AI Resilience Report forEngineering Teachers, Postsecondary

Right now, AI is mostly augmenting engineering professors rather than replacing them. The work happening behind the scenes — drafting tests, writing grant applications, answering routine student questions — is where AI tools are showing up first. For example, a new study covered in Nature found that NIH grant proposals drafted or edited with AI chatbots were more likely to win funding ^[1], though they also tended to look more similar to past winners.

On the teaching side, ASEE researchers published in March 2026 are testing custom AI chatbots that answer undergraduate engineering students' questions outside class hours ^[2], letting professors focus on harder concepts and mentoring. Big systems are also moving fast: the California State University system spent $17 million giving all 460,000 students, faculty, and staff access to ChatGPT Edu ^[3]. But the high-touch parts of the job — supervising research, leading discussions, and mentoring — are still very human.

As one professor told NPR, AI-written essays are like "bringing a forklift to the gym" — the work gets done, but the learning muscles never develop ^[4].

Adoption is moving quickly in some areas and slowly in others. On the "fast" side, Deloitte's 2026 Higher Education Trends report notes universities are betting on AI tools to handle grant reporting so researchers can spend more time on actual research ^[5], and budget pressure is pushing schools toward automation. On the "slow" side, faculty are pushing back hard on ethical grounds — thousands of CSU faculty signed a petition asking the chancellor not to renew the OpenAI contract and instead "use the savings to protect jobs" ^[3].

Accreditation rules, academic freedom, and worries about student learning are real brakes on full automation. The good news for anyone thinking about this career: the skills that AI can't easily copy — mentoring young engineers, designing meaningful labs, and leading honest classroom discussions — are exactly the skills Deloitte highlights as the "human" capabilities (communication, teamwork, and critical thinking) that will be more valued, not less, as AI spreads ^[5].