RCC’s George Pate presents at TACTYC National Conference
‘Harnessing AI’s potential in Accounting’ was the topic of a presentation given by George Pate at the 2024 National TACTYC Conference held in Arlington, VA.
TACTYC stands for Teachers of Accounting at Two-Year Colleges. The national conference draws hundreds of faculty members and accounting enthusiasts from community colleges across America and beyond.
“The 2024 conference was the largest ever,” stated Pate, who is one of the lead accounting instructors at RCC and also serves as the coordinator of the RCC Apprenticeship program. “This was our 50th Anniversary and we had over 500 people in attendance.”
Pate’s presentation drew praise and applause from the more than 50 participants that attended.
“We had a lot of interaction, a lot of questions and answers,” stated Pate. “I am by no means an expert on AI, but this was a great conversation to start about beginning to understand the functioning of AI and how we as educators can use it as a tool in our classrooms.”
The presentation explored artificial intelligence and its transformative potential in accounting education and provided practical AI applications with real world examples, while addressing ethical and privacy concerns.
Pate hopes the presentation helped equip attendees with the knowledge and skills to harness AI in their classrooms.
“When we first started hearing about ChatGPT and IT, my first thought was ‘the students have got a new tool to cheat’ and that they would be using it to write papers and solve math problems,” said Pate. “But the more comfortable we become with it, and the more that we learn about AI, and the more that this technology evolves, we can use it to advance our classroom as a very powerful tool for education.”
“We don’t have to be afraid of artificial intelligence,” Pate said. “The internet did not replace educators… we have to learn how to harness these tools and teach students how to use them responsibly, and as educators we can learn to use them to become more effective teachers.”
