OpenAI’s Codex is an AI coding tool that can help users write, understand, review, and debug code. Beginning in the Fall 2026 semester, U-M faculty can enable a $50 per user per month stipend to cover Codex usage costs for themselves, eligible staff, and for each student enrolled in an academic Canvas course.
How Codex for the Classroom Works
Before you begin, it’s important to understand some key information about how U-M’s Codex for the Classroom works and the overall process for setting it up.
Who’s Eligible for a Stipend?
- Faculty with a Teacher role in an academic Canvas course.
- Students in an academic Canvas course.
- Staff with a Teacher or Student role in an academic Canvas course.
Access and Stipends
- Faculty decide if their course is provisioned for Codex.
- To enable the stipend, faculty with the Teacher role in Canvas must first provision their course in U-M GPT Toolkit, which creates the necessary API keys.
- A $50 per month stipend is established for each eligible faculty/staff/student based on enrollment in an academic Canvas course for the current semester. Course rosters are synced twice per day to accommodate changes.
- Stipends are assigned per person, per provisioned Canvas course. This means that an individual enrolled in multiple academic Canvas courses may receive multiple $50 monthly stipends — one for each course that has been provisioned for Codex use in U-M GPT Toolkit.
Using Codex
- U-M AI Services provides access to Codex models through U-M GPT Toolkit, allowing you to use Codex without managing a separate OpenAI API account.
- Codex runs locally on your computer while model requests are sent through the Toolkit gateway.
- Currently, U-M only supports Codex used from your terminal through the Codex command-line interface (CLI).
- Once you’ve set up Codex, usage is currently limited to using the GPT 5.6 (Sol) model. Other model options will display in Codex, however, you will receive an error message if you attempt to use any other model at this time.
Set Up Codex
1. Faculty (Teachers)
Provision Codex for Your Canvas Course:
Once your academic Canvas course has been created, follow the quick and easy process of creating Codex for the Classroom API keys. This process creates unique Codex API keys for all eligible instructors and students enrolled in the course.
2. Faculty, Staff & Students
Set Up Codex on Your Local Computer:
Once the academic Canvas course you’re enrolled in has been provisioned in U-M GPT Toolkit, follow these instructions to retrieve your unique API key and set up Codex.
Keep your API key private. Treat it like a password — do not share it with anyone. Anyone with your key can use your stipend.
Ready to get started? Follow the setup guide for your operating system:
Documentation
For Faculty:
- Create or Retrieve Codex for the Classroom API Keys
- Understanding Stipends, Budgets and Usage Tracking
For Students & Staff:
For Faculty, Staff & Students:
Sensitive Data
Check the ITS AI Service entry in the Sensitive Data Guide to IT Services for a list of the data types that are permitted to be used with ITS AI Services.
Before using institutional and research data with third-party AI services, carefully review the ITS Safe Computing guidelines.