In this episode of The Smarter Campus Podcast, Zach sits down with a leader from Pikes Peak State College to talk about what it actually looks like to move from experimenting with AI to making it available across an entire institution.

Pikes Peak initially began with a small pilot group evaluating different tools and approaches. But when the team brought a limited rollout proposal to college leadership, the response was much bigger: go all in. The result was campus-wide access for students, faculty, and staff, with collaboration and shared learning at the center of the strategy.

The conversation also explores why community colleges require especially thoughtful approaches to AI adoption. Different states structure technical education, transfer pathways, and workforce programs very differently, meaning there is no single model that works everywhere.

For educators who are still figuring out where to begin, the advice is simple: start small, understand what people are actually afraid of, and use AI as a starting point rather than a finished product. The episode is a practical look at what institutional AI adoption can look like when access, experimentation, and human judgment are built into the rollout from the beginning.