Creating an AI-First University, w/ Kogod Dean David Marchick

What happens when a business school decides AI isn’t a bolt-on elective, but the operating system for how students learn marketing, finance, entrepreneurship, and leadership?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we’re back with David Marchick, Dean of the Kogod School of Business, to see what changed after his earlier promise to become the country’s first AI-first business school. We dig into what “AI-first” actually means in practice, what worked (and what failed), and how a culture of experimentation turned AI adoption from a handful of pilots into a school-wide shift.

We also tackle the most unavoidable issue in education right now: cheating. David shares Kogod’s approach to disclosure, ethics, group work, oral exams, and why “blue books” may be making a comeback. From there, we zoom out to the bigger stakes: the existential threat AI poses to universities, how the higher ed business model may change, and what skills still matter when AI can generate content on demand.

Guest

David Marchick — Dean of Kogod School of Business

Key topics we cover

• 3:56 — The “tipping point”: how AI moved from experiments to 90% of faculty using it
• 7:16 — What “AI-first business school” really means: AI + fundamentals + “power skills”
• 10:32 — Cheating and assessment: disclosure statements, prompts, oral exams, blue books
• 16:51 — A prompts-only entrepreneurship course and what personalized learning could become
• 22:06 — Non-technical students building apps and graduating with an AI-driven portfolio
• 23:38 — Practicing negotiations against AI counterparts with different personalities
• 25:04 — Agentic workflows as a management tool, not just a technical novelty
• 29:13 — The university headwinds: demographic cliff, international enrollment, funding, AI
• 38:58 — Leadership lessons: top-down AI culture plus bottom-up workflow redesign
• 40:42 — How David uses AI personally, including Tour de France route training plans

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