Reflections from EDUCAUSE 2025: People, Purpose, and Progress in Higher Education

EDUCAUSE is always a meaningful pulse check on where higher education is headed, and this year was no exception. With our new CEO Justin Beck, our SVP Sales Beth Griesbauer, our CMO Sharon Harrison, and nine additional team members from sales and marketing onsite, Booth #1125 quickly became a place for real conversations with leaders from more than 60 colleges and universities.

We also attended partner gatherings with Ellucian and Internet2, explored poster sessions from institutions doing truly impactful work, including Lone Star College and University of Houston, and hosted our Higher Ed Leaders Luncheon with a full table of clients and partners. It was an open, honest forum to discuss challenges, celebrate wins, share best practices, and reveal what’s next.

Across all of these moments, a few themes came through clearly…

Theme 1: Reintroducing our brand, together.

This EDUCAUSE also marked an important moment for us as a company.

Earlier in 2025, Ivy.ai and Ocelot officially joined forces under the Gravyty name. Many in the EDUCAUSE community know the Ivy & Ocelot brands well, and meeting face-to-face was a great opportunity to reinforce what this new chapter means: stronger expertise, a broader product suite, and a shared mission grounded in supporting the student experience.

Talking with long-time Ivy.ai and Ocelot customers and introducing them to the new Gravyty confirmed something meaningful:

Being together, in person, made that real.

Theme 2: A human approach to AI.

AI was expectedly a major topic at the conference, but what stood out most was how the conversation has shifted. Instead of asking whether AI has a place in higher education, leaders are now asking how to use it in ways that feel supportive, intentional, and transparent.

Institutions are focusing on:

• Helping faculty and staff understand where AI adds value and where it does not
  
• Choosing tools that enhance, not replace, personal connection
  
• Building trust by showing exactly how AI impacts daily work
  

Two sessions reinforced this especially well:

1. From Overwhelmed to Empowered: How We Built an AI Chatbot That Supports Students and Staff by Lone Star college system
This session showed how a branded student chatbot can make a meaningful difference when it is designed with real student input and cross-campus collaboration. It is not just about answering questions faster. It is about freeing advisors for deeper conversations and building tools students actually want to use.

2. Lessons from the Front Lines: Deploying a Campus-Wide Chatbot in Higher Education
by University of Houston
The key takeaway was that successful chatbot adoption is not a one-time launch. It needs leadership support, ongoing staffing, thoughtful rollout planning, and clear ways to measure success over time. When done well, it can become a trusted part of the student experience.In both cases, the message was the same:

Theme 3: Data as a shared campus resource

Many leaders we spoke with emphasized that data is only useful when more people can actually understand and act on it. What matters most now is shared language, training, and access.

The real progress is happening where teams are taking ownership together, not working in silos.

Chatbots don’t replace tried-and-true communication channels, but rather, they enhance your school’s student outreach strategy by offering immediate, round-the-clock support as a supplement to mass communications.

Theme 4: Collaboration as a strategy, not just a nice-to-have

Another theme across the week was the growing emphasis on collaboration. Institutions are:

• Bringing more voices into planning earlier
  
• Connecting enrollment, advancement, IT, and academic leadership in shared decision making
  
• Focusing on long-term alignment rather than quick fixes
  

Collaboration is not just part of strategy anymore. It is becoming the strategy.

Looking ahead

We left EDUCAUSE 2025 feeling energized and inspired by the conversations we shared. And we’re already looking ahead. For EDUCAUSE 2026 in Denver, we’re excited to share that we’ve doubled our booth footprint. The larger space will give us more room to:

• Build more interactive and hands-on demo experiences
  
• Create comfortable spaces to actually sit down and talk
  
• Host more opportunities to connect, recharge, and have fun together

We’re still finalizing the details, but think: maybe a latte bar, maybe a mini podcast recording studio, maybe puppies (we’re not ruling it out). Whatever it ends up being, we’re planning a booth that feels warm, welcoming, and worth stopping by.

We can’t wait to see you there!

To everyone who stopped by this year, joined a session, introduced a colleague, or shared a perspective, thank you. We are excited to keep the conversations going.

 If you’d like to see how our solutions can support your campus, we’d love to connect.
Book a conversation with our team

Kristine Dill
Director of Events & Partnerships @ Gravyty