University of Lynchburg staff members Sandra Perez ’16 and Charley Butcher will talk about how the University is embracing artificial intelligence, or AI, during an upcoming webinar, “Powering Pedagogy: Lynchburg and the Gemini Blueprint.”
The webinar, to be held from noon-1 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 7, is part of the EDUCAUSE Industry Insights series, which focuses on “best practices in the use of technology in higher education.” It will be moderated by Carly Walker with the digital workspace CDW. To attend the free, virtual session, register here.
According to Perez, Lynchburg’s director of academic initiatives, the conversation will address “how Lynchburg is embedding AI into everyday life” and “how we are leveraging Google Gemini to provide safe, secure, and ethical use of AI to our entire University community.”
Since ChatGPT was released by OpenAI in late 2022, Butcher and Perez have been looking for positive ways to incorporate AI on campus. As Butcher put it, they quickly discovered it could do “so much more than just writing papers” and that embracing this new technology wasn’t going to be optional.
“AI isn’t going anywhere, and if we truly care about preparing our students for their careers, we will embrace it and teach the how, the when, and the why to use AI,” Butcher, Lynchburg’s chief academic technology officer, said.
“Already, the number-one question in job interviews is ‘What kinds of AI skills do you have?’ So, we have to teach our community those skills, because AI is not taking people’s jobs, but people with AI skills are.”
In the spring of 2024, Perez and Butcher attended a Google Summit at the University of Richmond. Inspired by the experience, they invited Google to host an event at Lynchburg. In March, Lynchburg hosted a two-day Google for Education Summit, which was attended by Lynchburg faculty, staff, and students and teachers from throughout Central Virginia.
“[Having] Google on campus quickly generated the AI buzz among faculty, staff, and students — specifically around Notebook LM, Google’s newest AI product — and the excitement led supervisors and professors to look to us to lead the way, given our proximity and knowledge of Google Workspace, Gemini, and Notebook LM,” Perez said.
The upcoming webinar won’t be the first time Perez and Butcher have shared their passion for AI and the University of Lynchburg with audiences beyond the University campus. In March of 2024 and 2025, they spoke at the Association of Collegiate Computing Services of Virginia conference in Portsmouth, Virginia.
“We presented first on automating our processes using Google products, and then in 2025 we presented on inserting AI into those processes and how we took our efficiency to a whole new level,” Perez said. “We had full rooms at both presentations.”
They also traveled to San Diego for the 2025 Route to Market Higher Education Congress. There, they talked about Lynchburg’s AI-related efforts, including the use of Notebook LM, Google’s new AI research tool.
“We have rebranded the teaching and learning center to the Teaching and Learning Center for AI Excellence,” Perez said. “We have held AI training on Notebook LM all across campus and have been invited into the classroom to speak with students.
“We are exploring ways to give access to different AI tools to those that have an interest in using the plethora of tools.”
She added that the presentations she and Butcher have done recently, along with hosting the Google for Education Summit at Lynchburg, “started a buzz around the two of us. Carly Walker… invited us to do this …fireside chat talk for EDUCAUSE.
“So, really, it just keeps snowballing.”
