Partnered with academic leadership at Illinois Tech to translate research on higher education, enrollment, AI, and industry trends into strategies for institutional growth and transformation.
Designed the adoption strategy for a 100+ student graduate guarantee program, developed a 2026–2030 roadmap for the Computer Science department, and supported the restructuring of the Institute of Design into two new colleges—helping leadership navigate complex organizational decisions with evidence, foresight, and design.
Design Strategist & Researcher
Academic Strategy Leadership
Academic Strategy Supervisor
Academic Strategy Intern (me)
Design Research
Design Strategy
Behavioral Design
Project Overview
As Illinois Institute of Technology navigated an increasingly uncertain landscape, it faced a challenge to strengthen its promise of relevant, affordable, and accessible education. New strategic timelines created an opportunity to look beyond conventional academic planning—to examine emerging trends, interdisciplinary research, and shifting student and industry needs—helping academic leadership turn these signals into actionable frameworks, strategic roadmaps, and implementation recommendations.
Project Challenge
The institution was facing four converging pressures at once: declining enrollment in Computer Science, leadership uncertainty on how to respond to the accelerating disruption AI was bringing to the field, a student experience that felt transactional rather than connected to the institution as a cultural and intellectual hub, and an upcoming restructuring of the university itself.
The work gave leadership two things they didn't have before: a tested adoption strategy for a flagship graduate program, and a research framework robust enough to inform how the institution reorganized itself—including two new colleges: Designing Futures and Design & Society.
Increased program enrollment
The Elevate Program was adopted and implemented for over 100 students in its first semester, driving a 28% increase in enrollment.
Newly structured colleges
The CS Department strategy—still in progress—directly informed leadership's decision to restructure IIT's design and AI programs
The team split its focus across two parallel tracks, guided by a shared principle: ground every recommendation in research before proposing a direction.
This created a productive tension between grounded and speculative design, allowing us to explore what could be while remaining anchored in what the research revealed.
12 weeks
Key Design Principle
The approach meant building archetypes grounded in real student patterns, then stress-testing two different paths to adoption so leadership could weigh a safe bet against a bolder one with a full view of the tradeoffs.
Key Design Principle
The approach meant building a research framework capable of holding a much harder question: how should a department reposition itself when the discipline it teaches is being reshaped by the technology it studies.
Conclusion
Both tracks of this work point to the same underlying belief: that institutions navigating disruption — whether from enrollment pressure or from AI itself — need more than urgency to move forward. They need evidence, a framework for holding complexity, and a design process that treats people's sense of belonging and purpose as strategic variables, not soft ones. That combination is what turned two research efforts into decisions with real institutional weight — and it's the same lens I bring to organizations navigating similar inflection points today.
