AI for Academic and Administrative Workflows

Audience: Staff, administrators, faculty leaders

Format: Applied lab or short course

Safe • Boring • Useful • Repeatable

Demonstrate operational AI
without threatening roles.

This applied lab focuses on workflows that reduce friction and improve clarity, drafting, documentation, reporting support, and email procedures, while staying inside guardrails for sensitive data. Participants leave with ready-to-use templates and a shared method for safe adoption.

Audience: staff, administrators, faculty leaders
Format: applied lab or short course
Outcome: templates + repeatable workflows
Why this exists: Improving operations is a recurring campus need. This is where AI proves worth through clarity and time savings, not novelty.
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Core Topics

Operational use cases with clear boundaries.

Drafting and Summarization

Turn rough notes into clear drafts, then tighten for tone, audience, and purpose.

Meeting Notes and Documentation

Convert agendas and notes into minutes, action items, owners, and deadlines.

Data Interpretation Support

Explain tables, trends, and basic summaries, then prepare a human-reviewed narrative.

Email and Procedural Clarity

Rewrite for clarity, reduce ambiguity, and standardize messaging for repeated situations.

Policy and Guidance Drafting

Create student-facing or staff-facing plain-language summaries (reviewed before publishing).

Guardrails for Sensitive Data

Practice safe inputs, redaction, and “what not to paste” habits that reduce risk.

Applied Labs

Hands-on practice with ready-to-reuse workflow patterns.

  1. Paste a sanitized set of bullet notes (no sensitive identifiers).
  2. Generate a draft in the correct genre (memo, announcement, procedure).
  3. Refine for audience, tone, reading level, and length.
  4. Human review, then produce a final version and a “short version.”
Outcome: one reusable prompt + one finalized document ready for internal review.
  1. Provide an agenda plus sanitized notes or transcript excerpts.
  2. Generate meeting minutes in a consistent template.
  3. Extract action items with owners, due dates, and dependencies.
  4. Create a follow-up email and a one-page status tracker summary.
Output
Minutes + action list
Output
Follow-up email + tracker
  1. Provide a small, sanitized dataset or a table excerpt.
  2. Ask for a plain-language interpretation with uncertainty notes.
  3. Generate a report draft with headings and an executive summary.
  4. Identify what must be verified by a human before sharing.
Rule: AI can draft the narrative, people verify the claims.
  1. Bring a messy email, policy paragraph, or procedure draft (sanitized).
  2. Rewrite for clarity and “next action” readability.
  3. Create a short FAQ, plus a staff-facing “what to say” script.
  4. Generate a checklist version for repeat use.
Output
Email (short + full)
Output
Checklist + FAQ
Lab norm: All inputs are either public, anonymized, or approved for the environment being used.

Guardrails for Sensitive Data

Safe habits, predictable rules, fewer incidents.

What Not to Paste

Student records, HR details, medical information, protected identifiers, or anything regulated by institutional policy.

Sanitize and Abstract

Replace names with roles, remove IDs, summarize cases in neutral terms, and keep only what is necessary for the task.

Human Review Is Mandatory

AI drafts, humans approve. Especially for policy, emails to large groups, and public-facing communication.

Uncertainty and Verification

Require AI to mark assumptions and questions, then confirm facts before distribution.

Default stance: If you are unsure whether data is sensitive, treat it as sensitive and do not paste it.

Templates Participants Leave With

Copy, paste, adapt, repeat.

Template 1: Drafting Brief

“You are writing a (genre) for (audience). Goal: (purpose). Constraints: (length, tone, must-include). Provide draft + short version.”

Template 2: Meeting Minutes

“Convert these notes into minutes with decisions, action items (owner, due date), risks, and next meeting agenda.”

Template 3: Table to Narrative

“Explain trends in this table, list uncertainties, propose questions to verify, then draft a short report paragraph for leadership.”

Template 4: Email Clarity Pass

“Rewrite for clarity and next actions. Produce a short version and a polite version, keep authority, remove ambiguity.”

Template 5: Procedure Checklist

“Turn this procedure into a checklist. Add common failure points and a 3-question FAQ.”

Template 6: Guardrail Prompt

“Before responding, ask if any sensitive data is present. If yes, propose a safe alternative using anonymized placeholders.”

Proof of Value

How this shows worth without hype.

Time Saved

Faster first drafts, faster minutes, faster follow-ups, less rework due to unclear messaging.

Quality Lift

Consistent structure, clearer tone, fewer omissions, better documentation artifacts.

Risk Reduced

Guardrails, sanitization habits, and review norms lower the chance of sensitive data misuse.

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