This guide serves as a framework for staff and supervisors to work together as they integrate AI into daily operations. At Austin Community College, our approach to AI is guided by the pillars of clarity, trust, accountability, and growth. These principles ensure that technology serves our North Star of student success while maintaining the highest standards of data security and institutional integrity.
A Shared Purpose for AI
Both staff and supervisors should view AI as a tool for augmentation rather than replacement. AI is designed to improve workflows and help employees perform their functions more effectively. When discussing AI within a team, we emphasize that these tools are drafting partners. Human oversight is a required component of every output to ensure accuracy, inclusivity, and the absence of bias. Because AI can occasionally generate incorrect information, the human author remains responsible for the integrity of the work produced.
Open dialogue between staff and supervisors is the best way to ensure AI is used as a catalyst for responsible innovation, including guidance on data sensitivity as well as clarity when prohibition related to usage exists. With that said, teams should work together to identify exactly what information is safe to use. Publicly available data, brainstorming for public communications, and formatting documents are generally safe activities. However, caution is required for internal planning or any analysis that influences institutional decision-making. And, both parties must understand that certain data must never be entered into any AI tool. This includes student records, student correspondence, personally identifiable information, financial or HR records, and confidential institutional plans. Protecting this data is a core professional responsibility.
The TRUST Framework for Staff and Supervisors
The TRUST framework is our professional standard for modeling responsible AI use in administrative and departmental work.
| Letter | What it means for you | Staff Example |
| T – Tell | Be transparent about when and how you used AI to create work products. | Including a note on a departmental report: “AI-assisted drafting was used for this summary and reviewed by the author.” |
| R – Review | Fact-check everything. AI can hallucinate fake data, incorrect dates, or biased information. | Verifying that any data points or policy references generated by AI match official ACC documentation or Domo reports before sharing with the team. |
| U – Use Judgment | Retain your professional authority. AI can suggest wording, but you decide what is operationally sound. | Using AI to draft a project timeline, but manually adjusting the milestones based on your specific knowledge of the team’s capacity. |
| S – Safeguard | Protect institutional integrity. Use AI to enhance efficiency, not to shortcut essential human engagement or oversight. | Using AI to organize notes from a public meeting, while ensuring that final decision-making and personnel feedback remain entirely human-led. |
| T – Treat IP with Respect | Respect privacy and ownership. Be mindful of data security and copyright when interacting with AI tools. | Avoiding the input of any student correspondence, PII, or confidential institutional plans into an AI prompt. |
Steps for Professional Development
AI literacy is an evolving skill that requires a joint commitment to continuous learning and a growth mindset. Supervisors and staff should share their workflows and demonstrate how they critically review AI output, modeling responsible use. By talking through the reasoning for when to use or avoid a tool, the extended leadership team builds a collective understanding of responsible behavior.
Staff should feel empowered to experiment with approved platforms like Google Gemini using public or sample data. Encouraging ethical experimentation, supervisors support this growth by celebrating learning moments and treating good-faith mistakes as opportunities to refine skills.
And, finally, staff and supervisors should seek out professional development sessions, peer learning groups, and internal knowledge sharing. When uncertainty arises, staff and supervisors should leverage institutional resources and, for example, consult with department leadership or the IT Information Security team to ensure usage remains in alignment with the latest college policy.
For details of expectations and requirements by ACC Information Technology for use of AI at the college, please visit the responsible use guidance page on this resource hub..
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