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Environmental Scan
AI Landscape by Region
Spring 2025 baseline · June 2026 update

The Environmental Scan, made filterable

Spring 2025 baseline — 8 regions, 122 colleges, 3 entries, 60 notes · updated scan (latest: June 2026) adds 10 source-verified findings (6 new). Every entry is tagged with one or more Vision 2030 domains: People · Policy · Systems · Resources.

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Inland Empire / Desert

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College of the Desert

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Engaged People
  • 🆕AI named centerpiece of 2025 State of the College / institutional AI initiative. At the October 30, 2025 State of the College address ('Integrating AI in Education and Beyond'), President/Superintendent Val Martinez Garcia framed AI as a tool to harness and announced a comprehensive AI education push, positioning COD to prepare students to lead the change rather than just keep up. 2025 · high confidence — source
  • 🆕PaCE 'Generative AI Foundations for Creativity' community/continuing-ed course. Through its Partnership and Community Education (PaCE) division, COD offers a beginner-friendly 'Generative AI Foundations for Creativity' training covering core AI concepts, creative workflows for images/video/audio, prompting, and ethical and responsible use; sessions scheduled in 2026 with a completion certificate and portfolio project. 2026 · high confidence — source
PeopleSystemsResources
Team/Lead: College of the Desert/Library Faculty Jin An-Dunning
5 linked resource(s) — show status
Policies
  • Academic integrity policy (AP 5550) does not specifically address AI. COD's student Academic Integrity page and Standards of Student Conduct (referencing AP 5550) prohibit cheating, plagiarism, and 'unauthorized materials,' but contain no specific language addressing ChatGPT, generative AI, or AI tools as of the page reviewed (no date shown). undated · high confidence — source
  • Technology Acceptable Use Guidelines do not mention AI. The Desert Community College District / COD Acceptable Use Guidelines governing technology resources for students, faculty and staff contain no mention of artificial intelligence, generative AI, ChatGPT, or large language models. undated · high confidence — source
PolicyResourcesSystems
Team/Lead: College of the Desert
  • Not yet found. Appears to rely on the student code of conduct academic integrity.
  • “Plagiarism is any conduct in academic work or programs involving misrepresentation of someone else’s words, ideas, or data as one’s original work including, but not limited to, the following:
  • Intentionally representing as one’s own work the work, words, ideas, or arrangement of ideas, research, formulae, diagrams, statistics, or evidence of another.
  • Taking sole credit for ideas and/or written work that resulted from collaboration with others.
  • Paraphrasing or quoting material without citing the source.”
  • submitting as one’s own a copy of or the actual work of another person, either in part or in entirety, without appropriate citation (e.g., term-paper mill or Internet-derived products).
  • Library Guide
  • COD Definition of Plagiarism
  • Syllabus Example (Comm 101)
  • “Academic Integrity
  • In accordance with College of the Desert’s Student Code of Conduct, cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated. Incidents of cheating and/or plagiarism will result in a failing grade on the work and a report filed with the Office of Student Life.
  • Generative AI Policy
  • Generative AI tools may be able to help you generate ideas/topics for your assignments, formulate structure for your written work and speech outlines, and find existing research on the topic. These uses are permitted in this course. I will also permit you to use AI tools to edit your work and improve your use of language. If you use an AI tool in any of these ways to support your work, it must be included as a source/citation following APA or MLA styles. You cannot use the output from a generative AI tool as a reference when your work requires outside sources to support your thesis or central idea statement in a speech.
  • All of your writing in this course must be your own; you may not use AI text generators to write any portion of the written work you submit or for any portion of a speech you deliver. Using AI tools in this way will be treated as a case of plagiarism per the Academic Integrity policy above.”
  • Syllabus Example AIS 013 - Office Workplace Employment Preparation (Prof Michelle Richards)
  • Acceptable & Unacceptable Uses of AI
  • The use of generative AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Dall-e, etc.) is permitted in this course for the following activities:
  • Brainstorming and refining your ideas;
  • Fine tuning your research questions;
  • Finding information on your topic;
  • Drafting an outline to organize your thoughts; and
  • Checking grammar and style.
  • The use of generative AI tools is not permitted in this course for the following activities:
  • Impersonating you in classroom contexts, such as by using the tool to compose discussion board prompts assigned to you or content that you put into a Zoom chat.
  • Completinggroupworkthatyourgrouphasassignedtoyou,unlessitismutuallyagreedupon that you may utilize the tool.
  • Writing a draft of a writing assignment.
  • Writing entire sentences,paragraphs or papers to complete class assignments.
  • You are responsible for the information you submit based on an AI query (for instance, that it does not violate intellectual property laws, or contain misinformation or unethical content).
  • Your use of AI tools must be properly documented and cited in order to stay within college policies on academic honesty. For example, see the Library resources for APA guidance. Any assignment that is found to have used generative AI tools in unauthorized ways will be reviewed via COD Academic Integrity guidelines. When in doubt about permitted usage, please ask for clarification.
  • Adopted by permission, Temple University, Center for Advancement of Teaching
  • Syllabus Example KINE 010 - Personal & Community Health (Professor Yuen Tse)
  • “AI generated work
  • While artificial intelligence (AI) is widely used, AI-generated passages are someone else' works, thoughts and analysis. In this course, I would love to see your own thoughts, insights and ideas. How you organize your thoughts and put words together in a sentence communicate about you and it matters to me! Sometimes it can be hard to express yourself but it is a learning process. This course is to equip and challenge you to become a competent learner! Most of the assignments in this course require your very own reflections and analysis, rather than textbook facts and ideas. Therefore, AI-generated submissions are not permitted and will be treated as a violation of the standards of the COD Code of Academic Integrity. Use of ChatGPT (or other similar tools or software that generate suggested text) is not allowed in this class for any part of a graded assignment, including generation of ideas, writing of text, or rewriting your own work. Violations could result in failure of the assignment or failure of the course. AI-generated works will be graded zero and redo is not allowed.”
  • Syllabus Example PSY 001 - General Psychology (Professor Wendy Brooks, Psy.D.)
  • Policy on the Use of Generative AI in Written Assignments, Quizzes and Exams
  • Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a relatively new technology that is rapidly developing. Like the internet in general, these AI tools, like ChatGPT or Gemini, are neither good or bad when it comes to accessing and utilizing information. Instead, they are a new way in which we can interact with information.
  • I highly recommend that students complete their own work. Despite this recommendation, many students choose to use AI tools to assist them in completing assignments. Overall, AI tools should be used wisely and reflectively to deepen their understanding of subject matter.
  • If using Generative AI, College of the Desert students are expected to adhere to the same standards as the Code of Conduct on plagiarism. Presenting generative AI software content as your own is a violation of academic integrity and you will receive an F on the assignment. If you use generative AI in your work, you must indicate that you have done so.
  • Students are not allowed to use AI tools during quizzes or exams.
  • In this course, if you choose to use Generative AI tools (which is strongly discouraged), students must give credit to the Generative AI tools whenever used, even if only to generate ideas.
  • If you choose to use Generative AI tools on written assignments, you must add an appendix showing:
  • the entire exchange with Generative AI, highlighting the most relevant sections.
  • a description of precisely which AI tools were used (e.g. ChatGPT private subscription version or DALL-E free version).
  • an explanation of how the AI tools were used (e.g. to generate ideas, create an outline, word choice, elements of text, long stretches of text, construction of argument, pieces of evidence, maps of the concepts, illustrations of key concepts, citations or any other use).
  • the reasons why AI tools were used (e.g. to save time, to surmount writer’s block, to stimulate thinking, to handle mounting stress, to clarify writing, to translate text, to experiment for fun, or any other reason).
  • you need to cite AI appropriately. APA has guidelines for citing AI.
6 linked resource(s) — show status
Resources
  • 🆕$100,000 donation from Fred Noble (Wintec Energy) to seed AI education program. Fred Noble of Wintec Energy donated $100,000 to support College of the Desert's comprehensive AI education program, which Noble described as a 'seed that will grow.' 2025 · high confidence — source
  • 🆕Silicon Valley innovators partnering to build AI courses. Board of Trustees Chair Joel Kinnamon stated COD is already working with local innovators, including members from Silicon Valley, to create AI courses and unique programming for students; as of the announcement no formal AI degree or certificate had yet been established. 2025 · high confidence — source
  • 🆕COD Palm Springs campus positioned as AI education hub. President Martinez Garcia described the new COD Palm Springs campus (groundbreaking November 2024, construction in progress, slated to open ~2027) as a place where 'AI education will flourish,' offering workforce-focused programs in emerging technologies including AI and virtual reality. 2025 · high confidence — source
  • 🆕Student AI projects and video showcase at State of the College 2025. Students presented an AI video showcase and built AI tools including 'Val-atar' (an AI avatar/likeness of the president that greeted attendees), a course-catalog navigation chatbot, and other AI apps; the COD Foundation ran a State of the College 2025 student AI video contest with public voting. 2025 · high confidence — source
  • 'Roadrunner Rodney' AI chatbot for student academic and mental-health support. COD launched an AI chatbot named Roadrunner Rodney (introduced August 2024 during welcome day) that sends alerts and resources via text message and provides academic assistance and mental health support to improve retention and engagement. Fall 2024 · high confidence — source
  • Non-credit ed2go AI/ML workforce courses. COD's workforce/continuing-education catalog (via ed2go) offers an online 'Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Suite' (covering AI science, AI ethics, applications, and supervised/unsupervised machine learning) and an 'Introduction to Artificial Intelligence' course. undated · high confidence — source
ResourcesPeople
Team/Lead: College of the Desert
2 linked resource(s) — show status
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