CollegeVine

Please join us in welcoming Brian D. Reed, PhD, Associate Vice President for Student Success at University of Montana, to the Vineyard speaker lineup! Brian leads institution-wide efforts to improve retention, strengthen the student experience, and build coordinated, data-informed support systems that help students succeed. As higher ed embraces AI, he brings a valuable perspective on how institutions can use technology to remove barriers, improve outcomes, and better support students on campus. We're looking forward to hearing Brian's insights at Vineyard 2026. #Vineyard

Introducing CollegeVine's free IPEDS Insights Agent. Built on five years of comprehensive IPEDS data, ask the agent any question in plain English and instantly uncover competitive insights across more than 4,000 U.S. colleges and universities. Analyze enrollment trends, benchmark against peer institutions, identify market shifts, compare net price and completion outcomes, and uncover the insights behind your institution's performance. Try it out and turn public data into competitive intelligence: https://lnkd.in/eHFvxmKF

We're excited to announce Neeraj Kumar, Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at Roosevelt University, as Vineyard speaker. Neeraj is leading a campus-wide AI transformation at Roosevelt, deploying AI across critical university operations to improve efficiency while delivering faster, more personalized support for students and staff. We're looking forward to hearing how Roosevelt is uniquely deploying operational AI across campus and how those initiatives are driving measurable operational impact across the institution. #Vineyard

Announcing Cynthia Teniente-Matson, President of San José State University, as a Vineyard 2026 speaker! As CEO of the only public university in Silicon Valley, she brings a unique perspective on how higher education can thoughtfully harness AI to transform the student experience, modernize campus operations, and prepare institutions for what's next. Cynthia champions student success, innovation, and institutional transformation, leading major growth initiatives that expand opportunities for thousands of students. We're excited to hear how those experiences have shaped her perspective on AI. #Vineyard

At this week's CollegeVine Commons: NYC Enrollment, enrollment leaders from across the New York metro area came together for candid conversations and hands-on workshops exploring what deploying operational AI looks like inside today's enrollment office. One message came through clearly: operational AI creates the greatest value when it's applied to real institutional challenges. Attendees experienced that firsthand, working with AI agents to solve problems in territory planning, communications audits, and funnel diagnostics. Thanks to everyone who joined us for such an engaging afternoon of discussion, collaboration, and hands-on learning. Special shout-out to Stephen Ostendorff, Ed.D., Vinay Bhaskara, Sanam Mohan, and Mickey Baines!

Please join us in welcoming Steve Athanas, Associate Vice Chancellor of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at University of Massachusetts Lowell, to the Vineyard speaker lineup! With over 20 years of experience, Steve is recognized for building IT organizations that serve as true strategic partners to the broader institution, establishing technology solutions that help colleges solve complex challenges, improve collaboration, and create the foundation for successful AI adoption and meaningful innovation across campus. We're excited to hear his perspective at Vineyard 2026. #Vineyard

Vineyard 2026 will be here before we know it, and we're excited to announce that Dave Weil, Senior Vice President for Strategic Services and Initiatives at Ithaca College, is joining us as an official speaker. A nationally recognized leader in higher education AI, digital transformation, and institutional strategy, Dave brings valuable insights on navigating change and driving meaningful innovation across campus. We can't wait to hear his perspective at Vineyard 2026! #Vineyard

A clear objective and the business outcome you're optimizing for are the foundation of every AI agent. Before you deploy one, ask yourself these three key questions. Watch the full episode with Jessica Bohan, Forward Deployed Engineer Lead at CollegeVine, and Mickey Baines, host of Spark & Scale: https://lnkd.in/eyZsaTpK

This starts with one question. It ends with a deployed application. No coding. No data science team. No weeks of development. Just one conversation in plain English. Watch how a simple question about enrollment deposits turns into a predictive model and a deployed application that helps your team and AI agent identify risk, prioritize outreach, and take action – all within a single conversation.

Yes, Jessica Bohan builds agents for a living. Her actual job title: forward deployed engineer at CollegeVine. And the first thing she said that stuck with me was this — before you build anything, ask yourself whether the process you're trying to automate is actually agent-worthy. A lot of what higher ed does was designed around scarcity: not enough staff hours to follow up with every student, not enough capacity to connect the dots across admissions, housing, transcript review, and CRM activity. When the constraint changes, you can't just drop an agent into the existing workflow and call it progress. The process itself deserves a look. The housing agent she walked me through was the clearest illustration of this. 24/7 student support on housing questions — and a separate objective to streamline how maintenance requests get created and routed. The agent could call students, text them, email them, and create work orders. But the part worth sitting with is what happens to the staff time that used to go into that work. If the first 2 hours of someone's day (checking voice mail and email to get the issues that came in since yesterday at 4:30, and determine which tickets need to be created in the system), what does that person do, not just to replace those 2 hours each day, but how do they rearrange the WEEK to best leverage those extra 10 hours? And in some environments, that is a big issue. With labor unions, you can't always just change a description and add responsibilities on a whim. You need foresight to think through what changes should be considered and submit those them with the updated job description weeks or months out. Few departmetnal and divisional leaders have thought beyond deployment. The agent runs. The time comes back. And no one has a plan for it, and so it feels with "stuff" and that happens faster than you might think. By the time you are ready to consider what to do with the time, it is gone. This episode is a good one if you're past the "should we try AI" phase and into the "what does this actually require" phase. Jess covers agent architecture, FERPA and data security, how to evaluate whether something is worth building, where human oversight fits in, and what she thinks the next six months look like. She also knows what she doesn't know, which made the conversation better. Episode drops THIS AM! Link in the comments. #AIinhighered #higheredleadership