AI-Fluent Business Education with DePaul University
Co-hosted by Andrea Gilbert and Rhea Vitalis
With special guests James Moore, Director of Online Learning, and Dr. Jim Mourey, Associate Professor of Marketing, Associate Dean, and MBA Program Director at DePaul University’s Driehaus College of Business
Listen on: YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music
Episode Overview
In Part 3 of First Movers, we talk with James Moore and Dr. Jim Mourey of DePaul University’s Driehaus College of Business, a long-time Everspring partner that’s leading the way in integrating AI from both the academic and marketing sides. Inside the MBA, DePaul has embedded AI across every core course—not as an elective, but as a baseline skill students build through repeated, ethical use. We dig into why that shift matters for workforce readiness, what it took to bring faculty along, and how DePaul’s curriculum moves connect directly to the way we’re working together to keep the program visible and credible as AI reshapes student discovery.
Key Takeaways
- AI is becoming a core business skill: DePaul integrated AI across the MBA core, treating it as foundational, not optional.
- Curriculum integration protects relevance: Embedding AI throughout coursework ensures graduates are ready for how work is changing.
- Culture shift matters as much as tools: Faculty adoption and institutional commitment drive meaningful, scalable integration.
- AI fluency is emerging as a differentiator: Students will increasingly expect AI-enabled learning tied to career outcomes.
- Modernization must keep pace with rigor: The episode unpacks how to evolve programs quickly without losing academic depth.
Transcript
Rhea Vitalis (Everspring): Welcome to First Movers, a new PulseCheck series from Enrollify brought to you by Everspring. Today, we're exploring AI's evolution in higher education with the dynamic duo from DePaul University's Driehaus College of Business in Chicago: James Moore, Director of Online Learning, and Jim Mourey, Associate Dean of Graduate Programs. Also joining us is Andrea Gilbert, who leads Partner and Solutions Marketing here at Everspring. I'm Rhea Vitalis, your host. I lead Everspring's research on AI's impact on enrollment and translate the trends into practical moves for marketing and admissions teams. Let’s jump in.
The AI acceptance gap is real, and schools can’t ignore it (01:58)
Jim Mourey (DePaul): In my research, I have identified this AI acceptance gap. Companies want talent that have AI experience. Yet there's still this strange hesitation from institutes of higher education to integrate it into the experience. That seems crazy, because part of our responsibility is training the next generation of workers and employees who go out into the market. We need to be sensitive to what's out there.
Jim Mourey: In our MBA program, we decided AI is going to be a part of every core class. Whatever that means to this specific class, finance, marketing, management, it doesn't matter. At minimum, if we know what employers are looking for, we have an obligation to make sure we're addressing those needs.
Embedding AI across the MBA core (03:54)
James Moore (DePaul): What we're looking to do is fully integrate meaningful AI experience into the entire curriculum. We need to attack this at a programmatic level. Students are coming in and there will be multiple touch points along the trajectory of their course where they're using AI in a way that's meaningful and ethical. It builds up a portfolio of skills and experiences they can demonstrate to future employers.
Why AI was embedded across the curriculum, not as an add-on certificate or elective (04:44)
James Moore: If you want to demonstrate that you have skills, you need the confidence to listen to the environment and respond. The only way you can do that is when something becomes natural. If we create an environment where we're giving someone a certificate program or an elective course that builds on top of the program, they're not going to have that natural ability to use those skills without thinking. If you build it into the program, everything they've done includes the internal calculation: does using AI help or hinder here? One of the skills we're developing is for students to say, "No, AI is not the right tool to use in this situation, and here's the reason why."
Jim Mourey: We're teaching technological agility. AI of today will not be AI of tomorrow. These young people will still be in the market five, ten, twenty years from now. If anything we know to be true, the technology will continue to evolve. Everybody needs to be fluent at some level and be adept because it will change.
Faculty adoption is messy, but market urgency wins (09:01)
James Moore: Like all the good things in life, it was messy. Faculty tend toward skepticism. Their brain typically responds to any new thing by saying, "Prove it. Show me." It's a slow process, little wins, demonstrating how something is applicable. But we're a business school. We understand market realities and focus on student outcomes. We can see it's harder for some students to get the job they think they might want. We need to create a way to allow them to get to that place. Even if someone is reluctant with AI, they understand the urgency of providing those skills to students.
Jim Mourey: One of the most frequent questions I receive from prospective MBA students is, "How is AI integrated into the program?" That's an expectation. In the classroom last year, everyone had their laptop open to ChatGPT. In workshops with companies, every employee had their laptop open to ChatGPT. Pretending this is not driven by the market would be foolish.
Making students uncomfortable — in a safe, ethical way (15:41)
James Moore: We bring in students who aren't traditional business students. Musicians, theatrical performers, writers. A lot of those students have valid concerns about AI, but the role of the university is sometimes to make people feel uncomfortable in a safe situation. The only way you can say no to something is if you're fully informed. "No" should not be a reflexive statement without understanding the impact and the reasons for saying no.
Jim Mourey: Even if you decide not to use a tool, you have to know what the competition is doing. You might not like vibe coding, you might want to understand Python in the weeds. That's great. But there are students at institutions steps away from here who are going to be using AI to do their coding. You don't have to like it, but this is the world we currently live in and it's our job to expose you.
AI fluency strengthens entrepreneurship and career agility (21:52)
James Moore: There was a jobs report published showing 40 to 60% of current jobs are going to be significantly impacted by artificial intelligence. Students are listening. They're realizing that if the job they think will be ready for them by the time they graduate isn't going to be there, they need to prepare for something new. Coming out saying, "I'm going to form my own company or start my own business," is powerful. If we can raise a generation of people who are able to adapt to that change, we weather this storm of disruption.
Curriculum and marketing are intertwined through stories + AI discovery (30:07)
James Moore: The meaningful things that happen to you can be articulated as a story. There's a beginning, a middle, an end. We've been good at making sure we can tell stories, especially when they’re articulated by current and former students. If you do this well, it gets ingested by large language models. Prospective students are using these models to make decisions about which university is right for them. We've made sure that the information coming up organically, the stories from current and former students, surface in a way that large language models understand. Some of it's the way you write this, some of it's the way you tag it using appropriate schema behind the scenes.
Jim Mourey: We do answer engine optimization. We do AI search optimization. These are skills that a year ago I wouldn't have included, but now are essential. Higher education marketing has historically been top down. But what's more important now is the organic bottom-up experience: blog posts, students creating video content. The transformational story is even more effective when you're hearing it from the people whose lives you've transformed. That's better than whatever cute tagline we put out there. Let's hear from the students.
What changes they hope to see next year (42:50)
Jim Mourey: I hope we get to a point of comfort. Embrace the good value AI is bringing, be mindful of shortcomings and potential negative consequences, highlight them, and manage the negative with the positive. Embrace people who decide to go the organic route and not use technology. Get to a level of peace where everyone accepts AI as an option, acknowledges its risks, and we advance as human beings.
James Moore: The way we teach in the West hasn't really changed for a couple of hundred years. Those resources aren't scarce anymore. With artificial intelligence, knowledge is ubiquitous. We need to change the way that we teach. A year from now, you could walk into a classroom and it doesn’t look the way it has for the past couple of hundred years. Students are actively engaged with each other doing something important because they're all in a room at that time. They'll come in already proficient because they've used AI to follow guided learning paths and practice presenting until they can tell the story they want to share with classmates and professors.
Andrea Gilbert (Everspring): Change is hard. Some institutions are fearful of taking these leaps. I hope we see broader adoption. Integrate AI into how students are learning, problem solving, communicating, and see the value of the tools available. On the marketing side, students are moving through the process faster because there's more information at their fingertips. That should change how schools think about visibility, outcomes, cost per start. Better alignment across curriculum, marketing, and the student experience will reinforce readiness for an AI-enabled workforce. Schools that make that shift will see better students and better performance.
Closing (49:07)
James Moore: There are so many ways. Go to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, ask your questions there.
Rhea Vitalis: If you're interested in how AI is reshaping student search and discovery, you can check out Everspring's research at everspringpartners.com. I'm Rhea Vitalis. Thanks for listening to First Movers, and we'll see you next time.