From Engagement to Employment: Using AI to Power Student Workforce Programs at Scale

Most student workforce programs are one overloaded supervisor away from inconsistency. Coaching slips. Skill development stalls. Students leave without the career documentation that would have made their experience count. Institutions lose the operational value they invested in building. This poster session shows how Auburn University solved that problem across two distinct programs (a student cybersecurity workforce initiative and a social media marketing ambassador program) by designing AI directly into program workflows. Not as an add-on. As infrastructure. Presenters share the prompt frameworks, coaching workflows, and program design decisions that made both initiatives scalable, career-aligned, and institutionally grounded without sacrificing mentorship, ethics, or voice. The result is a framework any institution can use. Whether you oversee IT student workers, communication teams, peer advisors, or experiential learning cohorts, you will leave this session with concrete strategies for transforming student programs from operational line items into high-impact assets: ones that advance student success, strengthen retention and enrollment narratives, and deliver outcomes leadership can measure and communicate.