AI for U

Ep. 54: A President's Playbook for Institutional AI Leadership in Higher Ed

Episode Summary

Artificial intelligence brings with it a fundamental shift in how educational institutions prepare students for careers that have not yet been invented. In this episode of AI for U, host Brian Piper sits down with Dr. Rachelle Keck, President at Grand View University, to explore what institutional AI leadership in higher ed looks like from the president's office. Dr. Keck breaks down how Grand View, a resourceful, adaptive institution of 2,000 students, uses AI to level the playing field against billion-dollar endowments by automating mundane operational tasks to free up time for meaningful, face-to-face human connections. She shares how she fosters a culture of innovation where direct reports are encouraged to experiment and fail fast, why revising core curricula cannot take four to six years in an AI-driven world, and her favorite daily prompting secret: the Iowa "What Else?" method.

Episode Notes

Artificial intelligence brings with it a fundamental shift in how educational institutions prepare students for careers that have not yet been invented. In this episode of AI for U, host Brian Piper sits down with Dr. Rachelle Keck, President at Grand View University, to explore what institutional AI leadership in higher ed looks like from the president's office. Dr. Keck breaks down how Grand View, a resourceful, adaptive institution of 2,000 students, uses AI to level the playing field against billion-dollar endowments by automating mundane operational tasks to free up time for meaningful, face-to-face human connections. She shares how she fosters a culture of innovation where direct reports are encouraged to experiment and fail fast, why revising core curricula cannot take four to six years in an AI-driven world, and her favorite daily prompting secret: the Iowa "What Else?" method.

Join us as we discuss: 

• [2:32] Preparing tomorrow’s workforce through a culture of experimentation
• [8:35] How higher ed leaders can prepare their faculty and staff for an AI strategy
• [17:21] Winning over skeptics and Grand View’s biggest institution-wide changes brought by AI
• [25:10] Bridging siloed departments and gauging the temperature of higher ed’s urgency to adopt an AI strategy

To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website, or search for AI for U with Brian Piper in your favorite podcast player.

Episode Prompt: 

“What else?”

Follow-ups to push it further once "What else?" has opened the door:

• What am I assuming here that might not be true? 
• Who would disagree with this, and what's their best argument? 
• What would make this fail? 
• What would the strongest version of the opposite approach look like? 
• What am I not asking you that I should be? 
• What would you need from me to give a better answer? 

Ask "What else?" more than once. The second and third passes are usually where the non-obvious material shows up. Stop when the answers start repeating.