Professor Christopher Tucci recently took on the role of Interim Vice-Dean (Education) at Imperial Business School. This will see him focus on pedagogical development and innovation, including leading on how the business school adapts its offer in an increasingly AI-driven world. We spoke to Professor Tucci to find out more about what this involves, and how his experience feeds into the role.

What does your new role as Interim Vice-Dean (Education) involve?

Broadly, the role involves responsibility for all educational programmes at the Business School, including our 18 master’s programmes, four PhD programmes, and current and upcoming bachelor’s programmes.

This includes thinking strategically about the whole portfolio of educational activities to deliver a great experience for students, faculty, and programme managers. For example, we position courses into suites—the MBA suite, the finance suite, the management suite, and the specialised suite. And we’re constantly evaluating how much overlap there is between and within them, and whether our groupings match changes in the real business world.

That requires us to understand changing employer needs, evolving student interests, and shifts in cohort demographics. I know from my experience working on Imperial’s I-X initiative that there’s a rapidly growing interest in digital technologies, especially AI. Employers want people who understand these technologies and the ability to use them, not just as tools to boost productivity, but on a strategic level.

Academics are being squeezed on a number of fronts, so we’re working out how we can automate some of the back-office tasks such as organisation of marking, allocating teaching assistants, and tracking project supervision requests. These are often time-consuming, manual processes that could be simplified, giving academics more time to focus on face-to-face teaching, student support, and research.

I am a big proponent of active learning and project-based learning (for our students) – learning to deal with the ambiguities of what you’re exposed to and trying to solve problems as they come up.

What experience will you bring to the role?

I recently worked at NEOM University (in Saudi Arabia), helping to develop the curriculum for a brand-new institution that hasn’t even opened its doors yet. That gave me the freedom to focus on cutting-edge business needs, thinking about the skills and experience employers want from graduates now and in the future.

Things are very different at an established institution that already has a strong reputation, but the experience gave me valuable insight into some of the less tangible things that are important in the modern business world – soft skills, curiosity, creative mindsets, problem-solving abilities.

I also have industry experience in computer science research, which fuelled my interest in R&D management and innovation management. I think that gives me a lot of empathy for employers, how they think, how they work, and what they want from graduates.

How are you future-proofing students for a world where AI is rendering some jobs obsolete?

We’ve always had job replacement, and we always will – preparing students for this has always been part of our responsibility, and it’s part of my role now. For example, in response to current trends such as AI, we need to ensure that we impart critical thinking skills: how to evaluate and question AI output rather than just relying on it, so it’s a tool students can use to their advantage, rather than something that rivals them.

Along the same lines, we can do more to help students understand the weaknesses of these technologies, not just the strengths, so they have a rounded, critical view. This is important because in business, if you’re managing a portfolio of products and services, and you’re trying to come up with something new that would resonate with your target market, that’s not something that can be easily delegated to AI. Computers aren’t very good at running companies!

Instead, I am a big proponent of active learning and project-based learning – learning to deal with the ambiguities of what you’re exposed to and trying to solve problems as they come up. This gives our students rounded skill sets rather than learning just one way of doing something.

As long as we’re teaching students in this way, helping them see the bigger picture, and we’re teaching them to think critically and understand the pros and cons of emerging digital technologies, then I think our graduates are in a strong position in terms of vulnerability to job replacement.