More than 650 people at Mississippi State are now talking about AI in the Community of Practice.
What started as a small group in Microsoft Teams channel in November 2025 now has more than 650 MSU faculty, staff, and administrators comparing notes — on what they're trying. The conversation has become something more useful than tips.
By Julie Jordan
In November 2025, a small group of MSU faculty and staff were invited to join the AI Community Team. The goal was simple: give people a place to share what they were actually trying with AI tools, learn from each other, ask the questions that didn't fit neatly into a formal training session.
Nine months later, more than 650 people have joined.
The MSU AI Community of Practice runs on a Teams channel. People post what they tried, what didn't work, and get help immediately. A chemistry faculty member shares a prompt she used to redesign a rubric. An operations manager asks which student data can and can't go into a chat tool. A librarian explains the practical difference between Copilot and Claude. A procurement officer describes using AI to draft a vendor review and asks if anyone else has tried this.
The questions matter as much as the answers.
When faculty raised concerns in February about AI and academic integrity — specifically, whether MSU had a university-wide framework for handling honor code violations — the honest answer was: not yet. That conversation became part of the input into MSU's ongoing AI ethics and guardrails process, being shaped through structured faculty, staff, and student feedback through the spring of 2026.
The community is part of how MSU listens before it governs.
The next milestone: 1,000 members by December. At that scale, MSU will have real representation across every college and division. Early adopters become everyone.
If you're MSU faculty or staff and you're not already in — the link is below.