AI Forward: Darden’s Strategy for Leadership and Learning
AI Forward
Darden’s Strategy for Leadership and Learning
AI makes information synthesis and content generation available at scale. Capabilities such as judgment, discernment, ethical responsibility, dialogue across difference, and the ability to act responsibly amid ambiguity become more critical. These human-centric capabilities are not adjacent to Darden’s model. They are the heart of it, which positions us well to lead and learn in an AI environment.
Darden defines how a leading business school reimagines creating and delivering value across stakeholders through AI-integrated transformational learning, research, thought leadership, engagement with practice, and institutional platforms. As a school, we must set a standard for responsible, rigorous, human-centered leadership in an AI-shaped world, producing leaders who know what to delegate to AI, what to verify, what to challenge, and where human accountability must remain.
Our stakeholders need and want to understand how AI will influence Darden’s vision and mission in key areas: to generate new research, innovate in pedagogy, develop new partnerships, enhance operating capabilities, and model the responsible and effective use of AI across the School. This AI Forward strategy can assure stakeholders that Darden has prioritized this work and is well-positioned to continue to lead in an AI-shaped world.
Mission
Darden’s transformational, student-centered learning develops responsible leaders with the judgment and AI fluency to create meaningful impact in the world.
Values and principles critical to achieving excellence are:
Develop responsible leaders through AI-integrated, transformational, student-centered learning that grounds AI fluency in foundational knowledge, informed discourse, disciplined judgment, and ethical responsibility.
Advance rigorous research, teaching, and thought leadership that shapes business practice and the role of business in society, bringing clarity to how AI changes leadership, organizations, work, scholarship, and ethical responsibility.
Cultivate a thriving, values-driven community of learners, faculty, staff, and alumni who use AI to deepen learning, strengthen collaboration, enhance capabilities, and preserve Darden’s distinctive human-centered culture.
Build institutional capabilities, platforms, and governance that enable responsible experimentation, model the effective and responsible use of AI across the School, protect trust and transparency, support academic integrity and data stewardship, and extend Darden’s impact through degree programs, executive education and lifelong learning, centers and institutes, publishing, and operations.