A group of Houstonians have launched a virtual tutoring platform for students in Kindergarten through eighth grade. Image via teachingtogive.org

Seven local high schoolers took lessons from their own schooling challenges in 2020 to launch a free, virtual tutoring program last month with the goal of helping younger students close learning gaps of their own during this unprecedented academic year ahead.

Dubbed Teaching To Give, the project matches kindergarten through eighth grade students with honor roll high schoolers from Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Strake Jesuit, and Bellaire High School for 30- to 45-minute teaching sessions in core subjects, languages, debate, and arts via Zoom.

Kinder HSPVA sophomore Weillison Hsu, who now serves as president of Teaching to Give, first proposed the idea to fellow piano major and Vice President Hayden Miller at the end of the 2019-20 school year. The 15-year-olds are bright, talented, and artistic, but their freshman years had not come without challenges: First, several of their teachers were required to take a leave of absence, leaving them with long-term substitutes. Then COVID-19 hit, making traditional learning impossible.

It took time to adjust, Miller says, but eventually he and his peers found their stride in the tech-based schooling style that Houston Independent School District has been following for months. Still, they feared the transition for younger students had not been as smooth.

"We have been used to that independence, where in elementary school, and middle school even, you do a lot hands on and in person," Miller says. So, they decided to help in a way that was safe, affordable, and approachable.

"During these times, it's just not possible to make sure that everyone is fully striving," Miller says. "We wanted to make it as easy as possible for parents to use us and to have a stress-free environment, to provide a successful education and set up."

Today, Teaching to Give has held more than 100 free web-based tutoring sessions for kids around the city in subjects from science to piano. They ask on-boarding students to complete a personality and learning style questionnaire and place them with one of their 29 tutors who they predict will work best with for their subject matter and interests. Miller says the minor age difference has allowed their sessions to have real impact.

"It provides a more relatable experience," he says. "A lot of the time we'll have the same interests as our students. We can use that to foster mutual excitement for the subject material."

Still, the group is learning how to teach in a virtual setting as they go.

"It really forces you to think of how you say things to get the result that you want," Miller says. "I think we will all come out of this as better communicators."

Miller, Hsu, and the five other board members — Lina Wu, Amy Park, Fiona Condron, Rushil Chetty, and Ashley Chu — plan to continue to focus on virtual tutoring sessions even after the pandemic ends and limitations on in-person learning lift. Again pulling from their own experience, they know that virtual options can provide big benefits for busy parents and students like themselves.

And in the meantime, they're hoping to start partnerships with a few local lower schools, are accepting applications for additional tutors, and are raising awareness for their new initiative, Project Pencil, which will donate art supplies to the Gregory-Lincoln Education Center in the Fourth Ward.

"Art is something that is universal. It takes away the stress of learning. Also, art lessons and music lessons are very expensive," Miller adds. "We wanted to incorporate that into our classes because that's what our biggest strengths lie in. We wanted to share that passion and provide a way to spread more unity between people. Art has a way of doing that."

Teaching to Give founders (Weillison, Hayden and Lina) virtually meeting with Thomas Porter, HISD Magnet Coordinator for Gregory Lincoln. Image courtesy of Teaching to Give

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3 Houston innovators who made headlines in May 2025

Innovators to Know

Editor's note: Houston innovators are making waves this month with revolutionary VC funding, big steps towards humanoid robotics, and software that is impacting the agriculture sector. Here are three Houston innovators to know right now.

Zach Ellis, founder and partner of South Loop Ventures

Zach Ellis. Photo via LinkedIn

Zach Ellis Jr., founder and general partner of South Loop Ventures, says the firm wants to address the "billion-dollar blind spot" of inequitable distribution of venture capital to underrepresented founders of color. The Houston-based firm recently closed its debut fund for more than $21 million. Learn more.

Ty Audronis, CEO and founder of Tempest Droneworx

Ty Audronis, CEO and founder of Tempest Droneworx

Ty Audronis, center. Photo via LinkedIn.

Ty Audronis and his company, Tempest Droneworx, made a splash at SXSW Interactive 2025, winning the Best Speed Pitch award at the annual festival. The company is known for it flagship product, Harbinger, a software solution that agnostically gathers data at virtually any scale and presents that data in easy-to-understand visualizations using a video game engine. Audronis says his company won based on its merits and the impact it’s making and will make on the world, beginning with agriculture. Learn more.

Nicolaus Radford, CEO of Persona AI

Nicolaus Radford, founder and CEO of Nauticus RoboticsNicolaus Radford. Image via LinkedIn

Houston-based Persona AI and CEO Nicolaus Radford continue to make steps toward deploying a rugged humanoid robot, and with that comes the expansion of its operations at Houston's Ion. Radford and company will establish a state-of-the-art development center in the prominent corner suite on the first floor of the building, with the expansion slated to begin in June. “We chose the Ion because it’s more than just a building — it’s a thriving innovation ecosystem,” Radford says. Learn more.

Houston university to launch artificial intelligence major, one of first in nation

BS in AI

Rice University announced this month that it plans to introduce a Bachelor of Science in AI in the fall 2025 semester.

The new degree program will be part of the university's department of computer science in the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing and is one of only a few like it in the country. It aims to focus on "responsible and interdisciplinary approaches to AI," according to a news release from the university.

“We are in a moment of rapid transformation driven by AI, and Rice is committed to preparing students not just to participate in that future but to shape it responsibly,” Amy Dittmar, the Howard R. Hughes Provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said in the release. “This new major builds on our strengths in computing and education and is a vital part of our broader vision to lead in ethical AI and deliver real-world solutions across health, sustainability and resilient communities.”

John Greiner, an assistant teaching professor of computer science in Rice's online Master of Computer Science program, will serve as the new program's director. Vicente Ordóñez-Román, an associate professor of computer science, was also instrumental in developing and approving the new major.

Until now, Rice students could study AI through elective courses and an advanced degree. The new bachelor's degree program opens up deeper learning opportunities to undergrads by blending traditional engineering and math requirements with other courses on ethics and philosophy as they relate to AI.

“With the major, we’re really setting out a curriculum that makes sense as a whole,” Greiner said in the release. “We are not simply taking a collection of courses that have been created already and putting a new wrapper around them. We’re actually creating a brand new curriculum. Most of the required courses are brand new courses designed for this major.”

Students in the program will also benefit from resources through Rice’s growing AI ecosystem, like the Ken Kennedy Institute, which focuses on AI solutions and ethical AI. The university also opened its new AI-focused "innovation factory," Rice Nexus, earlier this year.

“We have been building expertise in artificial intelligence,” Ordóñez-Román added in the release. “There are people working here on natural language processing, information retrieval systems for machine learning, more theoretical machine learning, quantum machine learning. We have a lot of expertise in these areas, and I think we’re trying to leverage that strength we’re building.”