AI-First Business Education: How Kogod Transformed Culture, Curriculum, and Faculty Adoption

Most business schools are still forming committees to figure out what to do about AI. Kogod School of Business at American University formed a committee, but far from the typical higher ed standards. Leadership gave it six weeks and a five-page limit, and used the recommendation to integrate AI into every department, major, and minor. Three years later, undergraduate enrollment is up 40%, applications are up 50%, and more than 90% of faculty are using AI in the classroom.

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with returning guests David Marchick, Dean of the Kogod School of Business at American University, and Angela Virtu, Professor of IT and Analytics and Associate Director of Kogod’s AI Institute, about how the school moved from a dean’s instinct that AI would be big to a fully embedded, faculty-driven transformation that has redefined how business education is taught, assessed, and experienced by students.

Marchick and Virtu walk through how they navigated shared governance at speed, leaned into 14 core course coordinators to spread adoption like wildfire, and built a culture where faculty are making stuff up, trying things, and pivoting when something doesn’t work. Virtu explains how courses are being rebuilt from the ground up, with professors shifting from lecturers to coaches and students building real software for real clients. Marchick shares the enrollment and media results, including being named the first AI-first business school by Bloomberg Businessweek.

This conversation is especially relevant for institutional leaders trying to figure out how to move on AI without blowing up their governance structures or losing faculty trust. Kogod’s playbook worked within existing academic processes, and the results are measurable.

Topics Covered:

•       How a conversation with a Google executive sparked the AI initiative before ChatGPT went mainstream

•       Why Marchick gave the faculty committee six weeks and a five-page limit instead of a two-year study

•       The top-down and bottom-up strategy that moved faculty adoption from a handful of volunteers to over 90%

•       How 14 core course coordinators became the tactical lever for culture change across the school

•       The shift from professors as lecturers to professors as coaches

•       How non-quantitative students are programming and building functioning apps using AI

•       Kogod’s scaffolded four-year curriculum: AI literacy in year one, domain-specific applications in year two, deep dives in years three and four, and a capstone that combines all three pillars

•       Why the school teaches what’s wrong with AI before teaching what’s right

•       The AI assessment problem no institution has solved yet

•       What’s next: domain-specific AI apps, student portfolios, and an AI minor for non-business students

Real-World Examples Discussed:

•       Tommy White’s course with no readings and no textbook, where students use AI prompts to find their own materials and come to class with different sources on the same topic

•       Kelly Frias’s advertising class where students built a social media content tool and owner dashboard for a real college-apparel business with brand ambassadors at 75 campuses

•       Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, telling Marchick that the specific AI tool matters less than teaching students to feel comfortable experimenting and trying new things

•       A distinguished Kogod scholar describing AI as like having a PhD student for research productivity

Three Key Takeaways for Leadership:

1.    Culture first, training second, technology third. Faculty adoption spreads when leadership creates permission to experiment and fail, not when it purchases a platform.

2.    Teach what’s wrong with AI before teaching what’s right. A human has to be in the loop at the beginning and at the end. AI can be a collaborator, a partner, an assistant, but it cannot be a substitute.

3.    Don’t wait for the technology to stabilize. AI capabilities are changing in weeks. If you tried it two years ago and weren’t impressed, try it again. The updates in just the last few weeks represent really big strides.

This episode offers a practical, replicable look at what happens when a business school treats AI integration as a culture change initiative and moves fast enough to stay ahead of the technology. Kogod’s transformation is relevant to any institution trying to figure out how to act on AI without waiting for a perfect plan.

Read the transcript: https://changinghighered.com/kogod-ai-first-business-school-enrollment-growth/

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