{"id":145369,"date":"2026-08-19T21:03:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T21:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/145369\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T21:03:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T21:03:10","slug":"roanoke-college-partners-with-google-for-free-ai-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/145369\/","title":{"rendered":"Roanoke College partners with Google for free AI training"},"content":{"rendered":"

ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) – Roanoke College<\/a> is partnering with Grow with Google<\/a> to offer free access to industry-recognized credentials for faculty, staff and students.<\/p>\n

The school is participating in the Google AI for Education Accelerator. Ryan King, chief of staff and innovation officer at Roanoke College, said the partnership also offers credentials in project management, cybersecurity, personnel management, marketing and design, and user interface, each with an AI component embedded within it.<\/p>\n

How the credentials work<\/p>\n

King said the courses are hosted on Coursera. Once completed, participants receive a credential they can add to LinkedIn or a resume.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s a way that you can really highlight what you\u2019ve done, not just to the people who know you now, but to those who are going to consider employing you in the future,\u201d King said.<\/p>\n

King said the partnership offers 24 different certificates.<\/p>\n

A different approach to AI training<\/p>\n

King said Roanoke College\u2019s approach differs from AI minors and majors offered at other colleges in Virginia.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of saying you\u2019re going to be an expert at AI and AI only, we want you to understand how AI is going to integrate with the thing you\u2019re already an expert at,\u201d King said.<\/p>\n

King said the college\u2019s liberal arts education trains people to ask questions and think more deeply.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can train people to think critically, to problem solve, to communicate well, and to use AI as a tool, not a crutch,\u201d King said.<\/p>\n

Effect on the community<\/p>\n

King said community members who don\u2019t participate in the program directly can still benefit by hiring Roanoke College graduates, accepting students as interns or coming to campus to learn from students.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the effect is going to exponentiate as we send our graduates into the community around us,\u201d King said.<\/p>\n

Logan Hammerschmidt, director of co-curricular innovation and creativity at Roanoke College, works directly with students in the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to build things here on the college that everyone here in the Roanoke Valley can benefit from and beyond,\u201d Hammerschmidt said.<\/p>\n

How the program started<\/p>\n

King said he was selected this year as a Google Higher Education Leadership Fellow. During a small group discussion in March, King said someone suggested Roanoke College sign up for the Google AI for Education Accelerator. King said the colleges already signed up were mostly large schools and state flagship universities, with few small colleges and very few small private colleges.<\/p>\n

King said he contacted Google about including Roanoke College in the partnership. The college submitted an application in May and heard back two weeks later that it had been accepted. King said the college spent June and July setting up the program and launched it in August, two months after the application was submitted.<\/p>\n

King said the college launched a similar effort, the Work AI Lab, on a similarly fast timeline.<\/p>\n

Eligibility and how to sign up<\/p>\n

Any student in a Roanoke College program, including online programs, is eligible for the free certificates, according to King.<\/p>\n

King said the college sent a communication to campus and set up a website with an interest form for those wanting to participate. King said he assigns program licenses after someone submits the form, a process he said can be completed within 24 hours.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 WDBJ. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) – Roanoke College is partnering with Grow with Google to offer free access to industry-recognized…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,71499,3069,25,71500,49114,71498],"class_list":["post-145369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-ai-certified","tag-ai-training","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-google-ai-for-education-accelerator","tag-roanoke-college","tag-roanoke-college-ai-training"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}