November 21, 2025

By Basil Tutza

This past October, Penn’s Landing thrummed with educators and doctoral students from around the country attending the 2025 Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) Convening. The organization  partnered with Drexel University’s School of Education to host this year’s event with the theme of “Reclaiming America’s Promise through the EdD.”  

CPED brings together hundreds of educational professionals each year to speak on the evolution of the doctoral program, past and future. The conference provides an environment for both education students and faculty to connect over the issues presently affecting academia; it is a space for program directors and program participants, business owners and data scientists, to improve higher learning across the country.  

Drexel, in particular, has had a storied history with CPED prior to this conference: the university became a member of the prestigious group back in 2015, and in 2019 they were granted the Program of the Year award for its Doctorate of Education in Educational Leadership and Management. Drexel has also maintained a high degree of involvement with CPED’s special interest groups (CIGs), led workshops at prior conferences, and fostered a reputation of doctoral excellence within the organization.  

As the event’s sponsor, Drexel’s School of Education was well-represented with faculty and students leading sessions throughout the week. Through their various engagements, Drexel’s speakers presented an unintentional, yet topical theme: how AI was shaping the doctoral program.  

Enter: Michael Kozak, EdD, program director for educational administration and associate clinical Professor in the School of Education. Dr. Kozak, alongside Arizona State’s Jim Dunnigan, EdD, led an interest session for CPED’s Artificial Intelligence CIG following the event’s keynote presentation. “The whole group is action-oriented,” said Dr. Kozak, “meaning we bring information intending to act on it. We’re going to prototype these concepts, come back, and share our results with other educators.” 

The hour-long session became an open forum for educators to share their concerns, triumphs, and proposals relating to AI usage in the doctoral realm and beyond. Dr. Kozak, himself, was enthusiastic about the creation of doctoral-defense chatbots; but the conversation touched on everything from the development of AI literacy classes for younger students to the AI-facilitated loss of “deep learning” in the research process. 

Dr. Kozak highlights the role of these open conversations in shaping the School of Education’s approach to AI. “We’re bringing that knowledge and information back to our students, and the information that I learn from my graduate students flows back into CPED.” That same sentiment, he reasons, could be applied to CPED overall. “We’re helping our students in our respective universities, whether through AI, talking through the educational doctorate, or talking about research and methodology.” 

The CIG has already begun assembling a publication, through which its members presently research AI initiatives in their respective learning environments. Dr. Kozak feels Drexel is at the forefront of these projects, especially at CPED. “Drexel is all about innovation, right? And if we’re going to be all about innovation, we need to be a leader in this field, not a follower. In order to do that, we need to be a part of these organizations, bringing it back to the university, and talking about it with our faculty.” 

Perhaps most engaged with that spirit of innovation are Drexel’s presenting doctoral students, whose combined hour talk cemented the university’s commitment to blazing trails in AI-driven education. The three students—Tyler Creek, Serena Zelezny, and Matt Richardson—each shared the outlines of their theses as framed through CPED’s ideological framework, highlighting their dedication to furthering the craft of education within the context of their underlying linkage: as Zelezny aptly phrases it, “The potential of AI to solve a problem.”  

It’s that specific thematic connection that the students believe led Kristen Betts, EdD, clinical professor in the Educational Leadership and Management program, to invite them to speak at CPED. In fact, all three cited Dr. Betts as the reason they were at the conference in the first place, despite the fundamental differences in their lines of study. “She has a knack for really seeing you, really pushing you in the right direction,” says Richardson. “She really cares about you as a student.” 

Dr. Betts opened the doctoral presentation with an overview of CPED’s research philosophy, relating it back to the success of the School of Education’s EdD program. Mirroring the cautionary optimism of Dr. Kozak’s CIG, Dr. Betts underscored Drexel’s commitment to introducing graduate students to AI tools without sacrificing literacy, deep learning, and critical thinking throughout the research process.  

With that, she ceded the podium to the first speaker: Tyler Creek, Senior Director of Technical Sales Education at Cisco, and a third-year doctoral student. “My research,” Creek summarizes, “is looking beyond e-learning to accelerate skills and knowledge development using pedagogical conversation agents in the IT sector.” Creek’s approach differed from his colleagues due to his corporate background, which grounded his research solidly within the upskilling of Cisco’s sales engineers and drove a research process more aligned with product development. How, his research fundamentally asks, can AI agents be used to hasten expertise? 

“What is the neuroscience behind expertise?” Creek proposes. This question, stemming from his experience at Cisco, was what Creek cites as his reason for choosing Drexel’s doctorate program. “I really wanted to understand more about, number one, how the brain structurally and functionally changes as a result of learning. I’m in a field where we have a lot of experts, and a lot of expectations of said experts—so learning how to train most efficiently and effectively to develop that became the driving force of my decision.” That sentiment echoes through his thesis, which seeks to gauge the effectiveness of AI agents in training upskilling in a sector which constantly demands it.  

Serena Zelezny, while also industry-centric, follows with a seemingly opposite thesis: as she puts it, “Using AI in fine dining settings, particularly around the complexities of wine service.” Like Creek, however, Zelezny has a personal history with the topic. Not only is Zelezny a third-year doctoral student, but “a professional wine educator and faculty in Drexel’s hospitality program,” she states. “I’ve been there almost 10 years, and I own an off-campus wine school that trains aspiring sommeliers and wine professionals, and helps the public build deeper confidence and appreciation in wine.” 

Zelezny’s research does not involve the creation of an AI agent, though she floated the idea at first. Instead, she takes a customer- and expert-centric approach: “I look at what drives satisfaction for customers in those settings,” Zelezny explains, “and if AI has the potential to align with those expectations.” 

During her segment, Zelezny emphasizes how this research is motivated overall by the role of the sommelier. Because a great deal of their training is “just fact memorization,” she says, the service industry needs to determine what the human sommelier adds to the wine tasting experience that an AI agent doesn’t—and, thusly, when and where to use AI to enhance customer satisfaction.  

To close off the hour, Matt Richardson, a high school English teacher, provides a wholly school-centric thesis: “My research focuses on utilizing AI as an intervention tool for students who are struggling with substance use,” says Richardson, whose presentation draws, similarly to his co-presenters, from his own experiences as an educator.  

Like Zelezny, Richardson’s research process is primarily centered around interviews with teachers and experts on their experiences and comfort level with AI intervention tools. Underlying the thesis is a fundamental lack of resources for the students Richardson aims to assist; and CPED’s goals align with his desire to fill those gaps. “I think that’s the big thing [about CPED]. It’s not just business networking. We’re all here for the same mission and that’s to help students, day in and day out, to be the best they can be.” 

All three praised CPED for the chance to connect over that unifying mission. “The more I speak to people to just network, the less imposter syndrome I feel around my research,” Creek comments. “In that way, CPED is the perfect opportunity.” As if to highlight that point after their session’s conclusion, the three—between questions and congratulations—shared how academically experienced they felt speaking on their theses. They also reflected on the relationship they’d cultivated with each other. “We’ve been able to support each other in ways that only people going through this kind of process together can truly understand,” says Zelezny.  

Reflecting on their experience as Drexel representatives, the students connected with the same sentiment as Dr. Kozak: the School of Education’s leadership in the new frontier of AI. “We, as Drexel students, are at the forefront of putting AI into practice, right?” asks Creek. “We’re solving problems of the practice with AI in a way that nobody’s done before. It’s cool to see what the community is thinking of, as far as the EdD, and what we’re bringing to the table as students in that community.” Richardson further tethered this to the conversations he’d had with other CPED attendants. “Seeing how other universities are handling their EdD programs, especially AI, made me so thankful I’m here at Drexel.”