College Leaders Convene in Chicago to Define AI Governance

Participants from over 30 institutions, including the City University of New York and several HBCUs, worked in cross-functional teams to address the organizational challenges of AI. Rather than treating AI as a simple software procurement issue, the summit focused on six core competencies: mission alignment, resource management, responsible use, data infrastructure, talent development, and change management.

Dr. Yolanda Watson Spiva, president of Complete College America, noted that the urgency stems from the lack of existing guardrails in higher education. The goal is to prevent a scenario where AI exacerbates existing equity gaps rather than closing them. Norm Palmer, the organization’s director of technology innovation, emphasized that successful institutions are defined by the sophistication of their internal systems and people, not the specific tools they deploy.

Building on research initiated after the 2022 launch of ChatGPT, the summit curriculum leaned heavily on the framework established in the organization’s report, Generating College Completion. Beyond policy discussions, the organization is also operating the AI Readiness Consortium in partnership with Riipen. This initiative, funded by the Axim Collaborative, aims to integrate AI competencies directly into community college curricula through project-based learning, specifically targeting students most vulnerable to labor market disruption.