Connecting AI and Academic Advising - Adventures in Advising

In episode 82, we chat with Dr. Gabe Bermea, lecturer at Sam Houston State University and visiting scholar with the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions about the rise of artificial intelligence powered technologies and its connections to higher education, specifically academic advising. Can AI help advisors have more transformational conversations with students? What skills do advisors need working with AI?

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Transcript

Matt Markin  
Welcome back to another episode of the Adventures in Advising podcast. My name is Matt Markin, and I'm happy you're joining us today. If you don't already subscribe to the Adventure in Advising podcast on your favorite podcast platform and follow us on social media pretty much everywhere at advising podcast. So AI or artificial intelligence is connected to various aspects of our lives, from finance, healthcare, robotics, education, film and TV, from social media to our phones to security to navigational directions, AI plays a part in our everyday lives. So for a term that's gained popularity in the since the 1950s it seems, at least to me, that AI has been brought up more and more in the higher education realm over the last year. So to chat more about AI, higher education, academic advising, let's welcome our guest today, and that is Dr. Gabe Bermea many years of higher ed experience, Gabe is an active scholar practitioner whose practice and interest focuses on creating and delivering campus wide Enrollment and Student Success Strategies to expand access to opportunity and success in higher education. His research interests include Hispanic serving institutions, first generation student success, the emerging profession of academic advising and student success within the organizational context of minority serving institutions. Gabe, welcome to the podcast. 

Gabe Bermea  
Hi, Matt, thanks so much for having me. Glad to be here. 

Matt Markin  
I'm glad this all worked out. I know we follow each other on LinkedIn, and I saw the article you wrote through LinkedIn about AI, which kind of leads into some of the questions we'll ask today for this podcast interview, but I thought it'd be great to start out with asking you, kind of your path, your journey in higher ed, what does that look like for you?

Gabe Bermea  
Yeah, that's a great question. So where do we begin with that. So I started my journey in higher education as I mean, like most as an undergrad, right? We're gonna go back that far. And as much as I enjoyed my undergrad experience, one of my challenging components was getting just navigating the institutions, getting through, identifying my coursework, making sure I was following my program of study to get the grades that I needed. Early on, I was very much one of those. Not all those who wonder are law students, you know, but did a lot of wondering, you know, major exploration, career exploration, and I took, I would say, the the scenic route, if you will, to earn my undergraduate degree. In that process, I think I really struggled with trying to figure out, you know, what I wanted to be, my sense of purpose, my sense of self, all while, you know, navigating a predominantly white institution in my hometown. And when I graduated and I was getting ready for the next steps. I think, like many, I accidentally fell into higher ed at the time, my mother, who was who's now a retired bilingual ESL teacher, was like, Hey, if you can't get a quote, real job, you know, we had connections in the K-12 sector, which my family was in. She was like, get your teaching certification. You know, you can at least have that ready for you. You can never have too many pieces of paper, which fair, I completely understand. She's like, go in and get your teaching cert. And you know that would just be another backup for you to have in the event that you need to find your job. My undergrad was in comm studies, so the only thing I could teach was speech. And I remember specifically saying, I don't know very many you know schools that have speech teachers, but sure, you know, and which meant I had to go to the college of ed website to do the post back option. At the time, I didn't know the differences between primary, secondary and higher ed, and I clicked on higher ed, thinking that was where I needed to go to learn about the post bac information. After reading the website, I learned that there was an M, E, D in higher education, and I read about that program, and I thought, oh my gosh, this entire time, there should have been support as I was going through this journey, like there are people who are prepared for this work to, like, guide you through these experiences. And I remember being really upset about it, thinking, wow, I have somehow floundered my way through this experience and graduated that the programs that I had signed up for at the graduate level, I was going to go for a master's in communication studies or strategic comms. I'd already had programs lined up that I immediately said, Nope, I'm going to do this. Like, suddenly, like, it hit me that I could do this work at an institution. Because I remember thinking that was Thursday and the application was due Friday, so I handle it myself to the graduate school the next day and said, I want to do this program. I graduated, and then within the next week or two, I started my master's program there at Tech, Texas, Tech University in higher education administration. And I loved it. I did the program in a year. Would not recommend that at all, but I was eager to to get out there and start the work. While I was there, I worked at Texas Tech as a research associate and strategic planning and assessment, which is my like, I guess fourth role in Higher Ed was not my first choice, if I'm going to be honest, I was I because I had applied late. There were all the opportunities in my campus life, housing, like programming. All those were gone, right? Because I was the last one there. And I guess nobody wanted assessment. So I got strategic planning and assessment. And if I'm being honest, it was the best thing that could have happened, because, as you know, at the time, we were beginning to get into the age of accountability in higher ed, and assessment was all the buzz, right? So I was able to get exposure into what were then 25 Student Affairs departments on how their missions, their visions, their values, their metrics, their assessments, all of that, all of that data gathering was informing their efforts. And I got sort of that big picture of everything Student Affairs, if that makes sense, that would serve as the foundation for my career, you know, and I'm so grateful for it, you know, with respect to my to my then friends and colleagues and peers, they were like, you know, putting on these, these great events, and they're wonderful. But I was able to say, here's why it's so effective, you know, and here's the benefits of everything you're doing, and here's how it's going to advance the work of the department going forward and division. That was really exciting to to have those insights. Shortly after that, I went to UNC Greensboro, where I served as an academic advisor for about a year or two, able to teach first year seminar courses, academic recovery coaching, general Gen Ed advising, you know, you name it, anything under the sun, pretty much came through that office. We were sort of in a come one, come all office, you know, while the colleges themselves had specific decentralized advising model. We saw anyone and everyone I would come through our door. So it made for a very exciting day adventure for that particular time in my life, I think that advising first kick, you know, of like thinking, Ah, I could see myself working in that Student Success space for a while. Did that work at UNCG for about a year, then did assessment again at the division level, getting promoted to assistant dean at one point, overseeing student success initiatives. And then about shortly after that, in 2015 made my way back to Texas, where I was the director of academic advising for the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. While there, I set up an Academic Advising Center for 24,000 undergraduate students, a centralized model is what they wanted as a new institution in the UT System. It was a Hispanic serving institution. So a lot of my interests and passions intersecting there at UTRGV, I say we have an army of 55 academic advisors, which has since grown. So I want to say like 80 or 90 advisors that are now there at the institution for their centralized model. Absolutely loved it and then made my way to Tarleton State University about three years later as their AVP for student success, overseeing Student Success initiative and completion efforts, including academic advising while there. Loved it and then the pandemic hit. You know, the world changed, right? An opportunity presented itself to become a visiting scholar with the Rutgers center and to complete my doctoral work. So I thought, yes, let's take this. I can dive into some research where I was able to learn about academic advising and student success efforts at minority serving institutions. So currently serve as a lecturer with Sam Houston State University, as a part time lecturer there, and then, of course, was a visiting scholar with their leftist and local minority serving institutions. So you know, a lot can happen in 13 years.

Matt Markin  
So with your role as like do it as a lecturer at Sam Houston State University, and then a visiting scholar at Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions, what's the kind of difference between both of those roles?

Gabe Bermea  
Yeah, it's a great question. So as a lecturer with Sandy said, I'm just teaching graduate courses in the higher ed program there when the opportunity presents itself, right? And so teaching graduate courses and contemporary higher ed issues. What else have you talked. Their organization and history of higher ed, like those kinds of courses, a general faculty role, right? Also, when I say on the Rutgers center side, that gives you an opportunity for more research, for more professional development in that space, you get to meet some colleagues of color who are in higher education as well, who are looking to advance their careers in different ways, expand the research interests, making the connections develop professionally, a safe space for you to grow as a professional in higher ed. And so with that role, I was able to tap into an interest that sparked up while I was working on my dissertation, which was the idea of what does academic advising look like at serving institutions. My dissertation focused on professional identity development among Latinx academic advisors, and what that looks like. You know, within the context of Hispanic Serving Institution, journal articles forthcoming, it's been a while, right? But from that, not only was that interest, the data that did that interest come out of that work of, you know, studying MSI and academic advising structures and models, but also byproduct of that work is the concept of humanistic advising, which is where, sort of my most recent article came out last summer. I think exploring that work in a framework for humanistic advising so that dissertation service accounts for a number of things, but specifically with the Rutgers center, it is the exploration of academic advising and insights.

Matt Markin  
Most recently, you posted about how, like some of your research has been featured the most recently, the diverse issues in higher education. Can you talk more about that?

Gabe Bermea  
Yeah, so about two years ago, I got some seed money, if that makes sense, from the rocker center for minority serving institutions to pitch an idea until I want to study academic advising at emphasize, you know. And they were like, awesome. Map it out, you know, how do you want to go forward? I said, fantastic. So was able to do some, set up a questionnaire, and, you know, reach out to some academic advising leadership and representatives that select emphasize that we knew we're at we're minority serving institutions. So we have representation from 32 MS is a network tribal colleges and universities, HBCUs, HSIs and PCs like I want to say we have kind of the like, eight different types, six, five or six are represented in that study. I will say what I like about it is that it feels, I believe it's proportional to the sample, is proportional to the MSIS, but of course, not represented during the sample size, right? It's a qualitative study, of course. But I love that we had a variety of institutions. We also had, is it non non Native American, tribal serving institutions? I don't know if I said that correctly. I need to go back and double check it, but to have even like, you know, TCU participate, tribal college and universities participate in serving get their insights, was phenomenal. Native Hawaiian serving institutions is phenomenal, right? We were able to the study itself came out a few weeks ago. It's called advising, intention, examining academic advising at minority serving institutions. It really highlights specifically how emphasize assess academic advising and how they what methods of assessment they use, and then how they use that data to inform organizational strategies for academic advising. We also got to get to see how academic the competencies that emphasize considered to be as essential or extremely essential or less essential in the work, right? So we asked them about, you know, in the college, traditional competencies of cultural, relational, informational but I took it a step further and asking them not only about the technological competencies, but we asked about intercultural competency, not just traditional communication, but intercultural communication strategies. We asked them about, you know, the personal, self reflective efforts, right? How is it, how critical is it for academic advisors to institutions to have that level of professional growth and development as a competency for themselves and anti anti racism competencies in the context of academic advising. And what does that look like? We were able to ask them about what you know, where on the essential scale those items fell. And then complimentary to that was asking, well, how are they How frequently do academic advisors receive training on these topics at your institution, either in the onboarding or as professional development going forward? And we're able to see that, you know, of course, informational is like right at the top right, which makes sense, but we're also able to then see that we're academic and all of the competencies we're getting. As at least essential, right, nothing was seen as non essential, right. Everything had a value to it. But when it came to the Training, there were some areas that rarely got focused right, such as anti racist and racist space that you know. That's not to say that nothing is happening, but it's just like to say, you know, you can elevate this a little bit more, you know. And you're supporting your academic advisors and developing those anti racist competencies in their work, you know, whether that's developing an equity minded approach or philosophy to academic advising, right? As an example. So, yeah, that showed some highlights. And the other thing that we got to ask were, what are the responsibilities and duties of academic advisors within the institutions? And we found that there were about seven areas, seven, seven or eight, just like I should notice, because I can see the picture in my mind, areas of academic advising responsibilities. But there were tons of duties affiliated with early responsibilities, from the traditional course recommendations, right, which is like 97% of institutions, yes, all the way down to things like 5% of financial advising, right? You know, financial aid support, career exploration, right? Those, I mean, it covers again, that you got to really see just how nuanced the role of an academic advisor is at minority serving institutions, seeing that they were multiple hats and took their multiple functions for a student in their journey from beginning to end. So yeah, it was really, really insightful. Offer some recommendation for MSIs and other institutions to consider as they're developing their advising efforts. So yeah, check it out.

Matt Markin  
And I think, if anything, too, we can definitely do another part two interview and talk dive more into that, and also the recommendations from a lot of that data and research. So if we switch gears to AI, you know, us saying earlier was that, you know, we follow each other on LinkedIn, and I saw, you know, an article I written through LinkedIn. It was titled redefining academic advising, the rise of AI powered technologies. I guess, generally speaking, for those that have heard AI like, how, what would, how would you describe like an AI powered technology?

Gabe Bermea  
Oh, it's a good question. So by all means, I'm not going to say I'm an AI expert by any means. Like I was scrolling through TikTok as one does...

Matt Markin  
You go down a rabbit hole.

Gabe Bermea  
That's a rabbit hole, right? And as I was scrolling like i It's not like I was fully attuned to like I knew I had seen some like things the news about AI and chatgpt and all these things that, you know, technology experts had gathered, and you know they were earning concerns. And I had heard things in the in the public sphere, if you will, but on chat, on while I was on tick tock, I've just seen this video of, like, you know how AI is like changing everything, and you know how professors are having to three, three. Think you know their how you know how this AI tool can write an essay for me if I prompt it the right way. Or how you know this AI tool can create a brand for me if I give it the right ideas. Or now, as of like last night, I saw one of you know, if you upload a picture, that an AI will turn that picture into a video, you know, and it'll suddenly fill in everything else around it to create a film, you know, I guess just a video. And I was like, wow, that's like, really, that's crazy how quickly this technology is advancing, right? And it just got me thinking of like, these are tools that are able to do bits of information, of filling in, levels of synthesis, levels of you know, they can summarize content, if you ask them, they can generate content as as quickly as a human, if not faster, in some cases, right? They are able to create brand IDs with the light off. They're able to create these like ideas that like, really, sort of like give pause to sort of think, Oh my gosh. So how can we tell now the difference between AI generated content versus human creative content, right? What does that look like? And I just really started thinking about, wow, as we go towards that, what does that look like in the space of higher ed and specifically in academic advising like this isn't something that, in my opinion, we would have to work against. This is something that we have to work with, you know, and in what space and how might that look like, and what are the things that we should consider, which is what really gets into, what the articles really begin to slowly explore.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, it is something with with AI, and I think anything and higher ed, you know, sometimes it's things in higher education take a little longer to be absorbed or used. And sometimes it is this, it's something new. Let's fight against it. I know one article I read through. A Best Colleges survey was that 54% of students say that their instructors have not even openly discussed the use of AI tools like chat GPT, or even that six out of 10 college students report that their professor schools haven't specified how to use AI tools ethically or responsibly. But if we kind of move towards, let's say, for academic advising, for academic advisors, you were suggesting in your article that AI power technologies can actually help advisors have more of the transformational conversations with their students. 

Gabe Bermea  
So one of the things that I thought was really interesting about AI is I really think it can support a lot of that prescriptive component, right? So I know a lot of institutions have those chat boxes, you know, on their websites, which are really helpful. But in my experience, when I had to set it up for one of my institutions, we had to put that content in there, like, we had to, like, you know, type the responses. What would they would say? What are the options like? It was still human generated on the back end, just the chat bot was, you know, linking things to similar with similar language, if that makes sense. It it was learning on a different level, not at the AI level, right? But we were still creating the content on the back end. As I thought about AI, it's like I could ask, I imagine asking, you know, what courses do I need to take next semester to complete my degree? Right? If we've set up the system so, like, either to reference the catalog or to reference, you know, if we are able at some point to connect them to, you know, a personal assistant approach, if that a digital advisor or something like, where it does reference a student's Degree Works, whatever the legalities of that look like, if that's possible, you know, like, there's all kinds of possibilities to say, you know, the AI could bring back the course of innovations, right? Could also, maybe at some point even say, hey, you know, we've registered you for these courses. Like, you know, there are so many possibilities that could happen within that with AI to support the workload of academic advisors, right? I think it's really easy. Like, you hear a lot of the things in conversation of, you know, a lot of our dogs will be replaced by by AI alone. And you kind of like, you know, in the world of education, like, I remember hearing that like a few years ago with, you know, YouTube, you know, and the Khan Academy and all those other things that have come up that have ultimately supplemented education, you know, not necessarily, not always taking it over. I think it's very much true with AI, in the sense that in the space of education and space of advising, I think we know that academic advisors have a large load. In most cases, student load. We can't get to everybody all at once, right? In some cases, you can't get to we can, depending on so many hours in the day, right? We can. We can only work if it was done. And so as I think about this, for those students that need just those quick check ins, and you know, I just need to know how my what I need to take this semester, or what's this policy on XYZ, or the catalog they can reference with AI, you know, I think that feedback can come pretty quickly, and they can get it specific to that student specific feedback. Again, recognizing, you know, much to develop from the ethical and legal perspectives, you know, that would be fantastic to get it to that student level. I think that presents an opportunity to then, like, allow academic advisors to have less of those transactional conversations, right, and more of those meaningful conversations that are transformational. Right, to sit down and really do career exploration, sit down and have the conversation about major exploration, right? Let's talk about those learning experiences that you feel will be of service to you as a student and to your family, right? Like, how might that help you evolve in what you want to look how you want to learn and grow, right? Those components become more more available. Those conversations become more accessible because you're not in the day to day of checking the degree audit, you know, the day to day, of confirming the course recommendations, right, jotting those notes down. Those are all things I think, that could be generated by AI at some point in future, and that presents some opportunities, I think, to create a more humanistic and humanized advising experience. Because we are going away from that transactional you're going to have more of those meaningful conversations becomes more and more about the student and their experience beyond the first second of issues.

Matt Markin  
I think advisors hearing that would would be very excited, especially for a lot of us that maybe only have like that 30 minutes for an actual appointment. And how can I better use that time? If I if I may not get extra time. Will I be able to save time? So if there are some of the transactional things that can already be taken care of, then it's like, yeah, I have more free time within that 30 minutes to actually address more the concerns of the student talk about other things than that transactional piece. And I think too, you know you're mentioning with with the chat bot, and you were kind. Mentioned how you know you like, there had to be, you had to feed it a lot of that information in so a lot of it was still the human aspect of it, like I remember, for our institution, doing the chap, at least within our office, like we had a team of three or four individuals that would have would think up the most commonly asked questions and how to answer those and then for like a month or so, it was looking to see what questions were students actually putting into the chat bot and ensuring those answers were accurate, or feeding more information in for answers, so that way, like the AI would would continue to get smart, and then we able to answer more of those questions, and it'll be less that the actual advisor would have to actually type in and answer. Did you kind of experience that too?

Gabe Bermea  
Yeah, it was very similar. Yeah, you're right. We had to as a team, you know, what would be the questions? Okay? What would be our responses, and where would we refer them? Do we have the link to that right? Like it was putting all those pieces together, still very much human created content, whereas AI itself is tapping into the web and the resources that are immediately available when it's drawing from that content. You know, it was crazy because I did a quick that, a quick chat GPT thing, and said, you know, what courses do I need from? Typed in the university's name to get a degree in. And I answered like the subject matter, with the concentration of this like I specifically just like that, and recognizing that chat GPT has a limitation. So it was referencing things prior to 2020 or 2021, something to that effect. But it brought up a list of courses, and just said, these are the courses, you know. I said, Okay, well, what courses in what order would you recommend? And it reordered with those courses in a recommended sequence, right, based on just the catalog, you know? Now, if I, if I said, you know, I have already taken English 1301, can you revise it? It would revise it. But if I offered it for more specific recommendations, it would say I couldn't do that because I don't have access to to your specific degree, talk to an advisor. And I was like, ah, there's your There you go, right? Like, that's really cool to see that those in that chat GPT recognizes conversations as well, but also that it knows who to reference you to, to say, you know, contact your advisor, contact your institution. Like, it was very specific in that way. Like, okay, so, you know, that's where we would have some of those more maybe. So have some of those prescriptive or those transactional conversations, but you still have that level of like, this could be more transformational, because the student can come in thinking, Oh, I've already got these courses marked out. These are the courses I need. What Is there anything else I need to know, right? Like you can supplement that conversation more intentionally and having more and open the doors to other transformational conversations going forward. 

Matt Markin  
Do you think there might be some instances where students might try to get all their answers from, let's say, ChatGPT or from AI, and then to avoid actually trying to talk with their advisor?

Gabe Bermea  
I think that is very much a reality, you know? I mean, I think we're already seeing you kind of alluded to the fact early about, you know, how our students saying that institute that was a professor didn't have anything about AI in their syllabi, or have brought it up as a subject matter, but we know that institutions are already adopting some like, AI, some literally, I think the ed tech space specifically has like these, like, AI checking for, is this human generated content or AI generated content? Like, and we have students who are, you know, submitting essays without our, you know, AI generated I have a friend and colleague who was in the middle, I think I want to say finals, and it was like, you know, I caught four students. Ai generated essays, you know, full 100% per this checker, you know. And he's having to learn how to navigate those conversations, right? Is, well, the idea is, there is originally, but the AI wrote it like it's this weird space, right? I think it will hold true for course recommendations and for institutions, for policies like you still need, you know, you would hope that the interpretation of the policy or the interpretation of the degree requirements are articulated well in a catalog, the fingers crossing, right, but at the end of the day, you still need somebody to offer that context, to offer the why behind it, you know, which is not always articulated in in in a catalog, or in some cases in the broader space, right? So, yeah, I do think that could very much happen. I hope, though, that our students know that we're still there for them, though.

Matt Markin  
So yeah, 100% now, you also mentioned an article about with AI power technologies also supporting data informed decisions. Now are you talking more about it from like an institutional level or mid level advisor to student level?

Gabe Bermea  
I think it could be both, if I'm being honest. So again, this goes into the possibility of and again, the legalities and ethics and all that stuff. Still would need to be sorted out, like, that's not a that's not my expertise, per se, but you know, for me, that's tapping into the banners, or this, you know, the databases that we have as as institutions to say, Can we get access? Can an AI have access to that? There's a question for you, right? So that data to then analyze some of those trends right within, at the department level, at the programmatic level, at the institutional level, to get a sense of, you know, can we predict how many seats we're going to need for this, for this course, next semester, right? Can we predict? Can we gain insights into students patterns to get a sense of when we might be able to offer that course? Right? Can we get insights into course selection and graduation rates, and intentionally, it's based off of similarly indicators that we're seeing, based off of what AI can see across the institutions data set right in relation to the student course enrollment trends, student course selection trends, completion trends, etc, like all of those are things are really important components that can inform an institution strategy. And I think advisors are in a position to help offer some of those insights right when asked, right? I think a lot of that happens now with some institutions who have some of those, like technology tools in their hands, right? Not everybody has that though that they're having to do some of that either through a downloaded report that have to clean it up, they have to prep it like, you know, and again, those are wonderful skills. But if they're thinking about an AI world and academic advising AI world, there may be a space to offer some of that to the AI world, to offer those insights and gain some of those components to help inform us more strategically, how we can enhance the advising experience for students, while some time ensuring a progressive experience for completion for the students.

Matt Markin  
And I guess, leading into that, you know, let's talk about specifically academic advisors, you know, you know, I don't think, and I think you as well, kind of saying that, you know, AI is not going to replace, you know, academic advisors still going to be a need, but it's all about working together with both academic advisors and AI power technologies. And in one of your other posts, you had mentioned that, you know, there are like five skills that academic advisors can actually cultivate to effectively you utilize and work with AI powered technologies. You know that ranging from technical proficiency to data analysis, digital communication, adaptability and ethical considerations. So things that you've kind of sprinkled out already through through some of your answers, but can you discuss more about that particular post and how that how advisors can actually work with AI?

Gabe Bermea  
Yeah, that's a really good question. So as I was thinking through like, well, what are some of those, like, new emergent skills? And of course, this is all while I'm finalizing the final draft of the MSI report. Like, I'm also thinking of these competencies that are in that report. I'm like, huh, like, are these? Are these still relevant in the space, right? As we're thinking through this AI, this new world of AI, right? So, yeah, the technology proficiency came up, not when we say technology proficiency of you know, how to use AI generated tools. Like, what does that look like? How do we use ChatGPT, right? What does that look like in our day to day, right? How are we using that? How do we include it in our work? And then, of course, what data are we using? And then, how do we troubleshoot issues with that technology? Like those are all components that come up with that technological proficiency. I also think the data analysis component, you know, of understanding that there are lost, there are vast data sets within institutions, right? And again, that's the conversation that needs to be had with, you know, the legal professionals and the ethical you know, components of it all. But like, if we do give access to these data sets from an AI perspective, what does that mean? How do we understand these components of the data and what it's telling us? The AI itself is not an expert in the human experience, but can only provide you so much content, right? But we still need to be able to analyze and interpret that data, not only through the limited lens of an AI, but also recognizing the humanistic lens right of our students and experiences that they're having to get those data, those patterns, those trends that we're seeing that can inform our efforts going forward, to create a more unique and custom experience from the advising lens, as well as from the institutional lens. I think those digital communication skills, there's this thing about prompt engineering, like, how do you prompt the AI to give you the information you need, like, the right choice of words language you know, to get a response to the content? You need. But at the same time, learning how to communicate through those digital platforms such as chat boxes and other virtual communication tools is going to be really essential, right, especially as you look at Gen Z and sort of how they communicate just so naturally, like in the digital space, you know, I was laughing about the millennial pause that they talked about, of like, you know, when, for those of us that are millennials, like, there's a pause after we hit the record button, you know, that's how you know they're millennial, versus a Genji just starts talking right on the spot. And I was like, Oh my gosh, that's going to be something they consider in my digital communication skills, right? To create a more authentic connection with my students. Like, those are levels that you start thinking about. I did put in there ethical considerations of how we use it. Data, privacy comes in the algorithm, bias, you know, transparency, all of those are factors and we have to understand about the AI tool and what it can and can't do. I mean, we already know that there are some AI tools out there that have biases in them, right? In regards to, you know, they're going to recognize faces, different skin tones, from one perspective to, you know, how it learns Right? Like, is it going to learn to be XYZ instead of ABC? Like, these are all components that need to be considered. And then, of course, I mean, just in the past few months alone, we've seen AI like yesterday or this week was like as like last week, there was this thing about the military having an AI implant to help somebody start walking again without, you know, how long have they been working on that? But like to see the evolution happen so quickly in the last few months, right? We're going to need a level of adaptability which requires us to update our skills, which will require us to continually learn about these technologies, to keep up with them. But I also think so like to that to your point about those five skills, I also think that on the flip side, those are really important to have. But again, to the humanistic side, I think it's going to really shift. I hope that it would shift to more of a one on one, transformational, meaningful relationship, conversation, more of that humanistic experience, a humanistic advising approach, where the skills of empathy, cultural humility, collaboration, intercultural communication and critical thinking are at the forefront of you know, from the humanistic side, skills that will need to be cultivated and developed as well, because the machine cannot replace the one on one connection you're going to have with the student, right? And as we get more and more diverse, I think those humanistic skills are going to become essential, more essential to the role and be areas of development for academic advisors in the new AI world. That makes sense.

Matt Markin  
100% agree with that. And yeah, it seems like with any technology, it's, you know, how can this be adapted? How can advisors be you know, adapt to all of this, utilize it. How can this streamline processes or but like you're saying, how does it allow us to have more that one on one with the students, that students feel like they belong and they feel like they're being guided, they feel like they're being listened to and heard so all of it's meant to how can we make this holistic experience for the student, and I'm interested to see where things go and what's the next technology that's out there, because a lot of times when we, when the public, hears about a certain technology, it's been going on for a while. So what's the latest thing that that's being worked on right now? But I'm very interested to see how universities or institutions continue to use AI, how professors will might use it. And, you know, there's always that ongoing conversation about plagiarism with, let's say ChatGPT, but Gabe, interesting topic. I think. Anything that you want to add?

Gabe Bermea  
I echo the same thing. It's, you know, history suggests higher ed is slow to change, so it will be interesting to see how these technologies are are approached by institutions, how they adapt them, how they, you know, unit them, what policies that they set, what are the ethical and legal concerns, you know. But I think at the end of the day, to your point as well, is we don't we know that students want to feel that sense of belonging. Students want to feel that sense of inclusion. They know that, you know. They want that more humanistic, humanized higher ed experience, right? And at the end of the day, an AI can't provide that, you know. So the most valuable resource an institution has is its people, right? And so especially those that are on the front lines, which academic advisors are on the front lines every day, developing those relationships with students, cultivating those relationships, interacting and solving, and, you know, addressing the next big challenge that comes their way to make sure that they can earn that degree right. So it will be interesting to see how the conversation proceeds going forward. But. It, it will be one that stuff only history in the making.

Matt Markin  
Perfectly said, Thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Gabe Bermea  
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.