Hi everyone,
Tiffany here.
A quick reminder that Focus Friday is happening today from 12:30-1:30 p.m. Eastern, and we’re diving into a topic that’s been bubbling up in nearly every conversation this fall: the future of work in an AI era.
I’ll be joined by Andre Côté and Jake Allan-Hirsch from The Dias, who have been leading national research on AI exposure in the workforce and how technological change is reshaping jobs, skills, and entire career pathways. Together, we’ll explore what the future of work actually looks like—what jobs may shift or disappear, which ones won’t, and how colleges and universities can adapt programs, teaching, and student supports to prepare learners for what’s ahead. If you haven’t registered yet, it’s not too late. You can still join us here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/JqqWYLE_RmOlGHJGvvV9lA
As December 6 falls on a Saturday this year, we ask our readers take a moment to remember:
Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz
Looking Back
The last Focus Friday brought us into one of the most active, and sometimes overwhelming, conversations happening across Canadian campuses: what it actually means to be “AI ready.” To guide us, we were joined by Stephanie Enders, Chief Delivery Officer at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), one of Canada’s three national AI institutes under the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy. Amii sits in a unique position in the ecosystem: deeply rooted in world-class AI research, but equally focused on helping institutions translate that research into responsible, real-world practice.
Stephanie walked us through Amii’s growing portfolio of work with post-secondary institutions, including the AI Workforce Readiness project, a nationwide initiative funded by Google.org that now reaches 40 colleges and universities and more than 600,000 learners. The project brings together the kinds of supports institutions rarely have the time or capacity to build alone: foundational literacy modules, co-developed curriculum resources, and structured opportunities for faculty, staff, and students to explore AI in ways that are safe, critical, and aligned to institutional goals. What makes it so powerful, she noted, is not just the scale but the collaboration—it lets institutions build together rather than reinvent the wheel in parallel.
But the heart of our conversation focused on a deceptively simple question: what is AI readiness? Stephanie was clear that it’s not a checklist, a policy, or a technology rollout. Instead, she framed readiness as informed agency, or in other words, the ability for people across the institution to decide, with confidence and context, when to use AI, when not to, and how to understand the implications of those choices. Amii draws on UNESCO’s AI Competency Framework to guide this work, starting not with tools but with a human-centred mindset: critical thinking first, ethics second, and only then the techniques and systems that bring AI to life.
Amii deepens this model with a set of “workforce personas” that reflect the different ways people may interact with AI: the AI-curious learner just starting to explore; the regular user applying tools to everyday tasks; the builder or implementer shaping AI systems; and the strategist thinking about wider organizational impact. These layers help institutions move away from a one-size-fits-all approach and instead imagine a campus where different roles require different kinds of readiness, depending on whether the goal is optimization, productivity, safety, personalization, or something else entirely.
Stephanie also described how AI readiness looks different across the institution. For students, the challenge lies in balancing academic integrity with the reality that many employers, from tech companies to banks to startups, now expect AI fluency as a baseline skill. For faculty, AI offers both an administrative productivity boost and a powerful research accelerator, opening new possibilities for modelling, analysis, and scientific discovery. And for campus staff, the opportunities stretch far beyond generative AI: predictive maintenance for HVAC systems, improved safety monitoring, smarter recruitment pipelines, and more efficient administrative workflows. In many cases, these operational applications may be the most transformative, even though they tend to receive far less public attention.
As always, we ended with a conversation about where to begin. Stephanie emphasized that institutions often underestimate the value of small, early wins; the quiet foundational steps that make bigger changes possible. Creating open spaces for dialogue, where excitement and skepticism can coexist without judgment. Taking the time to understand students’ actual literacy levels rather than assuming universal fluency. Building protected sandboxes where faculty can experiment safely with AI tools. Piloting assignments that integrate AI critically, encouraging students to interrogate the technology rather than avoid it. And looking to interdisciplinary models (like the University of Alberta’s AI Everywhere course, for example) to spark curiosity and confidence across faculties.
Her message throughout was reassuring: no institution is starting too late, and no institution needs to do everything at once. AI readiness is a journey shaped by culture, values, and capacity, not speed. The goal is not to turn campuses into AI-first environments, but to prepare people to make thoughtful, responsible decisions in a world where AI will increasingly be part of everyday life. If you missed the conversation, you can find the recording on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jMxL7fXtVo
Looking Ahead
We’ll be taking a short break for the holidays. Focus Friday returns on January 16, and we’ll be kicking off the new semester with a fresh slate of conversations shaped by what matters most to all of you.
If there’s a topic you’d like us to explore next term — whether emerging policy issues, campus innovations, AI experiments, enrolment trends, or anything else you’re seeing on the ground — please reach out anytime at tmaclennan@higheredstrategy.com. Your ideas are what keep these sessions relevant, timely, and grounded in the real work happening across the sector.
I’m looking forward to seeing many of you in the new year.
Cheers,
Tiff
