Spring/Summer 2026

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

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AT THE WOODS

“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

By Betsy Simon Digital and Brand Marketing Manager A rtificial intelligence is here to stay, and Saint Mary-of the-Woods College hopes that the Lilly Endowment Inc.’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Higher Education initiative will give students, faculty and staff a leap forward. The Lilly Endowment Inc. has allocated up to $500 million to help Indiana colleges and universities address the challenges and opportunities of using AI. SMWC has received an initial $125,000 Phase I planning grant to explore ways to address these challenges and opportunities posed by rapid advances in AI technologies. “Employers are asking us to get students ready. They are learning AI just as we are learning it, yet they’re asking us to learn it faster,” said Janet Clark, Ph.D., provost/executive vice president for academic affairs. “It’s great that the Lilly Endowment understands the need for higher ed to move quickly when it comes to implementing AI, so they are making funding available through grants, which will allow us to invest in AI more quickly. We can’t equip students if we’re not equipped ourselves.” Last fall, RJL Solutions conducted listening sessions with the campus community to gauge interest, knowledge and comfort level with AI. The findings helped the college to develop its implementation grant, which was due in May. The projects are expected to be reviewed, approved and awarded by the end of 2026. “The listening sessions told us there is a spectrum of people who are comfortable with AI and helped us identify areas and individuals that could be early adopters or champions,” Clark said. “I think we also learned that everybody desires some continuous training, and the campus community wants us to invest in this to help them keep up with the changes.” A Quinnipiac University poll released in the spring of 2026 found that a majority of respondents believe college students should be taught to use AI. In all, 74% of those polled believe it is very or somewhat important for a college student to learn

to use AI, with 14% indicating it is not important at all. The Lumina Foundation-Gallup 2026 State of Higher Education survey found that 47% of currently enrolled college students have considered switching majors due to concerns about AI. They fear AI’s impact on the workforce and that it could eliminate certain jobs. The use of AI doesn’t come without controversy. Clark acknowledged that some people feel AI is unsustainable, while others believe students need to know how to use AI before they graduate to stay ahead. “We need to help faculty understand how to teach in the age of AI. They used to teach and then grade students’ writing, but now this tool can write assignments for them. Faculty must figure out how to teach differently so AI can assist, but not do,” she said. “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.” Students are already getting experience with AI research. For more than a year, Rob Vandermolen, Ph.D., assistant professor of mathematics, and John Davis, Ph.D., lecturer of science and math, have been working with biology and computer science students to design artificial intelligence that can identify bacteria by securing a camera to a microscope. The goal is to enable rapid identification in hospitals, where staff now must send a swab away for expensive, 24-hour testing. With the help of a planning grant, SMWC has determined that the implementation grant will focus on three main areas: staff operations, specifically in admissions, equine studies/ pre-veterinary and nursing. STAFF OPERATIONS In late February and early March, the Office of Admissions began utilizing the AI component in the college’s CRM to help detect fraud. The tool can scrape information from an application and do identity verifications, which are very labor

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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