IU’s Kelley uses Microsoft 365 Copilot to prepare business students for the AI era

IU’s Kelley School of Business faced rising challenges in preparing students for a rapidly changing job market, driving an urgent need for a scalable, secure AI solution to enhance learning, career development, and operational efficiency.

IU’s Kelley School of Business selected Microsoft 365 Copilot, integrating it across coursework, career services, research, and operations to provide AI-powered writing support, career guidance, research assistance, and administrative efficiencies.

With Microsoft 365 Copilot, IU’s Kelley School of Business improved student performance by 10% and reduced time spent on assignments by 40%— preparing students to thrive in the future of work and lead with confidence in their careers.

Indiana Universitys Kelley School of Business

Indiana University's Kelly School of Business, which offers a top 10 undergraduate program and a #1–ranked online MBA, prioritizes career readiness—placing 94% of graduates within 90 days.

With more than 14,000 students to support, Kelley’s Career Services team grappled with time constraints that made deep, personalized coaching difficult to scale. AI-powered career support was identified as an opportunity to keep up with the demand and specificity needed from students preparing for applications and interviews.

“There’s so much pressure for students to land internships or full-time roles early on,” says Rebecca Cook, Executive Director of Career Services. “They’re competing in high-stakes environments, often without a clear sense of direction. The volume of applications and expectations can feel overwhelming.”

Rather than approach AI as a standalone tech upgrade, Kelley introduced a pilot of Microsoft 365 Copilot across coursework, career services, operations, and research, creating a "virtual department of advanced business technologies" with 66 faculty members to ensure that Copilot was implemented organically throughout various disciplines.

“We in higher education are going to be left behind if we don't adopt this technology and actually integrate it in everything that we do,” says Pat Hopkins, Dean of the Kelley School of Business.

Embedding AI across curriculum

The Kelley School of Business adopted a two-pronged approach to AI integration—driven by both bottom-up faculty innovation and top-down strategic goals. At Kelley, a small student pilot of Microsoft 365 Copilot—alongside existing faculty access and broader availability of Copilot Chat for students—offered a glimpse into how AI can enhance key areas of business education, from communication to analytics. Even in this early stage, students began to explore how AI could support their career interests and better align their skills with evolving market demands.

In a randomized controlled trial, students using Copilot showed a 10% improvement in performance and spent about 40% less time on assignments. The time saved allowed learners to shift their focus from routine tasks to higher-order thinking—reflecting more deeply on assignments, engaging in collaboration, and developing critical reasoning skills. For self-directed learners in particular, the ability to ask questions and receive support anytime—not just when faculty are available—marked a significant transformation in the learning experience.

Improving writing and focus with AI support

Students involved in the Copilot trial reported a boost in confidence—especially when it came to writing and job preparation. The tool has had a particularly profound impact on international students, who noted improvements in clarity, accuracy, voice, and fluency in their writing.

“Copilot helped me explore my ideas from different angles and gave me the structure I needed to get started,” says Kelley student Daphne Burgis.

Burgis utilized Copilot to help generate strong research questions, providing useful prompts that she could build on, saving time and making her papers more focused.

“Once I learned how to prompt it effectively, I realized how much Copilot could accelerate my process. It helped me stay organized, manage my time better, and still produce high-quality work.”

For student Josh Burke, Copilot not only improved his resume but reshaped his career path entirely: “I asked it questions like, ‘Would I be a good consultant?’ and it helped me break that down into the kind of work I enjoy, the skills I have, and what aligns with my values. That kind of self-awareness would have taken me a lot longer to get to on my own. I realized that finance wasn’t for me, and consulting was a better fit.”

By reframing AI as a collaborator, students learned to better manage cognitive load, sharpen their focus, and approach their goals with new clarity. “Before, I was second-guessing everything in my resume and cover letters,” Burke explains. “With Copilot, I feel like I have a professional coach helping me refine what I want to say. It helps me focus my thoughts and write faster without compromising quality.”

Cook has noted a measurable improvement in the quality of resumes and cover letters students bring to their appointments. “Now, with Copilot, we’re no longer starting at square one—we’re starting at square four. That allows us to have deeper conversations about their goals, strategies, and growth.”

Empowering faculty to innovate, inquire, and mentor at scale

Faculty using Microsoft 365 Copilot reported that integrating the tool into their teaching and research workflows streamlined routine tasks and unlocked deeper insights. From synthesizing literature and cleaning datasets to drafting manuscripts, professors used Copilot to accelerate research and enhance academic output.

“In the area of research, we used Copilot in large-scale analysis scenarios and saw the time to process data decrease exponentially,” says Dean Hopkins. “We then validated the accuracy of the analysis as well and found that the AI tools performed just as well as human-written code.”

Alan Dennis, Distinguished Professor and John T. Chambers Chair of Internet Systems, also appreciates Copilot in terms of research assistance, viewing it as a “force multiplier”: “It helps with data integration, coding, even writing and revision. I use it all the time. When I hit a confusing result, I ask Copilot: ‘Why might people behave this way?’ It’s like brainstorming with a colleague—it pushes my thinking.”

Kelley is exploring how AI agents, particularly Copilot agents, can make a meaningful difference in higher education and business. Dennis envisions a future where interacting with technology is as seamless as using Wi-Fi: intuitive, ever-present, and voice-driven. Instead of jumping between tools, users will simply describe what they want, and AI agents will coordinate the necessary steps in the background. He sees these agents becoming a core part of how teaching, research, and business processes are conducted—starting with their integration into master’s and undergraduate information systems programs.

“I think agents have a lot of potential in higher education and in business in general because they can automate so many routine, mundane tasks,” he says. “I spend so much of my time performing tasks that don't ultimately add a lot of value. If I had an agent to tackle many of those tasks, that would save me a lot of time that I could spend focusing on higher-value tasks.”

For career coaches, Copilot can now handle routine tasks, giving back time to engage students in meaningful, strategic conversations about their goals and career paths. This has allowed career coaches to broaden their support across technical and niche fields, bridge communication gaps—especially for international students—and help learners reframe their experiences to better compete in a rapidly evolving job market.

“Copilot has saved our coaching team an enormous amount of time,” says Cook. “We’re no longer spending whole appointments rewriting resumes—we can focus on what really matters: coaching students through reflection, goal setting, and next steps.”

Working together to build a secure, scalable AI future

Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot offer enterprise-grade security that meets Kelley’s rigorous data governance standards, ensuring student, research, and institutional information remain protected. Its deep integration with tools already in daily use at IU and in the workplace—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams—meant faculty, staff, and students could begin leveraging AI immediately, without the friction of learning a new platform.

“We’re preparing students not just to be job-ready, but career-ready,” Cook explains. “Copilot gives them a digital skillset that will serve them far beyond graduation. Whether they’re pivoting industries, updating their personal brand, or aiming for promotion, they’ll know how to use AI as a strategic partner.”

Building on that foundation, Dennis also recognizes the importance of preparing students for a workforce where AI is not just a tool, but a collaborator—one that many will be expected to lead and manage from day one.

“If you think of the jobs that people get, most people start as an independent contributor and then they move up to managing people,” he says. “So, one of the things we're trying to teach our students is that your first job will be as a manager of AI.”

“We’re preparing students not just to be job-ready, but career-ready. Copilot gives them a digital skillset that will serve them far beyond graduation. Whether they’re pivoting industries, updating their personal brand, or aiming for promotion, they’ll know how to use AI as a strategic partner.”

Rebecca Cook, Executive Director of Career Services, Kelley School of Business

From knowledge transfer to knowledge orchestration

Looking ahead, Kelley is rethinking how AI could impact not only instructional tasks, but even the nature of assessment. For instance, after Kelley students completed a traditionally structured exam—one expected to take 75 minutes—in only 10 minutes with AI assistance, Dennis questioned whether education should still focus on memorizing knowledge or shift toward applying it.

“My experience with Copilot made me step back and wonder: what does it mean to learn in the AI age?” he says. “In the past, education was all about transferring knowledge and skills to the students. My bet is in the future of education, we're going to talk about two very different types of knowledge. There's going to be cultural knowledge that everybody in a certain field has to have in their heads, and there's going to be other knowledge that I know exists, and I know where to find it.”

This shift challenges traditional assessment and teaching methods, prompting a fundamental rethinking of the role of humans in learning, prioritizing strategy and thoughtful AI use over mere memorization.

“Our journey with generative AI is that we need to do more of it, and we need to do it faster,” says Dean Hopkins about the future of AI at Kelley. “At the Kelley School of Business, we've been innovators throughout our history. And we need to lean into this challenge and continue to be innovators by incorporating technologies like Microsoft 365 Copilot. My advice to other school leaders is, first of all, if you're not leveraging AI already, what is taking you so long?”

Dennis agrees, advising other universities to embrace AI to better prepare students and faculty for what lies ahead: “Education used to be about transferring knowledge. Now it’s about teaching students to orchestrate knowledge. And recruiters are telling us: if your students can’t work with AI, they won’t get hired.”

Kelley is looking to build a secure and scalable AI ecosystem to help enhance instruction and career development. More than that, Kelley is preparing its graduates to lead—not just with technical fluency, but with human insight.

“If you’re not using Copilot, you’re falling behind,” says Burke. “AI is the future—and if you can master it in college, you’re ahead of the game. The companies I want to work for are already using AI, and I feel like I’m building a skill set that puts me ahead.”

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“At the Kelley School of Business, we've been innovators throughout our history. And we need to lean into this challenge and continue to be innovators by incorporating technologies like Microsoft 365 Copilot. My advice to other school leaders is, first of all, if you're not leveraging AI already, what is taking you so long?”

Pat Hopkins, Dean, Kelley School of Business