AI Summit- AI in Action: Helping Faculty Reclaim Time for Teaching and Student Success

Last month, I had the opportunity to present AI in Action: Practical Chatbots for Teaching, Assessment, and Academic Operations to faculty across High Point University.

Rather than focusing on AI as a futuristic technology, we explored a much more practical question:

What repetitive, frustrating tasks are consuming our time, and how can we redesign them?

From assessment design and rubric development to curriculum mapping, student support, and academic operations, we examined how faculty can move beyond one-off prompts and begin building structured AI tools that produce consistent, reusable results.

My motto? Minimal prompting, standardized results.

If you are reading this, keep that in mind for your next project. Ask yourself: how can I generate useful, standardized outputs without having to explain the same need over and over again?

That is one practical direction we can take as we begin to embrace AI agents, AI-assisted workflows, and deeper AI integration within our roles.

We do not need to start with something overly complex. We can start with a simple guiding principle:

Minimal prompting. Standardized results.

Stay focused on that, and move forward.

One of the key ideas I emphasized during the session was that effective AI systems are rarely built on clever prompts alone. The most successful solutions start with identifying a repetitive task. From there, the work should move toward defining a clear role, strong context, a logical process, and a structured output.

Whether developing a study guide coach, a patient encounter simulator, or a curriculum intelligence assistant, the goal remains the same: reduce administrative friction so staff and educators can spend more time on the work that matters most: teaching, mentoring, and supporting student success.

Thank you to the faculty who attended, shared ideas, challenged assumptions, and helped make the conversation engaging. The creativity and curiosity in the room made me even more optimistic about the future of AI in higher education.

AI Summit
May 5, 2026