Fall 2025 Academic Affairs AI Community of Practice

The Fall 2025 Academic Affairs AI Community of Practice (CoP) at Fresno State brought together staff from across departments to collaborate and explore the potential and practical applications of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in their work. Facilitated by the Office of IDEAS with direction and support from the Office of the Provost, the CoP built on the success of the AI for Higher Ed Professionals course, which had over 200 completions systemwide through summer 2025, including 30 Fresno State staff. The19 Academic Affairs staff who had completed were invited to the CoP, and 8 chose to participate in the cohort.

The four-week program invited participants to share workflows, discuss ethical and professional considerations, and identify opportunities to responsibly incorporate AI into their daily work. Participants represented a wide range of roles and functional areas, from administrative support to communication to finance and more, yet found inspiration and insight from each other in how AI was being used to solve problems or streamline tasks.

These in-person sessions fostered meaningful, cross-departmental engagement and an experimentation mindset. Participants developed a shared habit of asking, “Can AI help with this?”while also raising strategic concerns about the longevity of AI tools, and emphasized the importance of involving staff voices in campus-level decisions about adoption and investment.

Participants concluded the experience by sharing an example of an AI-integrated workflow or project that they have adopted, that can be shared with the campus community for further inspiration, innovation, and exploration.

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AI Use Case Examples

Below are examples of AI-integrated workflows and projects that participants in the community of practice shared.

ChatGPT for Complex Document Production

Submitted by Mani Ly, Financial Analyst, Continuing and Global Education

ChatGPT is being used for assistance with document production in Adobe Acrobat. Locating help documentation for specific use cases can be time-consuming and require visiting various help forums and Reddit threads for partial answers. In one example, ChatGPT was used to create a flip-book style presentation of a document that was originally created in a more print-friendly one page at a time format. Then it was used to add additional elements, include a clickable table of contents and navigation buttons in the document. This workflow allows for more complex documents to be produced with limited expertise of rarely-used functions in a platform such as Adobe Acrobat.

ChatGPT for Automation Workflow Development

Submitted by Luz Mendoza, Communication Specialist, California Agricultural Technology Institute

ChatGPT was used to develop a new automation workflow to connect Gmail responses to Google Sheets without requiring manual intervention of each submission. Automation platforms, such as Zapier, that use API connections to move data from one platform or system to another can be cumbersome to setup, especially for novice users, so ChatGPT helped clarify the process and necessary steps to successfully connect Gmail to Google Sheets. 

ChatGPT for Drafting Radio Segment Scripts

Submitted by Laura Ramos, Director, California Water Institute

The CWI–Weekly Water Insights custom GPT was developed to streamline the creation of short, engaging, and informative 3-5 minute radio scripts for the “Weekly Water Insights” radio segment. The GPT is customized to include a fixed introduction and closing aligned with the segment’s brand and educational tone, prompt structure that ensures each script links historical context to present-day relevance, integrated style and tone parameters, ensuring the message remains engaging, factual, and accessible to a general audience. The GPT uses background knowledge about CWI’s mission, target audience, and Laura Ramos’s communication style to maintain consistency and professionalism.

The GPT drafts a first version of the radio script, which is reviewed and edited for accuracy, timing and emphasis before recording.

ChatGPT for Departmental Knowledge Base

Submitted by Mackenzie Burke, Office Coordinator, Academic Senate

Custom GPTs can be trained on departmental documents and training materials. This can allow for department staff to retrieve answers to questions quickly without having to search through multiple documents or go to Google. The customGPT can also be trained to respond to prompts in a specific format. For example, a GPT can be trained to respond in the format of a friendly, professional email. Thus, a user can include the text of an email query in the prompt, and the output will be a formatted email that contains the relevant answer which can be quickly verified and customized for a response. In this case, the GPT is not being provided to the general audience (as its responses still need to be verified) but it can speed the time to provide a response.

ChatGPT for Distilling Information

Submitted by Megan Valdez, Department Administrative Assistant, Physics

ChatGPT can be used to distill flyers and other promotional materials to create easy-to-digest email communication based on the information contained therein. For staff who have to communicate opportunities to audiences based on flyers and other items, this can be a time-saving approach to quickly capture the relevant information into a ready-to-send form. 

Canva AI for Promotional Materials

Submitted by Megan Valdez, Department Administrative Assistant, Physics

Canva can be used for generating the first draft of various promotional materials (flyers, social media posts, etc) based on information provided. Canva will draft multiple versions of a flyer which can then be customized to your liking (such as changing out photos or icons, fonts, etc). Canva also has the ability to create different versions of the material which will maintain the same style and content, so users don't have to try to make sure everything that fit in one format will fit in a different format. This can allow for time-saving and consistency in promoting opportunities and events.

NotebookLM for Departmental Knowledge Base

Submitted by Yet Chun Fong, LMS Technology Support Coordinator, Office of IDEAS
Submitted by Reyna Velasquez, Student & Faculty Services Coordinator, Continuing and Global Education

NotebookLM can be used to store important departmental documents and training information that can be used later to retrieve information when necessary without having to search through multiple similar documents or training materials for relevant information. This Notebook can be shared with various stakeholders within a department, including student employees who may lack familiarity with answers to uncommon questions. The Notebook can be updated any time so the information can remain current. NotebookLM also has the ability to create audio and video outputs, which can be used as introductory material for onboarding. NotebookLM chat outputs also reference the source material so users can verify any chat responses with the original documents, as needed.

Google Gemini for Accreditation Analysis

Submitted by Corinne Bardon, Administrative Support Coordinator, Counselor Education and Rehabilitation

Google Gemini was used to compare a student handbook to the guidelines from an accrediting body to ensure requirements were being met. Gemini provided a list of items that were meeting or not meeting requirements. Gemini also performed an analysis of the department website for required information as well. This allowed for an easy guide to areas of the student handbook that needed to be updated to meet requirements and, in most cases, where that information could be found on departmental or university websites. Gemini allowed for an easy export to Google Sheets which allowed for tracking the tasks that needed to be completed. Gemini also generated a slide presentation to present the findings to stakeholders in a departmental meeting.

Scribe AI for Workflow Documentation

Submitted by Luz Mendoza, Communication Specialist, California Agricultural Technology Institute

Scribe allows for easy creation of documentation of workflows and processes. The tool records you performing the process, capturing each click and interface, then creates a guide which contains the necessary screenshots and text walking through step-by-step that can be shared with any other users who need to complete this action or just for business continuity.