Thinking Out Loud: Dispatches on AI and Higher Education

How To Eat an Elephant

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:24:04 +0000

In episode three of Thinking Out Loud, Sam Jay and Larry Sampler recap their presentation to the MSU Denver Board of Trustees, subsequent discussion, and the work to be done over the summer as faculty, staff, and students prepare for a new academic year.

Have any question, comments, ideas, or feedback? Email us at ai@msudenver.edu.

Briefing the Board

Thu, 28 May 2026 05:17:14 +0000

In episode two of Thinking Out Loud, Sam Jay and Larry Sampler work through how they are preparing to brief the MSU Denver Board of Trustees on the university's AI readiness work.

They open with a round of fact or fiction, testing each other on a set of recent AI stories that range from useful to alarming to flat-out strange. The point is not the trivia. It is the reality that President Davidson and every senior leader now has to make decisions inside an environment this noisy and this fast-moving.

From there the conversation turns to the work itself. How do you build a governance structure that is flexible enough to keep up with AI without smothering the curiosity of a university full of smart people? Sam and Larry make the case for a task force model over a standing committee, walk through the four areas of emphasis shaping their plan (student readiness, faculty readiness and curriculum, operational innovation, and special projects), and get honest about the unglamorous truth that most of this work starts with documentation, not deployment.

Along the way: why they are not flipping every switch in Workday yet, what the controller's office taught them about where AI agents actually add value, the difference between training and education, and why keeping a human in the loop is the whole game.

Recorded as the team heads into board preparation and the summer planning stretch.

Have a question you are stuck on? Email us at ai@msudenver.edu.

Links and sources mentioned in this episode:

Getting Started

Wed, 13 May 2026 11:54:19 +0000

In the inaugural episode of Thinking Out Loud, Sam Jay, Executive Director of Digital Learning and AI Strategy, and Larry Sampler, former COO and now Special Advisor to the President, sit down to introduce the show and the work behind it.

Sam and Larry trace the backstory that brought each of them to leading AI at Metropolitan State University of Denver, a public, open-access university serving 18,000 students in downtown Denver. They talk about what got them into this work, what they have learned so far, and why they decided a podcast was the right way to think about it in public.

The conversation then turns to the areas of emphasis that will shape their work in the months ahead. Faculty readiness and pedagogical excellence. Student readiness and curriculum development. Operational innovation across the university. The shared thread is a commitment to using AI in a way that enriches the university's mission rather than competes with it.

This episode sets the foundation for everything that follows. Future episodes will go deep on the specific decisions, pilots, and unresolved questions that come with building AI capacity at a public university.

If you work in higher education, lead an AI initiative, or are trying to make sense of where this is all going, this is the place to start.

Subscribe and send us the questions you are stuck on.

Music: Space Cadet Training Montage by Zane Little (CC0 1.0 Universal).