A shared AI agenda for your cabinet

Your institution may encounter AI through teaching, research, admissions, procurement, and everyday administration. A useful cabinet discussion asks where those activities share responsibilities and where they need different rules.

The public introduction to the 2025 EDUCAUSE AI Landscape Study frames the topic across strategy, policies, use cases, workforce, and differences between institutions. That is a useful starting map, rather than treating AI as a single technology purchase. See the study overview.

1. Where is it already being used?

Ask each division for a short account of tools, tasks, users, and information involved. Include locally adopted practices. The aim is a usable picture of current work, not a competition to report the most pilots.

2. Which decisions need a common institutional position?

Identify the questions that cannot be resolved independently by every department: procurement review, access to institutional information, records handling, and responsibility for public answers. Distinguish these from choices that appropriately belong in a course or discipline.

3. Who owns the answer when offices overlap?

Use one applicant question as a test case. If it touches admissions and financial aid, which office owns the published answer? Who updates it, and who handles the individual circumstances?

4. What support do people need?

Ask staff and faculty to bring examples of confusing or time-consuming work. Pair policy with practical support, including a place to ask questions. Make that support available to the people expected to use it.

5. What evidence earns a wider rollout?

Choose measures appropriate to the task. Track answer quality and unresolved questions for an information service; assess learning outcomes with appropriate expertise for a teaching use. A demonstration is a starting point, not an institutional evaluation.