Thinking & Advocacy
In spring 2024, I earned a certificate in prompt engineering from Vanderbilt University on Coursera. I was so proud. Three months later, it was obsolete.
When I enrolled, it felt like a way to gain moral high ground. I wanted to join the AI conversation from a place of lived experience — not just presidential posturing. Then came GPT-4. Suddenly, instead of crafting a sophisticated prompt, I could ask the model to structure it for me and get a better answer faster. I went from dabbling to actively learning how to lead in a moment of exponential change.
Like many, I started with curiosity. My first AI prompt? The same as my first pre-internet Gopher-net download in graduate school at Michigan in 1990: a chocolate chip cookie recipe. But it didn’t take long to realize this wasn’t just another tech trend. This was more emotional, more existential — and, for education, more urgent.
The messy middle of AI adoption
At MVCC, we’re squarely in the messy middle with the diffusion of change. Our innovators and early adopters are experimenting with AI in powerful ways, but now we face the harder challenge: engaging the early majority. We’re navigating how to cross the chasm in the middle of the classic innovation adoption curve where what got you started won’t get you to scale.
The surprise? Some of our most trusted faculty and thought leaders in student success have been the most resistant to AI. I don’t blame them. AI surfaces deep concerns—about pedagogy, employment, sustainability, and the future of humanity. I’ve had conversations that start with AI-enabled-student cheating and end with the collapse of civilization as we know it.
It’s a lot.
But I’ve learned this: as leaders, we have to slow down to speed up. Emotional resistance isn’t irrational—it’s a mirror of what matters most to people. Their skepticism reflects what they believe makes us human, effective, and distinct as educators. If we slow down to listen deeply, we can go faster in the long-term with people more heard and engaged.
We need to lead just beyond where our culture stands today—pushing its edge, not breaking it. The early adopters didn’t need a roadmap; they wanted ambiguity. But the early majority needs context, proof, and structure. That’s not resistance—it’s a different kind of readiness. And it demands a different kind of leadership. To borrow Bruce Lee’s wisdom: “Be like water.” When we hit resistance, we adjust—not to avoid the challenge, but to better navigate it.
Leading with productive paranoia
I’ve been called “pro-AI,” but that’s not how I see myself. I say I am productively paranoid. AI is accelerating. I engage with it to be more productive, but also because we can’t afford to ignore it—or rush in blindly. What we can do is move forward with clarity, caution, and purpose.
At Mohawk Valley Community College, we’ve taken deliberate steps: working through governance structures, bringing in speakers like Todd McLees to frame AI as a tool for human flourishing, and offering low-stakes opportunities for staff and faculty to build skills and confidence. We’ve trained about 10% of full-time employees in the AI Agility Challenge developed by Todd and his team at HumanSkills.ai. We’re offering the training to local employers with notable success. But we’ve also kept the pace measured — alternating exposure and support to match where our culture is.
Barriers as design constraints
Even if I had faculty knocking on my door to scale AI, we simply can’t afford enterprise LLM licenses for everyone. That’s not resistance — it’s reality. And it’s one most community colleges share. Despite the barriers, we must persist with students at the center; an AI strategy untethered from student success is just digital noise. We must embed AI into curriculum and campus systems in ways that strengthen outcomes and graduate readiness without breaking our cultures.
This is where presidential leadership matters. The work isn’t just to promote AI but to reframe its barriers and position the college to move when they fall. We can’t afford to put a license in every hand just yet — and, frankly, that may be a blessing. It gives us time to shape the why, not just the how. We get to design forward — not just buy forward.
Advice for the AI-anxious president
If you’re reading this and feeling behind, you’re not alone. But you do need to start. And if you’ve started, I encourage you to deepen your urgency and keep going.
Here’s what you can do:
- Do your own slow work. Read the AI for All ATD Task Force report, center yourself in the framework’s seven core principles and eight action areas, and build your own point of view. It needn’t be polished. It just needs to be yours, and AI for All is a helpful foundation.
- Embrace a growth mindset. Start by playing. Use the free versions of ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Copilot. Ask for a recipe, travel tips, or speech suggestions. Take an AI training course. Just explore.
- Find your “AI security blanket.” For me, that’s Todd McLees. His LinkedIn posts and human-first lens (always keeping human agency at the forefront) help me stay grounded and current.
- Engage the opposition with curiosity. The fears are real. Talk to those who are resistant — not to convince, but to understand.
- Keep it real. Avoid promoting AI adoption beyond reality. The stakes are too big for platitudes. Acknowledge where your institution is. Amplify bright spots. Name concerns.
- Think mission AND culture-first. Don’t chase tools. Build trust. The tech will evolve, but your people and purpose must remain the compass.
- Become productively paranoid. Track for how AI is evolving and regularly revisit your approach to what it means for your college.
If your AI strategy is about making jobs easier, that’s a fast path to replacement. But if it’s about making people more effective in advancing student success? That’s where transformation happens. My certificate may have been obsolete after three months, but the early foundation I built by engaging with AI sparked a curiosity that keeps growing as technology evolves.
AI as cultural leadership
AI is not just a new tool in the toolbox. It’s a force that will challenge the very architecture of the postsecondary industrial complex — how we operate, teach, learn, credential, advise, and define expertise. The question is not whether this transformation is coming but whether we will shape it — let it shape us.
Dr. Randall J. VanWagoner has served as president of Mohawk Valley Community College (MVCC) in Utica, New York, since 2007. Part of the State University of New York system, MVCC has been part of the ATD Network since 2014 and received Leader College distinction in 2025.
This blog post is part of the “From Vision to Action” series showcasing how ATD Network colleges are operationalizing AI integration across eight key action areas identified in the ATD AI for All Task Force’s report, “Creating the AI-Enabled Community College: A Road Map for Using Generative AI To Accelerate Student Success.”