The team behind the Rising Sophomore Success Program pilot, including Jensen (far left) and Schilling (second from left).A startup led by a Driehaus alumna, in partnership with DePaul University, has earned a competitive Illinois Innovation Voucher.
Archer Career, led by CEO and co-founder Pam Schilling (DBA ’19), is a leading provider of microlearning career education. The grant, designed to support groundbreaking work by Illinois companies in partnership with Illinois universities, will allow Schilling and DePaul to continue integrating agentic AI into Archer’s model.
A pilot program at Driehaus this summer has already showcased the promise and potential of agentic AI to boost retention rates and empower student success.
The Rising Sophomore Success Program (RSSP) focused on the wide array of skills that go into succeeding as a student: time management, dealing with stress, exploring career paths, managing money, and more. A select group of rising sophomores and incoming transfer students practiced these skills through Archer’s signature microlearning approach: short, 10-minute modules that mix video and interactive activities and are designed to fit around students’ busy lives.
Agentic AI allowed the team behind RSSP to personalize their approach. Informed by behavioral science and powered by an AI model, the team sent out nudges and encouragement customized to each student: their login patterns, their progress in the course, and more.
Integrating AI in this manner offers a path forward for RSSP, and other programs like it, to scale without losing their personal touch. Such models, and the data that power them, tell a more complete story than ever before: about how students engage with learning in real time, and about how learning fits into the bigger picture of their lives.
Schilling sees widespread applications for integrating AI into learning experiences of all kinds, and across a range of institutions.
“Agentic AI represents a bold leap in how we support early-career learners—not just by giving them resources, but by keeping them engaged and accountable in real time,” she said. “This grant allows us to pilot new functionality that delivers measurable impact at scale, particularly for institutions looking to drive student retention and success.”
On DePaul’s end, the program attests to how data-driven innovation can reinforce some of the university’s core values: among them, the promise to make a high-touch, personalized education more widely accessible.
“DePaul is committed to supporting student success and using data to make timely, strategic interventions,” said Dr. Jaclyn Jensen, Professor of Management and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs at Driehaus. “Our collaboration with Archer Career and the development of Agentic AI holds enormous promise for helping students feel more confident and connected—and ultimately more likely to thrive and persist.”