http://opencog.org/

From Sterling:

At the heart of OpenCog are different types of probabilistic networks.  All the modules, therefore, use this probabilistic network to do whatever it is they want to.

To do what you want would require that everyone know how to build the library in a C++ build environment, explore the library, and then be able to understand enough to make their own modules.  At the very least, they’d have to understand the probabilistic network structure in order to understand the modules.

Using OpenCog in C++ as a tool for doing AI might make a reasonable sized project but even then it is doubtful that in the course of a semester students would be able to make anything novel/interesting.

All-in-all I think there’s a fairly heavy commitment before worthwhile results are churned out.

I do think that there might be certain similarities between openCog and what you want Lake to be... and exploring opencog libraries, functionality, etc, might make a reasonable sized project for a student with strong programming skills.