Explore the Agenda
8:00 am Registration & Networking
9:00 am What it Takes to Make a LEAP a Reality
9:10 am Chair’s Opening Remarks
Embedding AI in Higher Education Without Losing Trust, Judgment, or Capacity
9:20 am Discover: Keeping Humanity at the Center of AI: How the University of Tennessee Is Using AI + Human Intelligence (HI) to Reinvent HR, Elevate Creativity, and Accelerate Talent Processes
- Turning AI anxiety into AI empowerment by introducing an AI + HI philosophy across HR, pushing teams to rethink every process from drafting job descriptions to screening candidates to creating internal training experiences through an innovation first lens that strengthens capability instead of replacing people
- Demonstrating what responsible, human centered AI looks like in practice by developing UT’s first AI generated CHRO avatar, complete with an original script, video and theme song, and using it to model future focused communication, accelerate training delivery, and build confidence in AI as a tool for creativity, not a threat to jobs
- Driving exponential efficiency gains across talent workflows by using AI to streamline application reviews, reduce repetitive work, generate job aids and announcements at speed, and improve the quality and consistency of hiring decisions, enabling HR to respond faster and more strategically across a multi-campus system
9:40 am Discover: The Great Skills Merge: Why “Human” Skills Are Your Best AI Strategy
- Quantifying how the rapid deployment of AI agents across administrative, academic, and student facing functions is accelerating demand for uniquely human capabilities such as judgment, empathy, ethical reasoning, and complex collaboration, drawing on proprietary Cornerstone OnDemand labor market data and 2026 workforce projections to show how the skills premium is shifting in real time
- Reframing traditional role design by mapping the emerging hybrid skill profiles now required across colleges and universities, as the historic divide between “technical” roles and “people centric” roles collapses and faculty, staff, and administrators are increasingly expected to combine digital fluency with advanced human decision making
- Designing a data-driven, whole person development strategy that enables institutions to close critical skills gaps, preserve the human touch in an AI enabled operating model, and intentionally prepare their workforce for higher value, judgment intensive work rather than incremental automation
10:00 am Discover: Turning Disruption Into 90% Efficiency Gains: How Stevens Institute of Technology Embedded AI as a Core HR Team Member
- Responding to a 40% revenue loss, two rounds of RIFs, and mounting regulatory volatility, HR at Stevens Institute of Technology is under pressure to maintain service levels, support campus needs, and protect employee experience with significantly reduced bandwidth
- Introducing lightweight AI tools to automate time-intensive content creation and daily communication, converting training materials into ready-to-deploy videos in under two minutes (vs. multi day production) and equipping the team to respond faster, write more effectively, and redirect time toward higher value strategic work
- Building a measurement framework to quantify efficiency gains, targeting a 90-95% reduction in training development hours, increased throughput on required learning, and clearer capacity benchmarks that define how HR can operate as a more agile, future-ready function amid ongoing disruption
10:20 am Develop: How Can Higher Education Institutions Embed AI to Increase Capacity While Preserving Human Judgment and Trust?
- How can HR leaders in higher education introduce AI in ways that reduce fear and skepticism among faculty and staff while strengthening confidence in decision‑making?
- Which HR and talent processes in universities are best suited for AI enablement first, and where should human judgment remain clearly in control?
- How is AI reshaping skill expectations for faculty, staff, and administrators, and what risks emerge if institutions adopt tools faster than they redesign roles and capabilities
- How can institutions measure AI impact in higher education beyond efficiency, including quality, consistency, service experience, and trust?
10:40 am Action: What Practical Steps Can You Take to Build a Human‑Centered AI Roadmap for Your Institution?
- Where are the greatest capacity constraints in your HR or talent function today, and which AI‑enabled use case could deliver relief without undermining trust?
- What guardrails do you need to define now (appropriate use, review thresholds, data boundaries) to ensure AI supports, rather than replaces, human decision‑making?
- What human capabilities (judgment, ethical reasoning, influence, collaboration) must be intentionally developed alongside AI adoption in your faculty and staff workforce?
- What near‑term indicators (time saved, consistency, service quality, adoption confidence) will you track to demonstrate value and guide responsible scale?
11:00 am Speed Networking Break
The Future‑Fit Higher Education CHRO: Leading Institutions Through Disruption & Divergence
11:40 am Panel: Redefining the CHRO Role in an Era of Disruption, Scarcity, and Sector Divergence
- Where are the greatest capacity constraints in your HR or talent function today, and which AI‑enabled use case could deliver relief without undermining trust?
- What guardrails do you need to define now (appropriate use, review thresholds, data boundaries) to ensure AI supports, rather than replaces, human decision‑making?
- What human capabilities (judgment, ethical reasoning, influence, collaboration) must be intentionally developed alongside AI adoption in your faculty and staff workforce?
- What near‑term indicators (time saved, consistency, service quality, adoption confidence) will you track to demonstrate value and guide responsible scale?
12:20 pm Action: What Practical Steps Can You Take to Reposition the CHRO Function for the Next Era of Higher Education?
- Where is HR already being pulled into “institutional business model” decisions on your campus (enrollment strategy, workforce affordability, student-facing service delivery), and what must you stop doing to make room for that shift?
- What is one cross‑functional co‑creation move you can formalize in the next 90 days (with the provost, president’s office, finance, IT, student-facing units) to increase decision quality and speed under constraint?
- In your context (public vs private, unionized vs non‑union, governance constraints), what are the “non‑negotiables” HR must protect and what’s one area where you can pragmatically adapt to new political/financial realities without losing trust?
- What two measures will you use to prove HR’s strategic contribution over the next cycle (e.g., reduced change noise, improved execution of strategic initiatives, workforce cost resilience, improved manager effectiveness, increased cross‑campus alignment)?
12:30 pm Networking Lunch
Building Leadership Systems That Create Alignment, Accountability, and Bench Strength in Higher Education
1:30 pm Discover: Building Culture from the Ground Up: How Howard University Is Driving Leadership Alignment and Accountability at Scale
- Launching a multiyear, university-wide cultural transformation focused on leadership effectiveness, service excellence, and accountability by co-creating a shared framework with faculty and staff, ensuring the work was community built rather than HR mandated and grounded in lived institutional realities
- Activating Howard’s new leadership and service blueprint, The Bison Way, across the employee lifecycle by embedding it into performance expectations, talent attraction, leadership development, and recognition, giving leaders and teams a consistent language and clear blueprint for how work gets done across the university
- Demonstrating early, measurable momentum with a 2x increase in applications to manager and leadership development programs, including unprecedented faculty participation, forcing cohort caps for the first time and signalling stronger cross campus engagement, reduced silos, and rising confidence in leadership development as a pathway for growth
1:50 pm Discover: Rebuilding Leadership Bench Strength: How UMBC Is Engineering a Multi-Level Leadership Learning Continuum to Strengthen Capability & Succession
- Redesigning UMBC’s entire leadership development architecture in response to a new leadership, and a growing cohort of leaders, some new to higher ed replacing one-off courses with an intentional, cohesive, multi-tiered curriculum that builds capability from aspiring to senior leaders.
- Integrating coaching, mentoring, and cohort based learning across programs like Launch, Inspire, Leap, Rise and Peak UMBC’s senior leadership track to improve leader confidence and reduce over escalation to HR, targeting a 20-30% reduction in employee relations cases as leaders gain the skills to resolve issues earlier and more effectively.
- Targeting measurable institutional impact by building a pipeline of trained internal leaders prepared to step into acting, interim, or permanent roles, reducing succession related disruption and positioning UMBC to improve retention as leadership turnover across higher ed continues to accelerate.
2:10 pm Develop: How Can Higher Education Institutions Build Leadership Systems That Scale Across Faculty, Staff, and Decentralized Units?
- How can universities co‑create leadership and culture frameworks with faculty and staff so they feel community‑owned rather than HR‑mandated?
- What design choices matter most when moving from one‑off leadership programs to a multi‑level, institution‑wide leadership architecture?
- How can leadership expectations be embedded consistently across the employee lifecycle (recruitment, development, performance, recognition) in a shared‑governance environment?
- What indicators best demonstrate leadership impact in higher education, such as reduced escalation to HR, stronger succession readiness, or increased cross‑campus engagement?
2:30 pm Action: What Practical Steps Can You Take to Strengthen Leadership Alignment and Bench Strength at Your Institution?
- Where is leadership breakdown most visible today (manager capability, accountability, service culture, silos), and what system, not program, needs redesign first?
- What is the minimum viable leadership framework or continuum you could pilot within the next 90 days to build momentum and credibility?
- What elements should be standardized across campus (language, expectations, pathways) versus intentionally adapted at the school or unit level?
- What governance and metrics (participation demand, readiness for acting roles, ER escalation trends, promotion pipelines) will help sustain leadership investment over time?
2:50 pm Networking Break
Rebuilding Trust, Care, and Decision Quality in Higher Education During Periods of Change
3:10 pm Discover: Strengthening Engagement Through Smarter Listening: How Saint Louis University Boosted Participation to 66% and Improved Low Trust Indicators
- Replacing a heavy, slow, 85‑question biennial climate survey with a streamlined, real‑time listening system that captures employee voice more effectively and reduces the lag between feedback, action, and impact, solving years of survey fatigue and low transparency across divisions.
- Implementing SLU’s new voice strategy using Glint, increasing participation from the high‑50s to 66 percent in just three cycles, requiring leaders to publicly share their results and commit to one to two focused actions, and making responsiveness achievable rather than burdensome.
- Demonstrating measurable culture improvement through a four‑point rise in overall satisfaction (Esat), notable increases in previously low “action will be taken” scores, and meaningful gains in units that invested in communication and follow‑through, strengthening trust and engagement at a time of financial pressure and workforce uncertainty.
3:30 pm Discover: From Reactive HR to High Trust, High Efficiency Operations: How Kellogg Community College Increased Decision Velocity, Reduced Rework, and Strengthened Institutional Trust in HR
- mproving institutional productivity by redesigning legacy workflows that required multiple unnecessary handoffs, reducing rework, shortening turnaround times, and shifting upstream responsibilities back to departments so HR could redirect capacity toward higher value strategic work instead of administrative triage
- Increasing decision clarity and reducing escalations by eliminating the “up and over” culture, elevating HR specialists as authoritative experts, and standardizing accountability expectations across all employee groups, creating faster, more consistent, and more defensible people decisions college-wide
- Enhancing employee experience and organisational alignment through structured feedback sessions, benefit design conversations, cultural surveys, and union engagement, resulting in stronger buy in for HR initiatives, clearer understanding of process realities versus perceptions, and greater trust in HR as an objective, data informed partner
3:50 pm Discover: Centring Care Through Transformation: How Kent State Is Redesigning Culture, Division Structure & Workforce Experience During Major Organizational Change
- Leading DPCB-managed offboarding and internal job transition processes in support of a university-wide academic transformation, including staff reductions and college/department mergers, by designing a care-centered framework focused on clear communication, employee support resources, and compassionate transition experiences.
- Merging the divisions of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Human Resources into a unified People, Culture & Belonging structure using a bell hooks– inspired “margin to center” framework shifting HR away from purely transactional work toward a more relational, transparent, community driven operating model
- Tracking culture change through climate, engagement, wellbeing, and exit survey data, targeting improvements in trust, belonging, and manager effectiveness indicators by feeding data back to leaders, identifying red flag divisions, and designing tailored interventions that move culture from insight to action
4:10 pm Develop: How Can Higher Education HR Functions Strengthen Trust and Decision‑Making While Navigating Disruption and Change?
- How can HR redesign workflows and decision rights in higher education to reduce rework, escalation, and confusion without shifting undue burden back to departments?
- What behaviors and operating norms help HR move from reactive, transactional support to a trusted, authoritative partner for leaders, faculty, and staff?
- How can care‑centered approaches to restructuring, offboarding, and internal transitions be delivered with clarity and consistency in shared‑governance environments?
- What data sources best help institutions understand where trust, belonging, and manager effectiveness are breaking down across colleges and divisions?
4:30 pm Action: What Practical Steps Can You Take to Improve Trust, Reduce Friction, and Strengthen HR Credibility on Your Campus?
- Where are decision delays, repeat questions, or “up and over” behaviors most visible today, and which workflow or accountability point should be redesigned first?
- What care‑centered practices (communication standards, transition support, manager guidance) could be formalized to improve employee experience during change?
- How can you clarify decision authority and expectations across HR, leaders, and departments to reduce escalation and improve consistency?
- What indicators (cycle time, escalation volume, engagement or climate signals, qualitative feedback) will you track to demonstrate improved trust and decision quality?