCross and Batten institutes (Darden MBA concentrations).

What international MBA applicants should know

Cost: for 2026–27 (first year of the Class of 2028), Darden lists tuition and fees of $88,240 for international students, plus a $1,100 case fee, and a total estimated cost of attendance of $125,420. International students should add $7,000 for a spouse and $4,000 for each additional dependent listed on the I-20 (Darden cost of attendance).
STEM work authorization: Darden’s Management Science specialization, earned by completing 12 credits from a select group of electives, carries a STEM designation. Darden says this gives eligible F-1 students the possibility of up to 36 months of U.S. work authorization after graduation (12 months of OPT plus the 24-month STEM extension) (Darden).
AI rules differ by course: the open-AI policy described above applies to the first-year strategy course. Expectations can differ in other courses, so check each syllabus and remember that UVA’s honor code applies to all academic work.
Rankings: UVA is No. 26 in the 2027 U.S. News Best National Universities ranking, and Darden is No. 11 in the U.S. News 2026 Best Business Schools (MBA) ranking (Forward Pathway).

References

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