R/AI
Rural AI Corridor
curriculum & certifications
The NVIDIA program

An NVIDIA-powered training stack — engineered for rural use.

A unified curriculum that takes a rural Texan from 'never touched AI' to a Jetson-certified developer in under 20 weeks — fully covered by free education credits and Denton County workforce grants.

80hr
Total pathway
DLI-101 → DLI-401
20wk
Cohort time-to-cert
Stackable, self-paced
$0
Cost to participant
Grant + Inception covered
4
NVIDIA certifications
DLI + Jetson Developer
Use

Plug-and-play AI workflows for farmers, coaches, schools, and main-street businesses. Free tier forever via mycitymyschool.tech.

Study

NVIDIA DLI courses delivered in-classroom at NCTC and on-demand through MyCitySchool — covered by TWC tuition grants.

Develop

Jetson + DGX Cloud lab access for student-built AI products. Graduates feed directly into the Wistron / MyCityMySchool for Sports pipeline.

Curriculum tracks

Four tiers · zero tuition · stackable certs

Each track is a standalone NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute credential. Stack all four to graduate as a Jetson Developer with a paid pilot inside Denton County.

TIER 1
DLI-101
8 hr
2 weeks · self-paced

Fundamentals of AI for Everyone

K-12 educators, ag operators, small-town entrepreneurs
  • What AI is (and isn't) — non-technical primer
  • Prompting GPT/Gemini/Claude for real work
  • AI for classrooms, farms & main-street ops
  • Ethics, bias & data privacy in rural settings
Outcome · NVIDIA DLI Certificate of Competency
Certification
NVIDIA DLI Certificate of Competency
Issued by NVIDIA DLI on completion of the in-course assessment.
TIER 2
DLI-201
16 hr
4 weeks · hybrid

Building Generative AI Applications

High-school seniors, NCTC dual-credit, local devs
  • Python & Jupyter on NVIDIA-accelerated notebooks
  • LLM fine-tuning with NeMo & RAG pipelines
  • Deploying a generative app to MyCityMySchool for Sports hub infra
  • Capstone: ship one product to mycitymyschool.tech
Outcome · Portfolio project + DLI cert
Certification
Portfolio project + DLI cert
DLI portfolio certificate awarded after capstone review.
TIER 3
DLI-301
24 hr
6 weeks · in-person lab

Computer Vision for Rural Industry

Wistron-bound technicians, MyCityMySchool for Sports analysts
  • CUDA basics & GPU acceleration
  • Object detection for agriculture & athletics
  • Real-time video analytics on Jetson Orin
  • Industrial QA pipelines (Wistron line readiness)
Outcome · Job-ready CV / Edge-AI certificate
Certification
Job-ready CV / Edge-AI certificate
Job-ready CV / Edge-AI certificate via NVIDIA DLI proctored exam.
TIER 4
DLI-401
32 hr
8 weeks · capstone cohort

Edge AI on Jetson — Field Deployment

Howard Technology installers, county IT, founders
  • Jetson Orin hardware + sensor integration
  • TensorRT optimization & on-device inference
  • OTA fleets for rural deployments
  • Launch a paid pilot with a Denton County employer
Outcome · Jetson Developer Certification
Certification
Jetson Developer Certification
Official Jetson AI Specialist / Developer credential from NVIDIA.
Hardware path

Jetson developer kits

Tracks DLI-301 and DLI-401 are designed around Jetson Orin Nano dev boards and edge cameras. Cohorts either bring their own kit or share lab hardware to complete the on-device portions of the curriculum.

Cloud path

DGX Cloud + DLI notebooks

DLI-101 and DLI-201 run on NVIDIA-hosted GPU notebooks. No local hardware is required — every module ships with the cloud environment pre-configured for the assessment.

Certification process

How an NVIDIA DLI certificate is awarded.

STEP · 01
Enroll in the track

Register for the DLI course (self-paced or instructor-led). Each track maps to a single NVIDIA-issued credential.

STEP · 02
Complete modules + labs

Work through every module and the hands-on lab notebooks. Progress is tracked inside the DLI learning platform.

STEP · 03
Pass the assessment

Submit the in-course assessment or capstone. NVIDIA issues a verifiable digital Certificate of Competency or Jetson Developer credential.