Move fast, mend things: Growing up in Silicon Valley, Jonathan Montoya has always been conscious of technology's possibilities and disparities. He has spent his career exploring the ways that STEM can offer students mobility and opportunity. / Photo by Francis Tatem
Educator at Work: Jonathan Montoya Is Using AI to Connect with Students on the Margins
An assistant professor of Teacher Education at SMC, Montoya and a team of fellow educators were among a handful selected for the Create+AI Challenge, a global competition hosted by Stanford University and Google.
“At Work” is a series that highlights Saint Mary’s faculty and staff at work in the world. Artists, writers, scholars, scientists—we sit down and dive deep into their latest projects.
Jonathan Montoya has always viewed science and technology as tools that can, if properly utilized, offer opportunity and mobility. An assistant professor of Teaching Education, he is Program Director of the Bilingual Authorization in Spanish at Saint Mary’s. Montoya grew up in nearby San José and from Silicon Valley picked up his share of techno-optimism. At the same time, he was conscious that, in the same region, “entire groups of people are…prevented from partaking in the fruits of this prosperity,” as he and his co-authors wrote in a 2021 paper on equitable STEM pathways.
As an educator, Montoya has spent his career exploring how to bring those benefits to underserved students. He wrote his doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Irvine, on equity in engineering, and he contributed to Computing and AI for All, a program focused on the intersectional development of computer science identities among K–8 students. At Saint Mary’s, where he began teaching in 2024, he was recently awarded a Faculty Innovative Pedagogy Grant to support his equity-centered STEM training (previously funded by the Micro:bit Foundation). And as a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Center for Integrated Facility Engineering, he is part of a team reimagining the future of graduate school for STEM fields.
Montoya is currently exploring the empathetic capacity of artificial intelligence in a new, Stanford-funded project. Earlier this year, he and two colleagues were selected as awardees for the Create+AI Challenge, a global contest supported by the Stanford Accelerator for Learning and Google that puts “educators and learners at the heart of AI design.” Out of more than 300 global applicants, Montoya’s team was one of 12 awarded. They received $50,000 to develop UGood?, an AI-driven attendance tool that helps teachers quickly and compassionately check in with absent students.
I recently sat down with Montoya to talk about UGood?, his work at Saint Mary’s, and how his research informs his teaching practice.
What brought you to Saint Mary’s?
The heart of the teacher education program at SMC is the Lasallian values, and that’s the reason why I’m here. It’s what differentiates us from other programs, and it’s something that’s really lived here. I live that mission, partly because I’m a direct result of that mission.
I attended Piedmont Hills High School in San José, where my math teacher, Kevin Murphy ’84, a Saint Mary’s alum, was a big influence. Kevin put me on a path to study education, which ultimately led me to Saint Mary’s. What I had always heard about the College is that the faculty and staff care about the Lasallian mission.
Above all, the people who work and teach here are here to serve the students. I resonated with that.
How did UGood? come about?
Growing up in Silicon Valley, I’ve always been interested in tech. Graduate school is where the AI stuff really took off for me. I’m actually pretty skeptical of it; I don’t believe tech always needs to be implemented. But I’ve been interested in researching how AI can make the classroom experience better, for teachers and students.
In the fall of 2025, my friend and fellow educator, Adam J. Siegel, PhD, and I were invited to submit a proposal to the Stanford Accelerator for Learning Create+AI Challenge, which is an international contest. Of more than 300 applicants, we were among 12 teams from around the world invited to compete. In the end, we won the top prize in the Augment Teaching track for our proposal to create UGood?, an AI-driven attendance application. It will be used across different learning management systems, such as Google Classroom and Canvas. We just want to create a tool that helps the teacher be more impactful and effective.
“The heart of the teacher education program at SMC is the Lasallian values, and that’s the reason why I’m here. It’s what differentiates us from other programs, and it’s something that’s really lived here. I live that mission, partly because I’m a direct result of that mission.”
What does the app do?
Essentially, the app is meant to assist teachers in writing personalized messages to students experiencing attendance issues. There’s so much on a teacher’s plate, day to day, from lesson planning to grading to monitoring behavior. Teachers are taxed, and UGood? is a time saver; it frees them up to do other important work.
The interface is a database of responses for different scenarios. Best case, the AI model learns from what a teacher would authentically say, generates suggestions, and then the teacher can curate those messages. The prototype is still in the testing phase, but it’s getting results. Lindsay Couto, a member of our team and an English teacher in Santa Clara Unified, has successfully used the app to encourage an absent student to return to school. My feeling is that if even one student is reached by this technology, that’s impactful.
There’s an incentive here for school districts, too. The reality is that districts lose a certain amount of money every day a student is absent. If that student returns, though, that funding returns. So that’s another big selling point for UGood?: If this technology shows results and gets students back in the classroom, that’s good for everyone involved.
What excites you most about this project?
The thing I’m most interested in and curious about is whether the app actually provides authentic communication. This is an experiment, ultimately. Do I hope we offer authenticity with AI? Of course, but I don’t know if that’s possible. AI is only as good as the data that you input.
AI can sometimes feel like “The Answer," but at the end of the day, it’s still just a tool. And like any tool, using it well takes effort. We’re talking about practice—the everyday reps where students figure things out, make mistakes, and grow. AI can support learning, but it can’t replace that part.
Still, I'm excited to leverage AI tools to help serve the students that I care about most. At the core of what I do is the students that I serve. I don't ever want to forget that. They’re why I'm here, and why I do what I do.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Anne Williston, MFA ’27 is a Graduate Editorial Fellow with the Office of Marketing and Communications and an educator.
