Dept Chair · NSF Co-PI · ex-VMware

From music
classroom to
AI lab.

I lead the Network, Cybersecurity, and Cloud department at Central Piedmont. I help build one of NC's first associate-degree AI programs as co-PI on the NSF GAIT grant. And I speak about all of it.

Current research How AI is reshaping entry-level IT work — and what community colleges should teach because of it.
Book me to speak → Read recent writing
  • Central Piedmont
  • UNC Charlotte
  • Wingate Honors
  • NSF ATE GAIT
Research focus AI × Entry-Level Workforce Dr. Frazier A. Smith
Dr. Frazier A. Smith
As featured
in & on
  • Podcast Live from South College
  • News Central Piedmont's NSF ATE GAIT grant
  • Award DevLearn Best in Show DemoFest 2016
01 / Speaking

Eight talks I give.

See all topics
Higher Ed · CTE

Building one of NC's first associate-degree AI programs

The full talk runs 45 minutes plus Q&A. The 25-minute version drops the case-study section.

 Workforce · Research

What AI is doing to the entry-level IT job — and what to teach instead

Field data and ongoing research on how generative AI is reshaping help desk, junior cloud, and analyst roles. Where the entry-level door is narrowing, where it's widening, and what curriculum has to change before the cohort graduates.

 Ethics · AI · Workshop NSF

Would You Pull the Lever? Ethical dilemmas in the age of AI

This workshop was developed under NSF ATE award #2500901.

 Instructional Design

LLMs, RAG, and agentic development as instructional-design tools

Practical workflows for instructional designers — beyond "ChatGPT writes my objectives." Concrete RAG patterns over course documents, agentic pipelines for course generation, and where the human still has to sit in the loop.
02 / Testimonials

What people say.

[Conference organizer quote — 1–2 sentences on what attendees took away from your talk.]
CO [Conference Organizer] [Role · Event year]
[Industry partner or peer faculty quote — what working with you produced.]
IP [Industry Partner] [Role]
[Student or graduate testimonial — what changed for them after your course or program.]
SG [Student / Graduate] [Program · Graduation year]
[Former VMware / Broadcom colleague or learner — 1 sentence on your impact.]
FC [Former Colleague] [Company · Role]
03 / About

Music classroom to AI lab.

Dr. Frazier A. Smith
Wingate → VMware → Wingate

I started as a music education major at Wingate University. I came back to Wingate in 2026 as adjunct in the Honors program — only this time, I'm teaching applied AI.

"The arc from Wingate undergrad to VMware senior manager to community college department chair is the whole story."

In between: a decade of instructional design work at Belk, CPI Security, SnapAV, Anomali, and Carbon Black; senior leadership at VMware and Broadcom shipping training to working engineers; and now leadership of a 3-pathway IT department in Charlotte.

Read the full story →

04 / Writing

Recent posts.

All writing
May 2026

What a music-education degree actually transferred to IT leadership (and what it didn't)

The popular version of this career-pivot story is the inspirational one. The honest version is more specific, and more useful.

 4 min May 2026

What I learned standing up an xAPI lab system for a CC cybersecurity program

Three months in. Cost, infrastructure, schema regrets, and what to start with if you're considering this yourself.

 3 min Apr 2026

The case for teaching cloud through real infrastructure, not labs

Our data center workers learn faster than our lab students. That's not a curriculum problem. It's an exposure problem.

 2 min
05 / Teaching

Where I teach.

All courses
Central Piedmont
Dept Chair · Instructor
  • CSC-214 Data Structures
  • NOS-120 Linux/UNIX Single User
UNC Charlotte
Graduate Faculty
  • Graduate Seminar Cloud Computing for Data Analytics
  • ITIS 3310 Software Architecture and Design
Wingate
Adjunct · Honors
  • Honors Applied Innovation (AI) for Honors