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Send me the listMorris County’s vocational district has been teaching artificial intelligence in a high school classroom since 2021. Now it is building an entire academy around it.
The Morris County Vocational School District is opening an Academy for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Engineering at the Morris County School of Technology in Denville, and the first application window closes Tuesday, November 3. It is the eleventh full time academy on the Denville campus and the eighteenth across the district, which also runs programs inside Morris Hills, Morris Knolls, Roxbury, Randolph, and Jefferson Township high schools.
The groundwork is older than the academy. In August 2021, the district became the first high school program in New Jersey to adopt Intel’s Artificial Intelligence for Workforce program, folding its first two modules into the junior year of the Academy for Computer and Information Sciences. County College of Morris signed on at the same time. What was one course sequence five years ago is now a four year track of its own.
That track starts with foundational engineering and moves into artificial intelligence, robotics engineering, autonomous systems, and smart manufacturing. Students design and program robots, work with sensors and smart devices, and build AI powered projects alongside classes in programming, electronics, and cybersecurity. Seniors finish with a capstone and a structured internship, and students can leave with industry certifications in artificial intelligence, robotics, cybersecurity, workplace safety, and advanced manufacturing.
Here is the part parents tend to learn late: this is a ninth grade decision. The MCVSD academies are full time, students apply as eighth graders, and each applicant picks one academy. There is a single deadline for all eighteen, Tuesday, November 3, and everything goes through mcvts.org/apply.
The information sessions are the only scheduled chance to walk the buildings before that deadline. The Morris County School of Technology in Denville hosts three: Saturday, October 10, 2026 at 9:00 a.m. and again at 12:00 p.m., and Thursday, October 29, 2026 at 6:30 p.m. Anyone weighing the AI and robotics academy should be at one of those, since the program is based on that campus.
The satellite academies hold their own sessions, all at 6:30 p.m.: Performing Arts at Morris Knolls High School on Thursday, October 15, Business Administration Early College at Randolph High School on Thursday, October 22, Math, Science and Engineering at Morris Hills High School on Tuesday, October 27, and on Wednesday, October 28, Aviation and Sports Medicine at Roxbury High School alongside Environmental Science at Jefferson Township High School. Registration is on the district’s information sessions page.
The district has been adding academies at a steady clip. It launched the Academy for Aviation with Roxbury High School in 2024, and its students keep turning up in statewide conversations, including an MCST student named an NJSIAA Student Ambassador. Artificial intelligence is the newest lane, and the first class to walk into it applies this fall.
