For decades, universities have long played an important role in the development of AI systems. Today, with the rapid emergence of agentic AI, higher education leaders have a responsibility to approach this technology as a catalyst to reimagine how, where and for whom education works.

A vocal advocate for the transformative potential of technology, ASU President Michael Crow will share his bold vision for the future of higher education, exploring how emerging technology can empower learners to drive their own journeys. Drawing from ASU's leadership in innovation, he'll discuss how new approaches can help dismantle traditional barriers to education, enable more personalized learning experiences, and expand access at scale.

Join a distinguished panel of higher education leaders for a conversation on the challenges and opportunities shaping the future of learning. Presidents from across higher education will share perspectives from their respective institutions, discussing how leadership, innovation, and strategy come together to guide higher education forward. The panel will be moderated by Jeff Selingo, a New York Times bestselling author and higher education journalist whose reporting on the intersection of education and work has made him a trusted voice for both campus leaders and the public navigating what's next for higher ed.

Panelists

• Michael M. Crow, Arizona State University 
• Mark Milliron, National University President 
• Amy Diaz,GateWay Community College 
• Stacy Leeds, The University of Tulsa

Moderated by Jeff Selingo, New York Times bestselling author and higher education journalist

Join renowned author and Pulitzer-prize journalist John Markoff for a fireside conversation with Sethuraman "Panch" Panchanathan, University Professor of Technology and Innovation at Arizona State University and former Director of the National Science Foundation. Drawing on decades of reporting and research at the frontier of technology, the two will discuss the forces shaping innovation today and what they mean for the future ahead.

Speakers

• John Markoff, Pulitzer-prize journalist, Author
• Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan, University Professor of Technology and Innovation, Arizona State University

Moderated by: Michael Moe, Founder and CEO, GSV

John Markoff will be onsite for an exclusive book signing for Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots

College athletic departments are among the most complex operating environments inside a university — simultaneously running a sports organization, media business, live-events operation, fundraising enterprise and student-support system. What happens when that entire organization begins to operate differently because of AI?

This session will explore what it actually means to build an agentic athletic department: where agents can act rather than simply answer, where humans move from executing routine processes to directing and judging them, and where institutional knowledge becomes available across traditional organizational silos. Just as importantly, the conversation will examine the boundaries — where human judgment remains essential and how leaders build trust, governance and accountability as agents assume more responsibility.

Presenters:

• Michael Cohn, GSV Sports (moderator)
• Lisa Young, Sun Devil Athletics
• Jeff Kunowski, SPORTx at ASU
• JJ Van Niel, Head Coach Volleyball, ASU 

Moving from AI pilots to enterprise adoption requires more than technology. Leaders from the University of California, Irvine will share how they built an AI ecosystem serving more than 30,000 users through scalable infrastructure, flexible architecture and intentional adoption strategies. Learn how institutional ownership, governance, training and community engagement are helping move AI from experimentation to sustainable, campus-wide impact.

Presenters:

• Xanat Hernandez, Director of Communications, University of California, Irvine
• Sarkis Daglian, Director of AI, Cloud and Client Solutions, University of California, Irvine
• Sherwynn Umali, Deputy Chief of Staff for Student Affairs, University of California, Irvine
• Dominic Slauson, Generative AI Specialist on the ZotGPT team within the University of California

In March 2025, we launched an AI tool in our portal search bar (myUMBC). For students, the tool has access to their most important data and they can ask either generic or personalized questions. If I ask how to register for classes, the answer will explain the registration process, identify my assigned advisor, detail how to schedule an appointment and name my academic advocate for assistance. Additionally, if the system assigns me a registration appointment, it tells me the date and time I can register for classes. This kind of personalized AI search is now being extended to integrate with our service management platform in the event a human needs to be involved in servicing their question. This tool is now evolving beyond supporting students to supporting staff and faculty.

Presenter:

• Jack Suess, Vice President of IT and CIO, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

What does truly personalized learning actually require, and what's possible right now? At Gies College of Business, we've been running a series of experiments we call Learning 3.0: using agentic AI to test adaptive explanations, personalized video, custom practice, and individualized feedback at scale. We built this work with a team of Gies Disruption Lab students and recent graduates, keeping real learners at the center of the design process. This session is an honest account of what we tried, what surprised us, and what a genuinely dynamic, student-responsive course looks like, and what it takes to get there.

Presenters:

• Julia Sabin, Sr. Manager of Academic Innovation, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Adam King, Director of Innovation and Transformation, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Jamie Nelson, Associate Director, Educational Innovation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

ASU host: Dan Gruber, Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning and Clinical Professor, ASU W. P. Carey School of Business

As AI becomes embedded across higher education, institutions face a critical strategy challenge: layering chatbots and AI agents onto legacy workflows will only produce incremental gains. True transformation requires an AI-native mindset that reimagines processes from the ground up, rather than automating the status quo.

This presentation will share transformational AI use cases, including agentic AI, and show how process mapping can help institutions redesign how work moves across admissions, advising, research administration, student services, and operations. By mapping current-state processes, institutions can identify redundancies, handoff failures, and decision bottlenecks that no single chatbot or agent can solve alone.

The real opportunity is to redesign these processes with AI agents woven into core logic, data pathways, and decision points, creating new operating models that improve student outcomes, reduce administrative burden, and help universities adapt as AI continues to evolve.

Speakers

• Mary Strain, AI and Machine Learning Strategist, AWS
• Tara Roberts, Senior Director, Student Success and Service Delivery, Financial Aid and Scholarship Services, ASU

ASU Host: Colleen Schwab, Global Innovation Strategist, AWS
 

In today’s classroom, AI is doing more than generating content. This session brings together two faculty members from two colleges at Arizona State University to showcase how they’ve designed AI experiences that support meaningful classroom dialogue, interactive learning and transparent assessment. They will demonstrate how VibeCheck supports student-teacher dialogue and responsive instruction, while IntegrityShield and GamED.AI promote assessment transparency, academic integrity, and gamified learning. Attendees will get a first hand look at tools that use AI to strengthen classroom dialogue, authentic assessment, student engagement and trust.

Speakers:

• Kevin Beyer, Executive Director, Information Technology, The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ASU
• Vivek Gupta, Assistant Professor, School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence at ASU

• Tyler Kilbourne, Assistant Director of Information Technology, The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ASU

   

As AI moves from experimentation into teaching, learning and core university systems, higher education institutions face a larger question: What does responsible adoption look like at scale?

This session brings together perspectives on the pedagogical, operational and governance decisions that should shape an institutional approach to AI. Panelists will explore how universities can ground AI strategy in evidence and student experience while establishing clear ownership of decisions, data and outcomes. From protecting the intellectual work at the heart of learning to coordinating responsibility across academic units, IT and technology partners, the discussion will examine where current approaches fall short and what institutions need to build for what comes next.

Presenters:

• Kim Channpraseut, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Brad Gobby, Curtin University, Australia
• Abhishek Singh, Chief Technology and Security Officer, Adelaide University

Join Jeff Barr, Vice President and Chief Evangelist at AWS, for a practical look at what generative and agentic AI mean for higher education and the future of the student experience. Drawing from recent talks with global developer audiences, Jeff will explore how AI is changing the way applications are imagined, built, tested and improved.

As institutions consider AI-enabled tools, agents and services, teams will need to think differently about how they design applications, connect data, support users and build responsibly at scale. Jeff will discuss how AI is reshaping developer roles, team workflows, data strategies and the relationship between technology builders and the people they serve, with a focus on what this shift means for universities preparing for a more intelligent, adaptive and student-centered digital future.

The keynote will be followed by a fireside conversation with Valerie Singer, General Manager of AWS Global Education, moderated by Lev Gonick, Chief Information Officer at Arizona State University. Together, they will explore how institutions can turn emerging technologies into meaningful action, foster a culture of innovation and create new possibilities across the university experience.

Amazon Web Services is the premier sponsor for the 2026 summit.

In this workshop, attendees will experience two major sessions back-to-back. First, a 40-minute fireside chat bringing the perspective of Arizona State University, Accenture and NiCE experts, sharing what actually happens when agentic AI gets deployed for the student experience — the vision, the wins, the friction points, and more. This is followed by a 50- minute demo and build-your-own-agent session, where attendees work in small groups to build their own AI agent live, guided by NiCE experts. Attendees will leave with a working agent, practical takeaways, and greater confidence to adapt what they built for their own campuses.
 

Presenters:

• Paola Doebel, Senior Vice President and General Manager CX Americas, NiCE
• Justin Poteet, Public Sector AI Transformation Leader, Accenture
• Bill De Dufour, Director, Pre-Sales Engineering, NiCE
• Vince Vaughn, Account Executive, Higher Education, NiCE
• Gigi Speaks, Senior Director, Experience Center, Arizona State University

Explore how AI agents can help institutions create more personalized, responsive and scalable student experiences across advising, learning support, retention, campus services and career readiness. This guided learning session will move beyond the chatbot conversation and examine how agentic AI can provide more contextual, action-oriented support for students.

Through practical examples and discussion, participants will learn education-focused agent design patterns, connected-agent concepts and responsible implementation approaches that can help institutions plan for AI-enabled services with clarity, care and confidence. This session is designed for learning and discussion, rather than hands-on technical building.

Speaker details coming soon. 

AI policies provide important guidance, but their impact comes to life through the student experience. In this workshop, participants will experience the same learning journey we hope students take in an AI-enabled world, moving from comprehension to judgment to creation. Through hands-on activities, attendees will explore how AI Assistants can support learning, accelerate understanding, and enable new forms of creation, while keeping human agency, critical thinking, creativity, and decision-making at the center of the experience.

Presenters:

• Shauna Chung, Senior Strategic Development Manager for Higher Education, Adobe
• Dan Armstrong, Senior Education Solutions Consultant, Adobe

As colleges and universities rapidly adopt AI tools, many institutions discover there is no clear answer to who actually "owns" AI strategy, governance, procurement, implementation, or risk management. Is AI led by IT, academic affairs, research, libraries, teaching and learning centers, innovation offices, or executive leadership? This panel explores how campuses are navigating fragmented decision-making, shared governance, faculty concerns, student expectations, and cross-functional coordination in real time. Panelists will share emerging governance models, lessons learned, and practical approaches for leading through uncertainty while balancing innovation, trust, and institutional responsibility.

Presenters:

• Mike Kennedy, Deputy CIO, University of California, Riverside
• Anupam Joshi, Vice Provost and Chief AI Officer, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Moderator: Bridget Burns, CEO, University Innovation Alliance

As universities begin deploying agents that can access data and take action, they need an institutional foundation that supports both trusted information and increasingly complex AI workflows. This session brings together two complementary approaches to building that foundation. Presenters from Vanderbilt University and the University of St. Thomas will show how governed data products and extensible multi-agent architecture can work together to move institutions beyond fragmented pilots toward enterprise AI systems designed for real operational and academic needs.

Presenters:

• Allen Karns, Chief AI & Technology Officer, Vanderbilt University
• Jena Zangs, Chief Data and AI Officer, University of St. Thomas

ASU host: John Rome, Deputy CIO, ASU Enterprise Technology

Institutional governance was built for stability: committees deliberate, policies are approved, and structures hold until the next review cycle. That model has worked for decades. And now, AI has broken it. These systems act, adapt, and decide at a velocity no governance process can match, leaving institutions writing policies for a technology that has already moved on. But with this challenge, an opportunity emerges. Agentic AI is surfacing what has always been true: structures built for stability are fragile when they meet velocity. The institutions that will navigate this moment are the ones willing to build governance that is fluid, resilient, and human-centered. A global study on AI literacies and governance spanning six continents funded by WCET is revealing how leaders actually make these decisions and where AI literacies development strengthens governance capacity. This panel shares what the research is finding and what it means for institutions ready to govern differently.

Speakers:

• Melissa Vito, Vice Provost of Academic Innovation, The University of Texas at San Antonio
• Angela Gunder, CEO and Founder Opened Culture

ASU host: Amy Pate, Director of Learning Technology, Office of the University Provost, ASU

What happens when AI moves from a separate chat window into the learning environment itself? This session explores how four campuses are building agentic AI directly into Canvas by Instructure to support feedback, reflection, coaching, and real-time learning. Examples include a leadership simulation at Utah State University, teacher-built interactive learning apps at the University of Sydney, a faculty-controlled coding assistant at the University of Florida, and a measurement-driven pilot at the University of Notre Dame that helps educators better understand student learning and strengthen support where it matters most.

Presenter:

• Ryan Lufkin, Vice President of Global Academic Strategy, Instructure

Instructure is a sponsor of the 2026 summit.

Agentic AI is creating new opportunities to transform the student experience, strengthen institutional operations and expand access. Leaders from Harvard University, the University of Florida and the California State University Office of the Chancellor will share how they are leading AI transformation at scale through enterprise strategy, governance, cybersecurity, workforce readiness and responsible innovation. Join this executive conversation to learn how technology leaders are building trusted, AI-ready institutions.

Presenters:

• Ed Clark, Chief Information Officer, California State University Office of the Chancellor
• Josh Roberts, Chief Information and Digital Officer, University of Sydney 
• Nick Gilbert, Chief Information Officer, The London School of Economics and Political Science
• Beth Myers, Associate Vice Chancellor and CIO, University of Colorado

ASU host: Lev Gonick, Chief Information Officer, Arizona State University

As artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes the workforce, colleges and universities face a dual challenge: preparing students for an evolving labor market while simultaneously adapting their own institutions in real time.

This conversation will explore how higher education leaders are navigating AI implementation across teaching and learning, student support, operations, workforce preparation, and institutional governance. Panelists will discuss emerging approaches to embedding AI fluency, career readiness, and durable skills across disciplines, while also addressing the organizational realities leaders face as policies, technologies, faculty expectations, employer demands, and student behaviors shift at unprecedented speed.

Panelists:

• Peyton Burgess, Emerging Technologies Program Manager, Virginia Commonwealth University
• Beth Meyers, Chief Information Officer, University of Colorado
• Jason Keith, Senior Vice President and Provost, Iowa State University

Moderator: Bridget Burns, CEO, University Innovation Alliance

Agentic and adaptive AI is finally making it possible to deliver on learning's long-standing promise of personalized pathways at scale to support student engagement. By automating the creation of tailored scenarios, skill assessments, and feedback loops, AI dramatically reduces the time and cost of developing truly adaptive courseware and other agents critical in supporting student success. This panel brings together a technology leader driving AI strategy across 9 campuses and one of the largest online programs collectively supporting over 55,000 students and an adaptive learning platform CEO to explore how agentic AI can personalize the student experience. Attendees will learn how agentic and adaptive AI can accelerate course design, integrate adaptive and immersive elements within existing institutional infrastructure, and capture skills data that proves student mastery, not just completion.

Presenters:

• Brian Davis, Executive Director for Strategic and Academic Technology, Louisiana State University

• Phillip Miller, CEO, Skillwell

   

As AI reshapes entry-level work, higher education must reconsider how graduates are prepared for the workforce. Some of the challenges include developing AI fluency and helping learners build the judgment and adaptability needed to use these tools well. This session will explore how colleges and universities can connect workforce signals more directly to curriculum and course design. Drawing on several institutional approaches, speakers will examine how to identify where programs need to evolve and create learning experiences that better reflect the demands of an AI-influenced workplace.

Presenters:

• Helen Chen, Professor of Computer Science and Former Senior Vice Provost for Academic Strategy and Innovation, North Carolina State University
• Kathleen deLaski, Author and Professor, Education Design Lab, George Mason University, Harvard Project on Workforce

ASU host: Sukhwant Jhaj, Vice Provost for Academic Innovation and Student Achievement, ASU

As generative and agentic AI reshape how people learn and work, business schools have an opportunity to create more active, adaptive experiences that encourage learners to test ideas, make decisions, build connections and apply new knowledge in real time.

Drawing on emerging work from two business schools — IESE Business School, a premier, globally ranked graduate business school in Barcelona, Spain, and Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, the largest business school in the United States — this session will explore how agentic AI can support more personalized and self-directed learning journeys.

Presenters:

• Maria Perillo, IESE Business School, Spain
•  Raghu Santanam, W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University 

Agentic AI can loop: calling tools, checking its own work and trying again. That makes consumption hard to forecast and makes “let staff, faculty and students use it freely” a difficult sentence for any CFO to hear. This session examines which AI workloads institutions can move onto devices, how local processing can change the cost curve and where the cloud remains the right answer. The session will include a live demonstration of hybrid local-and-cloud inference on current hardware.

Speakers

• Melanie Wood, Director, Microsoft Surface 
• Casey Hill, Strategic Advisor, Microsoft Surface
• Neil Misak,  AI Architect, Microsoft Surface Engineering

ASU host: Jenn Greenberg, Associate Director of Strategic Engagements
 

In a single day, a student might submit an assignment in Canvas, message a study group in Teams, ask a support portal about financial aid and chat with a campus AI agent. They won't think about which company built each tool. What they'll notice is whether their university feels connected and whether someone is there when they need them.

This panel brings AWS, Instructure and Microsoft to the same stage to take on questions none of them can answer alone: Is the campus front door already lost to consumer AI? What should follow a student from one system to the next, and who decides what gets shared? When should an agent stop helping and hand them over to a person? The panelists will also address the interoperability problems they still need to solve together.

Attendees will leave with practical design principles for building a student experience that feels connected and human, across every platform they use.

Presenters:

• Valerie Singer, General Manager, AWS Global Education
• Arohi Desai, Director of Product Management, Instructure
• Deirdre Quarnstrom, Vice President of Education, Microsoft
• Moderated by Bonnie Wilde, Executive Director, Enterprise Technology Affairs, Arizona State University

This panel brings together perspectives from academic innovation, system-level technology leadership and digital education research to explore how institutions can move beyond evaluating completed products and toward assessment practices that make learning processes visible. Speakers will discuss the opportunities of AI-assisted grading, approaches to assessment for and as learning, and the institutional strategies needed to implement new models responsibly and at scale. Gain practical ideas for designing more authentic learning experiences, improving feedback and preserving trust in assessment.

Presenters:

• Danny Bielik, President, Digital Education Council
• Alphia Possamai-Inesedy, Pro Vice Chancellor Student Success, Western Sydney University  
• Annie Hale, Chief Research and Data Officer Action Lab, EdPlus
   

The Impact Award honors a remarkable individual whose work exemplifies the power of leadership, compassion and systems change – and reminds us that technology must always serve humans first.

This year’s Impact Award will be presented to Paula Starr, Chief Information Officer for Cherokee Nation, to recognize her work to intertwine Cherokee values with cutting-edge IT solutions.

As universities move from experimenting with AI to deploying agentic systems that can act independently, the stakes around data access are rising. These agents may reach into student records, research data, and campus systems, yet many institutions still lack a clear picture of what agents can access and whether that data is properly protected.

Led by Cyera, this session explores the foundational work higher education institutions need before granting meaningful access to AI agents, including how to build a living inventory of enterprise data, classify FERPA-regulated records, research IP, and operational data, and evaluate whether existing controls, such as data loss prevention (DLP), can withstand agentic use cases.

The session will also examine barriers slowing agentic AI adoption and address a pressing governance question: when an AI agent acting under a person’s credentials makes a mistake, where does accountability sit?

Attendees will leave with a practical framework for inventorying data, classifying risk, and assigning oversight across human and non-human actors.

Presenter:

• Eddie Borrero, Data & AI Security Officer, Cyera

Someone has to be first. Across higher ed, a new role, Chief AI Officers, is tasked with preparing universities for AI adoption and use. Navigating daily signals of AI progress, faculty governance, student and institutional data, academic freedom, and the need for a strategy yesterday, is a complex task for which there is no predecessor and no playbook.

Moderated by George Siemens, Chief AI Transformation Officer at Southern New Hampshire University and a founding convener of the Chief AI Officer Network (CAION), this session brings together three sitting higher-ed CAIOs from across the network. The conversation will focus on what these leaders wish someone had with them on day one about managing strategic, technical, and relationship aspects of AI. This is an honest, unscripted discussion about what the role really looks like, the wins, the policies that had to be rewritten after rapid changes, and the skills that turned out to matter more than anyone expected.

Whether you're building this role at your institution, considering stepping into one, or just want to understand who's steering AI on campuses across the country and internationally, you'll leave with a clearer, more encouraging picture of what's required to be successful in this role (and with fewer illusions about what it takes to get there!).

Speakers: 

• Allen Karns, Chief AI Technology Officer - Center for Generative AI, Vanderbilt University
• Elizabeth Reilley, Vice President of Digital Transformation & Chief AI Officer, The University of North Carolina System
• Aaron Driver, Chief AI Officer, University of New England
   

AI is reshaping higher education everywhere, but not in the same way. In this session, academic leaders from Ukraine, Mexico, and Ecuador compare notes on how their institutions are adopting AI for teaching and learning, and what's translating across borders and what isn't.

Panelists will share how they're preparing faculty and students, what's working in their classrooms, and where local context, from infrastructure to culture to policy, shapes their approach. Attendees will leave with a broader view of the global AI landscape in higher education and practical ideas they can bring back to their own campuses.

Presenters:

• Sergiy Tytenko, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Digital Technologies EPAM, American University Kyiv
• Anna Mariela Preciado Leyva, Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara
• Pablo Ruiz Aguirre, Prorector, Universidad Internacional del Ecuador. Loja
• Moderated by Emiliano Diez, Chief Technology Officer and Global Managing Director of Products and Services at Cintana Education
   

Universities around the world are moving beyond early AI experiments toward systems that can support students across courses and institutional services. This session brings together initiatives from the United States and Mexico, pairing an institution-wide generative AI platform with an academic virtual assistant evolving into a more agentic learning companion The two examples offer a global perspective on what it takes to move from a promising AI tool to an institutionally supported system. Presenters will explore how local context shapes that work while highlighting the shared challenge of building AI infrastructure that students can trust and institutions can sustain.

Presenters:

• Özgür Yılmazel, Director of Data Core and a Senior Research Fellow, UMass Amherst
• Anthony Gilberto Ayala Bastidas, Tec de Monterrey, Mexico

ASU host: Paula Hildalgo, Assistant Vice President, ASU's Office of Government and Community Engagement

Higher education institutions struggle to understand the full student journey due to fragmented systems, inconsistent identifiers, and incomplete data. This session explores how two universities — Western Governors University and Arizona State University — are, creating a unified and continuously improving view of the learner. By combining vector search, LLM-driven matching, and scalable data workflows, IRDA moves beyond static integration toward a more agentic model where systems improve match quality, adapt to new sources, and unlock real-time insight. Attendees will see how identity resolution becomes a foundational capability for student experience measurement, enabling more accurate analytics, targeted interventions, and reduced friction across the learner lifecycle.

Speaker:

• Eric Hansen, Director of Student Journey Measurement, Western Governors University

Over 3,000 course catalogs. More than 4.8 million courses. Triangulator is a shared network that uses AI to gather and normalize those messy data and match likely equivalencies, with human reviewers in control of every decision. Explore why we built it, real use cases, and how to bring your institution into the network.

Speaker:

• Anne Jones, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Office of the University Provost, Arizona State University

ASU Host: Gemma Garcia, Executive Director, Office of the University Provost

Higher education is entering a new phase of AI adoption. Institutions are moving beyond generative AI tools toward emerging forms of agentic AI capable of reshaping how students are experiencing learning. Yet many institutions are still grappling with foundational questions: what role should AI agents play? Where can they meaningfully support students without replacing human relationships, judgement, and care? And how do institutions move from isolated pilots toward intentional strategy?

Grounded in recent research, this session will explore institutional approaches related to agentic AI in higher education. The discussion will focus on examining how institutions are beginning to use AI agents for a wide variety of course and student support. Panelists will share their perspectives about emerging practices, what tensions institutions are encountering, and where meaningful opportunities may exist.

Presenters:

• Brandon Rich, Director of AI Enablement, University of Notre Dame
• Ayham Boucher, Director of AI Innovation Lab, Cornell University
• Jennifer Gebelein, Director of AI Integration and Faculty Success Florida International University
• Kim Arnold, Director of Teaching and Learning, EDUCAUSE (Moderator)

ASU host: Kyle Bowen, Enterprise Technology

Across the United States, community colleges serve nearly 40% of undergraduate students. Today, these institutions are working to embed responsible AI systems that reduce friction, strengthen institutional readiness, and improve student persistence and success. In this session, leaders across three community colleges – Pima Community College, Merced College and Calbright College – come together to highlight their unique and shared experiences for designing human-centered AI systems.

Presenters:

• Tony Sovak, Director LMS & eLearning Quality, Pima Community College
• Kody Stimpson, Dean of Innovation and Institutional Effectiveness, Merced College
• Vivek Vyas, Chief Product Officer, Calbright College

ASU host: Daniel Corr, Vice Provost, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College

Agentic AI can generate learning content and assessment questions at unprecedented speed, but scale alone does not guarantee quality. Poorly constructed questions may confuse learners, reinforce bias, or fail to measure the intended knowledge and skills. This session introduces a practical, research-informed framework for evaluating AI-generated, scenario-based questions across multiple dimensions. Drawing on work with ReQUESTA, a multi-agent system for generating comprehension questions, speakers will demonstrate how expert rubrics, human review, and systematic comparisons can help educators and developers assess and refine AI outputs. Attendees will leave with actionable strategies for integrating quality evaluation into AI-enabled learning workflows while keeping educator expertise and student learning at the center.

Presenters:

• Peixia Shao, Postdoctoral Scholar, Learning Engineering Institute, Arizona State University
• Katerina Christhilf Sabino, Graduate Service Assistant, Learning Engineering Institute, Arizona State University
• Yu (Terry) Tian, Assistant Research Scientist, Learning Engineering Institute, Arizona State University

ASU host and moderator: Danielle McNamara, Executive Director, Learning Engineering Institute

As institutions move from AI experimentation to implementation, educators need practical ways to integrate advanced tools and assessment into learning ecosystems. This session argues that meaningful AI integration is an institutional responsibility, not just an individual effort, requiring structures, guidance, and support for effective and responsible use.

APLU has begun collecting institutional examples, and presenters will highlight approaches for integrating AI into instructional design and faculty development. The session emphasizes that institutions must go beyond encouraging experimentation by establishing clear expectations, professional learning, and cross-functional support to enable intentional, pedagogically grounded use. Participants will leave with strategies to foster culture change, align AI with faculty needs and learning goals, and support sustainable teaching innovation.

Presenter:

• Karen Vignare, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU)

ASU host: Nancy Gonzales, Executive Vice President and University Provost at Arizona State University

AI offers the potential to provide timely, personalized feedback to thousands of learners, but responsible implementation requires more than generating scores and comments. This session examines the design, deployment and evaluation of human-in-the-loop AI feedback systems. A combination session with teams from ASU Learning Enterprise and ASU New College will examine how higher education can deliver timely, personalized AI-supported feedback at scale while preserving instructor oversight, transparency, fairness and student trust. From Timely Grader, a human-in-the-loop AI feedback system, to a multi-agent grading assistant designed to support 75,000 learner submissions, speakers will examine how higher education can deliver timely, personalized AI-supported feedback at scale while preserving instructor oversight, transparency, fairness, and student trust.

Speakers:

• Marjory Marshall, Senior Program Manager, ASU Learning Enterprise,
• Yixuan He, Assistant Professor, New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University
• Catheryn McClellan Reardon, Assistant Teaching Professor of Psychology and AI Strategist for Psychology Digital Immersion Programs, New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University

Students are already living the future that higher education is still planning for. In this candid panel, students from community college, public university, and ASU share how they use AI to study, create, and prepare for careers. They'll discuss what works, what doesn't, and where they wish their institutions would listen more closely.

Panelists will speak to how agentic AI is shaping their daily learning, what support and guardrails they want from faculty and campus leaders, and how they think about building skills and staying in command of their own work in an AI-driven world. Attendees will leave with a clearer picture of the student experience as it is today, plus practical ideas for designing AI tools and policies with students rather than for them.

Presenters:

• Raquel Castellanos, Business Administration Student, Pima Community College
• Mabel Tsadia, AI Acceleration Analyst and Quality Assurance Engineer, Arizona State University
• Paul Gonzalez, Student Ambassador for Academic Innovation, The University of Texas at San Antonio
• Bensonn Anspach, The University of Virginia

Some of the most meaningful conversations happen around the table. This invite-only lunch session extends a unique opportunity to connect with peers, share experiences and build relationships across institutions and industries.

Hosted by ASU Executive Vice President and University Provost Nancy Gonzales and GSV Ventures Managing Partner Deborah Quazzo, with special guest and 2026 Impact Award Paula Starr.

Explore how human-centered AI is reshaping health education—from curriculum and student readiness to assessment and clinical learning. Discover a practical framework for developing AI-ready health professionals who can evaluate AI outputs, recognize bias and limitations, protect sensitive information, and preserve human judgment and empathy. Examine how AI-enabled assessment tools can evaluate not only whether students reach the right answer, but also how they reason and perform throughout the learning process. Finally, learn how Avery, an agentic AI nurse assistant, is being evaluated as a learning partner and interprofessional teammate in educational and clinical settings.

Presenters:

• Judy Karshmer, Dean, Professor, & ASU Chief Wellness Officer, Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation
• Julie Liss, Senior Associate Dean and Professor, College of Health Solutions
• Jeremi Smith, ASU John Shufeldt School of Medicine and Medical Engineering

AI learning agents are moving beyond standalone chatbots to become integrated parts of the course experience. This session explores two institutionally developed platforms that give instructors meaningful control over how AI supports learning, while reducing the need for complex prompt writing or technical configuration. Presenters Joshua Smith of the University of Utah and James Castle of the University of Georgia will examine what it takes to move these tools from individual course experiments to institutionally supported learning systems. Through two different models, the session will show how AI learning agents can scale without losing sight of instructional intent or institutional responsibility.

Speakers:

• Joshua Smith, University of Utah

• James Castle, University of Georgia

   

As generative AI becomes part of students’ everyday academic work, unclear expectations can lead to confusion, inconsistent grading, and accusations of misuse. National University’s RAISE 5 guidelines give faculty and students a clear, field-tested framework for when and how AI can be used. The session provides insights from both faculty and academic leadership perspectives on how institutions can communicate clear standards for acceptable AI use while redesigning assignments to evaluate how students direct, critique, validate, and document AI-generated work. Leave with strategies for reducing ambiguity, strengthening academic integrity, and shifting assessment toward student judgment, reflection and responsible human-AI collaboration.

Speakers:

• Torrence Temple, Academic Program Director of Single Subject Credential Program, National University
• Sheila Hunt, Associate Director of Faculty Support & Development, National University

ASU host: Gemma Garcia, Executive Director, Learning Technology, ASU Office of the University Provost

It started with a chatbot at ASU. Then, conversations with students changed what was being built. Students who are struggling often don’t ask for help, and the conversations they avoid may be the ones they need most. Professors face their own challenge: knowing who needs attention, when to reach out, and what to say. Academic integrity presents a similar challenge: identifying a potential problem is only the beginning.

This session shares how human-centered, iterative research shifted ASU’s approach to AI. From academic struggles to potential cheating, it explores how AI can identify the moments that matter and help professors start conversations that might otherwise never happen.

Speakers

• Elliott Hedman, UX & AI Experience Lead, Robots & Pencils
• Ben Mayfield, Sr Solutions Engineer, Honorlock
• Kim Beckert, Assistant Vice Provost, Undergraduate Education, Arizona State University

ASU Host: Jenn Greenberg, Associate Director, Strategic Engagements, Enterprise Technology
 

Industry partnerships are helping education institutions move agentic AI from isolated pilots to institution-wide practice. This session offers a behind-the-scenes look at how institutions and technology partners are building AI-enabled solutions that support learners across degree, online, and non-degree pathways.

Topics will include what makes such partnerships work, the challenges that surface during implementation, and how cross-unit coordination, data, and governance decisions shape responsible scaling. Education leaders will leave with practical insight into turning emerging technology into connected, learner-centered solutions.

Speaker 

• Margo Martinez, Vice President and General Manager of Education, Salesforce

ASU host: Frank Montoya, Senior Product Manager, Arizona State University
 

The GAME School is one of the newest and most exciting units at ASU. As the games and entertainment industries grapple with AI and universities explore how to build AI fluency within creative disciplines, the GAME School is helping lead the way through innovative courses such as Creating Games with AI and Machine Learning for Media Arts, as well as courses that integrate AI with related topics, including motion capture through Martial Arts and Motion Capture.

The session will feature student feedback and visuals offering a glimpse into these courses and the student experience. Presenters will also highlight the GAME School’s partnership with the Ultimate Endgamers League, including an AI-powered leaderboard that has resulted in ASU’s first esports scholarship opportunity. The session will conclude with a brief look at AI research underway within the School, including work in 3D generative AI for games and other emerging areas.

Speaker

• Pavan Turaga Founding Director of The GAME School at Arizona State University