Artificial Intelligence

Case Western Reserve University Deploys Google Gemini

The university prioritizes multiple forms of communication to educate students, faculty and staff about the platform’s benefits.

Suchi Rudra

Suchi Rudra is a writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, BBC, and Vice, among other publications.

Before Case Western Reserve University introduced Google Gemini to its faculty, staff and students in April 2025, the campus need for a secure artificial intelligence solution had been growing.

Tron Compton-Engle, assistant vice president of client experience at Case Western Reserve University, said that he and his team had been looking for an AI solution “where we didn’t have to worry about whether the data was being used for training. And Gemini was a way to get a safe AI tool that the entire campus could use for their work.”

Two months before making Gemini officially available to its campus, the university released the Gemini app to a group of beta testers and received positive feedback. Once Gemini became a core service covered under the university's contract with Google, the team released the no-cost Gemini for Education to the entire campus community. The team additionally purchased Google AI Pro for Education licenses for staff and faculty, which offers expanded AI use as well as access to premium models and features.

DISCOVER: Google can help modernize campus environments.

Campuswide Communication and Training Is Vital to AI Adoption

Once Gemini launched, the university quickly began the implementation of a many-pronged approach to train users and get the word out about its features. In December 2025, in conjunction with Google, the university held a half-day AI conference for the entire campus, where the discussion and various panels centered around Google's AI tools, including NotebookLM and Gemini. Compton-Engle says that 500 people attended, mostly faculty and staff, but some students too.

The opportunities for training are plentiful. Faculty, staff and students can take advantage of an online, self-paced Canvas course to learn how to use and make the most of AI tools. But the university also holds targeted training sessions for users who have been granted access to the Google AI Pro license, including university leadership (president, provost, department deans).

If a department or office is interested in using AI for a particular purpose, or simply requests a general training on how to use AI, “we meet with them, talk about their need, and then we tailor the training to that particular department. Sometimes, they just want to get an AI knowledge baseline for the department, and sometimes they have a repetitive thing they want to do more efficiently with AI, like writing a report,” Compton-Engle says. Recently, he’s been talking with the business school, Weatherhead School of Management, which is interested in putting together a series of AI training sessions for the school’s staff.

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Currently, Case Western Reserve holds online “AI office hours” with Google on a monthly basis. “We have people from Google and from our university technology team on Google Meet, and anyone can join to ask their questions, get help and learn about new features on the Google AI platform,” explains Compton-Engle.

Tailor Communications to Each Audience

For other universities that haven’t yet started down the Gemini path, Compton-Engle believes that “the rewards definitely outweigh the risks. What people are getting out of it is definitely helping them do their work more efficiently.”

His main piece of advice is that taking a broad approach to disperse information helps with adoption. “Don’t just hand it out, but really work on getting the word out. Really work on training,” Compton-Engle says. “We’re trying to meet people where they are. Some people like big events. Some people like joining in on a Google Meet. Target your different audiences: faculty, staff and students.”

UP NEXT: Google Gemini can improve learning.

He adds that it’s important to push across the message to skeptical users that AI is now a lot more powerful and helpful than it used to be. “I think there are a lot of people who used AI a year and a half ago, and it was terrible, so they sort of dismissed it,” he says. “But they need to know that it’s way better than it was even a few months ago. It’s just understanding that they should give it another try. Even if you tried it, and it didn’t help before, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t great now.”

Google Gemini Delivers Time-Saving Benefits for Faculty

For Compton-Engle, long term success is getting Gemini AI embedded in people’s work, which will allow them to work more effectively “and have time to do bigger things.” He looks forward to seeing more user stories and concrete data on Gemini in action.

“We’re seeing people use Gemini to do things like help them write reports,” he says. “But we had one engineering faculty member who wrote a textbook and used Gemini to help convert that textbook, which had lots of figures, into slide decks for his classes so he didn’t have to do that manually. It did a pretty amazing job with it, and I’m sure that saved him an incredible amount of time.”

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