Marc Watkins is the founding director of the Mississippi AI Institute, where his work focuses on the Institute’s mission of exploring how AI is reshaping teaching and learning. He is a coauthor of The Norton Guide to AI Aware Teaching. At the University of Mississippi, he serves as Assistant Director of Academic Innovation, helping faculty navigate emerging technologies, and as Senior Lecturer in Writing and Rhetoric, teaching digital media studies and courses on AI’s impact on society. Marc has worked with dozens of universities, schools, accreditors, and companies around the world to design faculty development, build AI governance, and establish a duty-of-care approach to AI in education. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Texas State University, and his writing has appeared in award-winning anthologies, including the Pushcart Prize series.

His work with training faculty in AI literacy has been profiled in The Washington Post. He regularly writes about AI and education on his Substack Rhetorica.