Artificial Intelligence at CBU

California Baptist University is committed to the responsible, ethical, and secure use of artificial intelligence in support of teaching, learning, research, and institutional operations.

Microsoft Copilot (Enterprise / Edu) is the university-approved generative AI platform.

Foundations of AI at CBU

Overview: Importance, Potential, and Awareness

California Baptist University believes each person has been created for a unique purpose. In that spirit, artificial intelligence (AI)—including generative AI—can equip CBU staff and faculty to serve students more effectively and to strengthen our Christ-centered educational mission by supporting excellent academics alongside spiritual and social development.

To honor that purpose, AI must be employed with wisdom and care in ways that protect students, employees, and the university. This page outlines why responsible AI use matters, the opportunities it can create, and the shared awareness habits that guide faithful, responsible use of AI at CBU.

Why Responsible AI Use Matters

Trust and integrity: CBU’s teaching, research, and operations depend on accuracy, transparency, and accountability—AI outputs must be reviewed and verified before use.
Privacy and confidentiality: AI tools can store, process, or expose sensitive information if used improperly, including student records, HR data, contracts, and protected research or study data.
Compliance and risk management: Responsible AI use helps meet legal, regulatory, accreditation, and contractual obligations while reducing institutional and reputational risk.
Human dignity and impartiality: CBU seeks to treat students, applicants, and employees with biblical fairness and care. AI outputs should be reviewed and corrected to support just outcomes, equitable impacts, and impartial decision-making.
Academic and professional standards: Clear expectations support academic integrity and appropriate attribution, authorship, and citation practices in both academic and professional work.
Well-being and mental health support: When used responsibly and appropriately, AI tools can help reduce stress, improve access to support resources, assist with time management and workload organization, and promote overall well-being. AI should complement—not replace—human relationships, professional counseling, pastoral care, and other trusted support systems.

Potential Opportunities Enabled by AI

Student support and success: Drafting clearer instructions, improving feedback rubrics, creating practice questions, and generating examples—while keeping humans accountable for final decisions.
Teaching and learning design: Brainstorming activities, differentiating content, improving accessibility, and creating formative assessments.
Research productivity: Literature discovery support, outline generation, code assistance, and summarization—paired with discipline-appropriate validation and citation.
Administrative efficiency: Summarizing meeting notes, drafting communications, creating first-pass FAQs, and accelerating routine writing, reporting, and analysis needs.
IT and analytics: Faster troubleshooting, documentation, and prototype development using reviewed and approved tools.
Operational Efficiency and Service Improvement: Approved artificial intelligence tools can help CBU improve operational efficiency, service quality, and responsiveness by supporting routine drafting, summarization, analysis, documentation, and workflow organization.

Practical Use and Awareness

Generative AI technologies offer practical solutions across university departments, enhancing efficiency, communication, and decision-making. The examples below illustrate how approved generative AI tools can support campus operations when used with appropriate human oversight and in alignment with CBU policy.

AI Use Case Highlights

Student Success Coaches

Student success coaches may use generative AI tools to draft personalized responses for students seeking assistance with academic programs, course selection, or scheduling questions.

By grounding the AI tool in approved program requirements, standard guidance, and common student inquiries, coaches can more efficiently generate tailored draft responses.

All AI-assisted content is reviewed, edited, and approved by coaches prior to being shared with students to ensure accuracy, clarity, and a supportive, personal tone.

Safety Services Shift Supervisors

Safety Services shift supervisors may use generative AI tools to extract key information from dispatch call logs or operational notes and generate initial draft summaries to support shift transitions and reporting.

These drafts help supervisors prepare documentation more efficiently while maintaining consistency across reports.

Supervisors remain responsible for validating all information, correcting errors, and finalizing reports before distribution or archival.

Admissions Staff

Admissions staff may use generative AI tools to draft responses to common applicant inquiries, summarize application trends, or prepare first-pass outreach communications for prospective students.

By using approved messaging frameworks, published admissions criteria, and publicly available information, AI tools can assist staff in creating timely and consistent draft communications.

Admissions personnel are responsible for reviewing all AI-assisted drafts to ensure accuracy, policy compliance, and alignment with institutional messaging before communications are finalized or sent.

These examples demonstrate how generative AI can assist with routine drafting and summarization tasks while preserving human judgment, accountability, and institutional responsibility.

Awareness: What “Using AI the Right Way” Looks Like

Protect sensitive data: Do not enter confidential, regulated, or personally identifiable information into AI tools unless the tool and use case are explicitly approved for that data type.
Verify before you rely: Treat AI output as a draft. Fact-check content, validate citations, and confirm accuracy—especially for student-facing guidance or policy-related materials.
Be transparent: When AI meaningfully assists with a deliverable, use appropriate disclosure consistent with course expectations, departmental standards, or project requirements.
Mind bias and fairness: Review AI outputs for stereotypes, missing perspectives, or unfair recommendations; avoid using AI as the sole basis for consequential decisions.
Keep humans accountable: AI can assist with work, yet responsibility for decisions, approvals, grades, and official communications remains with CBU employees.
Respect intellectual property: Use proper attribution and follow licensing and copyright rules; do not assume AI-generated content is automatically safe to reuse.

Practical starting point:

If you’re unsure whether a task is appropriate for AI, pause and ask:

Am I sharing any sensitive data?
Is this tool approved for CBU use?
Can I independently verify the output?
Who is accountable for the final result?

If any answer is unclear, consult the Policy, Training/Resources, or Approved Tools and IT Review guidance that follows.

Policy and Governance

Purpose

This policy establishes guidelines for the ethical, secure, and effective use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and technologies at California Baptist University (CBU). It is intended to promote appropriate innovation while safeguarding sensitive information, maintaining academic integrity, and ensuring compliance with applicable legal, regulatory, accreditation, and contractual requirements.

Scope

This policy applies to all faculty, staff, and student workers who use AI tools for university-related tasks, projects, research, instruction, or communications. Use of AI systems in connection with CBU activities constitutes agreement to comply with this policy and related university guidance.

Policy Statements

Approved Tools: Only AI tools reviewed through CBU’s established institutional process may be used for university work. Information Technology Services coordinates technical, security, privacy, integration, and procurement review. Proposals presenting broader academic, operational, ethical, compliance, or institutional risk may be referred to the AI Steering Committee or another responsible office.
Data Protection: Confidential, regulated, or personally identifiable information must not be entered into AI tools unless explicit approval has been granted for the specific data type and use case.
Accuracy and Verification: AI-generated content should be treated as a draft until fact-checked and validated. Users are responsible for confirming the accuracy of outputs, particularly when providing student guidance or policy-related information.
Transparency: Any meaningful use of AI in deliverables must be disclosed in accordance with course requirements, departmental standards, or project expectations.
Fairness and Bias: AI outputs must be reviewed for bias, omissions, or unfair recommendations. AI tools must not serve as the sole basis for significant decisions affecting individuals or groups.
Accountability: While AI systems may assist with tasks, ultimate responsibility for decisions, approvals, grades, evaluations, and official communications remains with CBU employees.
Intellectual Property: All use of AI-generated content must comply with applicable licensing, copyright, and intellectual-property requirements. Users must not assume AI outputs are automatically safe to reuse.

Governance

Strategic governance and coordination of institutional AI activity are provided by the CBU AI Steering Committee. The Committee works with Information Technology Services and other responsible offices to apply staged review processes to proposed AI tools, pilots, and use cases

CBU AI STEERING COMMITTEE

The CBU AI Steering Committee serves as the university’s institutional AI control tower. It provides strategic governance and cross-functional coordination for the responsible, ethical, secure, and mission-aligned use of artificial intelligence.

The Committee advises on institutional strategy, recommends governance standards, coordinates AI activity across university units, evaluates emerging tools and use cases, routes matters to accountable offices, and escalates issues requiring executive action. It coordinates with—rather than replaces—existing academic, administrative, technology, compliance, and governance bodies. It is not the operational owner for all AI implementation, compliance activity, training delivery, procurement, or technology support.

The Committee reviews emerging AI tools, pilots, use cases, risks, and institutional practices for alignment with CBU’s mission, priorities, policies, and risk expectations. It identifies gaps, recommends adjustments, and elevates matters requiring institutional attention or executive decision. Implementation and ongoing operational monitoring remain with the appropriate university office or designated owner. Committee guidance informs institutional policy updates, approved tool evaluations, training priorities, and staged risk-review processes.

The Committee includes representation from Academic Affairs, Information Technology Services, Finance & Administration, Student Services, and other units appropriate to its work. Membership may evolve as AI adoption expands across the university. Specific members will be determined and announced in a future update.

Authority and Decision Rights

The Committee may recommend, guide, coordinate, direct, or escalate action within its charge. Executive Council retains final authority for institutional priorities, approvals, resources, and implementation.

Operational responsibility remains with the appropriate university office or designated implementation owner. The Committee may establish time-bound working groups with defined scope, ownership, and deliverables.

Committee Responsibilities

Strategy: Advise on AI priorities, monitor emerging opportunities, and support mission-aligned institutional approaches.
Governance: Recommend policies, standards, principles, and decision criteria aligned with academic integrity, data governance, information security, privacy, and compliance.
Coordination: Connect academic, administrative, technical, and compliance stakeholders and route proposals, questions, and implementation needs to the appropriate owners.
Evaluation: Review emerging tools, pilots, use cases, risks, and institutional practices; identify gaps and elevate matters requiring executive attention.

Guiding Principles

Mission Alignment: AI use must support CBU’s educational and faith-based mission.
Stewardship: AI should strengthen human capacity while accounting for long-term institutional impact.
Transparency: AI use should be understandable, documented, and accountable.
Collaboration: Effective AI governance requires shared ownership across campus.
Innovation with Care: CBU encourages innovation while maintaining appropriate safeguards.

University-Approved AI Tools

Approved AI Tools at CBU

AI Tool	Status	Notes
Microsoft Copilot (Enterprise / Edu)	✅ Approved – Preferred	Primary institutional AI platform; integrated with MS Office such as Outlook, Word, and Excel
ChatGPT Enterprise / Edu	⚠️ Conditionally Permitted – Department Supported	Requires departmental funding, an enterprise or education agreement, and review through CBU’s established institutional process. ITS does not provide standard end-user support unless separately arranged.
Google Gemini (Workspace Enterprise)	⚠️ Conditionally Permitted – Department Supported	Requires departmental funding, an enterprise or education agreement, and review through CBU’s established institutional process. ITS does not provide standard end-user support unless separately arranged.
Consumer / Free AI Tools	❌ Prohibited	Prohibited for university data or university work involving confidential, regulated, proprietary, or personally identifiable information.

AI Training and Resources

California Baptist University encourages faculty, staff, and students to build foundational skills for using artificial intelligence responsibly and effectively. The following free training resources from Microsoft support appropriate use of Microsoft Copilot and align with CBU’s expectations for security, verification, and accountability.

Get Started with Microsoft 365 Copilot: An introductory learning path that explains what Microsoft 365 Copilot is, how it works across Microsoft applications, and best practices for responsible use.
Access the Get Started with Microsoft 365 Copilot training
Microsoft 365 Copilot Training – Explore All: A collection of free training sessions, role‑based resources, and ongoing learning opportunities to help users deepen their understanding of Copilot capabilities and appropriate use across different roles.
Explore all Microsoft 365 Copilot training resources

Additional CBU‑specific training materials and guidance may be added over time. Users are encouraged to complete applicable training prior to adopting AI tools for university‑related work.