2026 Spring Summer Onyx Anneau

intensive, and flag the applications to alert the admission staff. The next step will be to help streamline the admission process and answer questions and inquiries more timely. “For the student, the AI software adds another layer of connectivity, and we can train it to know what academic courses and majors that students are interested in,” said Frankie Enochs ’93, MBA, MSIT, vice president for institutional technologies and operations. “This is available to students 24 hours a day. I think it will help get students to the phone and in-person conversations with our staff in a more prepared way.” Admissions started using AI to identify students with a greater interest in the College so they can provide information to them more quickly, especially during new student registration.

evaluations more valuable for him and, ultimately, for his students. “It explained to me that the students felt overwhelmed in my class because I use a lot of veterinary textbooks to create my classes, so I started feeding my PowerPoints to AI,” he said. “It keeps my content but restructures my slides in seconds, so they repeat more often, and the students love it.” NURSING Faculty see the SMWC nursing students use Copilot and ChatGPT to upload PowerPoint presentations from their lectures and ask AI to generate lecture notes and study guides to enhance their learning and study skills. At the Rural Health Innovation Collaborative (RHIC), students also have access to Virtual Reality (VR) goggles to help them practice client care. “It’s a way for them to practice their skills and techniques in a safe

“The AI agent identifies itself, and students always have the option to hand off to a real person,” said Chris Lozier, MBA, associate vice president for enrollment management. “We’ve jumped in a few times, but its knowledge base is pretty strong and has answered almost all the questions students have so far.” AI can handle manual labor

“I feel like it would be irresponsible for SMWC not to train students to understand and ethically use AI because they will be behind how the world is moving forward.” — Janet Clark, Ph.D., Provost/Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs

place,” said Marcia Miller, Ph.D., RN, dean of arts and sciences. “AI allows us to personalize our students’ education and tailor their activities and reading to what they know, but we’re still learning all that the healthcare industry wants and needs us to know to make sure our students are prepared.” AI also helps faculty with tasks that previously stole hours of their day. It can help professors create test questions like those students will see on the National Council Licensure Examination, the

tasks, so admissions staff have more time to invest in building relationships with students. When new student recruitment picks up in the summer, Lozier’s team will decide AI’s tasks and how they want it to function.

nationwide exam for nursing licensure. “It could take me up to 10 hours to create a case study, but AI has a grasp of the material and can create a very quality case study in four minutes,” Miller said. “I might have to add things to the case study, like graphics, but AI is an incredible timesaver and can put together a great deal of information in a hurry.” MOVING FORWARD SMWC’s grant application allocates funds to explore new ideas that may arise in the ever-changing world of AI. The institution is also researching an eco-friendly vendor that reduces the number of tokens required for use, thereby reducing environmental impact. The plan is to incorporate AI processes into other areas on campus, such as Academic Affairs, Student Life and Student Success. “These are high-demand, student-facing areas,” Enochs said. “AI can serve up information to students in a way that allows them to explore our campus interactively. From there, our staff can peel off situations and take more one-on-one time on those. This will allow us to serve students faster and better, which is critical in a competitive college environment.” For small colleges like SMWC, grants like the Lilly Endowment Inc.’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Higher Education will allow institutions to assist educators and students to better understand the usefulness of AI in the classroom and prepare students for a rapidly changing world using AI.

“It’s a helpful tool for us and takes the manual work away from the staff so we can do more personal outreach,” he said. “At the end of the day, we’re always out here if students and their families want assistance with a staff member. This has made us more available to answer questions, get conversations going and do the more high impact recruitment.” EQUINE Ed Ferguson, Ph.D., chair of the equine department and associate professor of equine, uses AI in his class and exam preparations. “I taught mostly graduate classes before I came here. When I came to SMWC, I had freshmen and sophomores, and students didn’t really like my tests at first,” he said. “I started using AI to help me create multiple-choice questions, critical thinking or case study questions, which it’s really good at.” Ferguson uses AI in the breeding facility to predict the best time to breed the horses and to help create scenarios for his general health lab. “It would be unethical for us to make a horse sick to show students how to treat it, but AI is really good at creating case study scenarios,” he said. “AI will give me a list of stats and symptoms of the horse, then students figure out what’s wrong. This is what veterinary schools are moving toward to prepare students for their clinicals.” AI also makes student feedback from Ferguson’s course

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