Where Two Rivers stands today

The institution

Two Rivers State University is a broad-access regional public university that has decided AI matters and has started to move, yet has no coordinated plan, no budget line, and no shared picture of where it stands.

Two Rivers enrolls around 8,700 students. Most commute. A large share are first-generation and Pell-eligible, and many are working adults attending part time.

What is already moving

• The president named AI as a priority in fall convocation and asked the cabinet for a plan.
• A volunteer faculty AI task force exists, with energy but no charter, budget, or authority.
• Roughly 30 to 40 faculty already use AI informally for course prep, feedback, and materials.
• IT has bought a small batch of enterprise licenses as an unmanaged pilot.
• The writing center and one advising unit are running small experiments.

What is still missing

• No AI policy. Academic integrity is handled syllabus by syllabus.
• No clear owner. AI decisions have no home, and no one holds the mandate to make them and make them stick.
• Effort is siloed. The people doing the work do not know what each other are doing.
• No dedicated staff and no budget line for AI.
• Uneven, untracked AI literacy among faculty and staff.
• Open questions about data governance and security.
• No assessment of where the institution actually stands.
• Uneven student access to tools, an equity gap leadership has noticed but not addressed.

The constraints any resource has to survive

• Central IT is about 12 people covering everything from the help desk to the network.
• Instructional design is one to two people for the whole campus.
• Faculty carry a full teaching load with little release time.
• The grants office is small and already at capacity.
• Cabinet attention is dominated by enrollment and budget pressure.
• Many Pell-eligible and lower-income students depend on a smartphone for access and lack reliable home broadband, a gap that widened after the Affordable Connectivity Program lapsed in 2024.

Why now

• At the last board meeting, a member asked the provost directly, "What is our AI strategy?"
• The provost promised the board a plan by the fall strategic-plan checkpoint.
• A regional workforce grant with an AI component has a near-term application window.

So the question in front of Two Rivers is concrete: what can it actually put to use in the next 90 days, with what it has.