Rice University has partnered with Google for Education to adopt Google’s generative AI solution, Gemini for Education, to provide students, faculty and staff with powerful, responsible AI tools designed to personalize learning, enhance creativity and better prepare students for a technology-driven future.
All faculty and staff members now have access to the FERPA-compliant Google Gemini and NotebookLM through their Rice accounts. Gemini, an intelligent AI assistant for summarizing content, generating ideas, accelerating writing and supporting research, can help quickly distill academic papers and provide insight-driven summaries.
NotebookLM is designed to help you work with your own content — whether PDFs, documents, web links or transcripts — by synthesizing information across sources to surface insights and support content creation grounded in your materials.
Representatives from Google for Education visited Rice Sept. 10 as part of its national college campus tour to teach the campus community how the new tools can help supercharge creativity and boost productivity. Hundreds of students participated in Gemini Academy, a dynamic event featuring hands-on training led by Google product experts. Simultaneously, a six-hour pop-up in the Academic Quadrangle offered interactive product demos and practical tips for more than 1,000 students. Faculty members also took part in a lunch-and-learn session focused on using these new AI tools to enhance teaching.
“We’re excited to see how these tools will support the collective work of the campus community and how they might inspire new ways to collaborate and innovate,” said Kelly Fox, executive vice president for operations, finance and support. “This initiative reflects Rice’s commitment to integrating cutting-edge technology to empower our campus with advanced AI capabilities across teaching, research and administrative work.”
Gemini will personalize learning, spark creativity and streamline teaching by helping students brainstorm and problem-solve while giving educators tools to plan lessons, adapt materials and save time. Its rollout will be paired with a strong digital citizenship and AI fluency curriculum to ensure responsible and effective use.
“This partnership with Google marks an exciting step forward in Rice’s commitment to responsible AI,” said Raza Dawood, associate vice president for transformational technology and innovation. “It’s been inspiring to see the strong interest and enthusiasm from our students and faculty, who are eager to explore how new technology can enrich learning, fuel discovery and shape the future."
The partnership ensures that all interactions with Gemini for Education are managed within Rice’s secure Google Workspace for Education domain. Google’s commitment to privacy and security means that conversations are not used to train models and schools retain administrative control over the data.
“Google for Education is proud to partner with Rice University on this important expansion of learning tools to students and teachers,” said Steven Butschi, director of Google for Education North America sales. “This collaboration is a testament to our shared belief that generative AI, when implemented responsibly, can be a powerful tool for enhancing creativity, personalizing learning and preparing students for the future. We’re excited to see how Gemini will support Rice’s mission and inspire a new generation of innovators.”
The reaction from the students was just as palpable.
“Responsible AI is such a big, new tool that a lot of students might not understand the best way to use it in a way that’s most beneficial to them,” said Grace Andrews, a fifth-year architecture student who attended the roll-out event. “Everyone is using AI anyway, so to learn more about it and be more informed sounds like a good initiative.”
Molly Wladis, a freshman at Wiess College, shared her hope for using AI in a trustworthy way.
“This is going to be a useful tool, especially as I enter the next few years of my education and career, and I think it’s important to learn how to use it early,” Wladis said. “I’m excited to see how these stronger, high quality AI platforms make their way into my academic life.
“I can see that Rice is very much leading the charge on that with the new AI degree. I think this move is going to set students up for success, both in their use of AI and in their careers.”
Owen McCulloch, a sophomore from Sid Richardson College, said he likes seeing universities taking initiative with accountability in AI.
“I’m glad Rice is proactive about this learning tool,” McCulloch said. “It’s a great tool if you use it as a tool. It is important that students know how to use it as a tool and not how to use it as a crutch, because then that just limits learning.”
For more information, visit AI at Rice.