Over the past two weeks, Cal Poly’s Digital Transformation Hub (DxHub) in San Luis Obispo and Amazon Web Services hosted two back-to-back workshops, the first for California State University students and the second for California Community College students. The program demonstrates the value of industry partnerships in providing learning that supports student education, and it does so in a way that benefits local non-profits, including the administrators of these very schools. In an era where the value of higher education is being questioned because of AI, the program shows the progress these schools are making in reinventing higher education in support of student success in a rapidly evolving job market.
What follows is my perspective as one of the 200 participants, selected from a pool of around 2,000 applicants. In addition to my role as a California Community College continuing education student at Foothill College, I bring the perspective of an administrator in higher education and someone actively involved in AI innovation at the systemwide university level.
Pairing students with administrators to solve real operational challenges
AI Summer Camp 2026, now in its second year, gives a select group of students an experiential AI learning program that pairs them with specific operational challenges faced by their own schools. Student teams, guided by AWS and Cal Poly DxHub staff alongside student and faculty mentors, develop AI solutions using industry tools provided free of charge throughout the week.
Vision 2030: bold steps toward access and student success
Using the model Cal Poly developed in partnership with AWS, California state schools can give students access to AI skills and tools, along with effective ways to learn and apply them for an evolving job market. It addresses the changing needs of students, the workforce, and California communities through an emphasis on access to technology, innovation, and student success, as set out in the California Community Colleges’ updated Vision 2030.
In his keynote, Kevin Kelly, Interim Executive Director of the California Community Colleges Digital Center for Innovation, Technology & Equity, said: “We are focused on digital, AI, VR, and other emerging technologies that keep coming up. Preparing our students for an AI-powered workforce.”
By working with industry, the college system reinvents itself in ways that stay relevant to the marketplace. Students come to understand what firms like AWS consider job readiness while getting comfortable with the tools and techniques. At the same time, university administrators see how both AI tools and newly trained students, many from their own schools, might serve as an important resource.
The voices of camp graduates: invigorated and proud
Students responded to the experience with energy, drawn by the chance to focus on learning AI while solving a real problem and ending the week with a deliverable they could add to a resume. These comments come from among hundreds of posts published in the week after the camp.
- Shai Yaish, CSU Northridge: “This was a true glimpse into real-world engineering through Learning by Doing!”
- Ivan Htet, De Anza College: “Over 6 days, I collaborated with my amazing teammates to solve a real-world problem.”
- Svetlana Swidin, Grossmont College: “My team spent the week building an AI chatbot concept for Lemoore College, something to actually help students get real answers about admissions, financial aid, and registration.”
- Adam Tadros, Foothill College: “Turning that much ambiguity into something real in five days taught me more than I expected.”
- Leslie Segovia, Coastline College: “What I will remember most was not the final prototype, it was the process. Innovation is not about having all the answers.”
Case study: transcript evaluation for transfer students
The problem. Though most students come from other California state schools, roughly 10 to 15 percent of Golden West College applicants come from private or out-of-state schools. For those students there is no systematic way to verify that a transcript matches program requirements. A group of four evaluators invests several hours per non-standard application, searching course descriptions from each school across every class required for admission, then verifying that grades, credits, and dates map to Golden West’s requirements. In the nursing program alone, the team had two weeks to process 2,000 applications, of which 200 to 300 had to be done by hand.
The approach. Group 10, calling themselves Transcript AI Assistant, brought together three developers, a cyber security specialist, and a business operations and strategy expert, working with a Cal Poly computer science mentor. They met with Richette Bell, Director of Enrollment Services, to size the problem, assess data availability, and define what a successful outcome would look like. They built and coded a solution on AWS services and presented to a panel of judges in person, live-streamed to client teams across the state, including a live demo that uploaded sample transcripts and evaluated them against the criteria.
The result. The team placed in the top three of all presentations that day and left DxHub having handed their client both the presentation and the original code. They had solved a real problem, and they updated their resumes and profiles accordingly.
Background on the workshop
The AI Summer Camp originated at Cal Poly, where AWS began sponsoring the first university-based innovation program of its kind in 2017, supporting about 15 student interns year round with AWS solutions experts and tools. Those students support local non-profits across the region, from schools to the California Department of Agriculture and the Department of Motor Vehicles. In 2025, Cal Poly and AWS opened the opportunity to more students through a workshop open to CSU and CCC applicants.
The ambition is to grow DxHub into a year-round program reaching all 116 community colleges, serving 2.2 million students, and all 23 CSU campuses, serving 471,000. Expanding a 15-student program to 200 people across two summers has already had an outsized effect.
- Two weeks, two courses. Week one for CSU students, week two for CCC students, running July 12 to 17 and July 19 to 24, 2026.
- Selection. Around 100 were selected from roughly 1,000 applications per workshop, based on stated learning goals and background. Each workshop addressed about 20 real operational challenges.
- Prerequisites. Students verified completion of an eight-hour AWS AI tools training workshop before the course began.
- Support. Roughly 20 team members, including four lecturers and staff, eight mentors, numerous faculty mentors, and four keynote speakers.
- Hours. Nine in the morning until seven or eight at night, every day.
Risk-taking, technical skill, and showing up
In her keynote, Chelsy Pham, CISO and Vice President of Information Technology Resources at Hartnell College, emphasized how she manages her team in ways that encourage risk-taking and growth. When mistakes arise, she pointed out, they show the team is pushing and innovating rather than failing.
Andrew Greaves, Senior Manager of Solutions Architecture for Worldwide Public Sector at Amazon, discussed a changing job market and the importance of graduates being ready to contribute immediately while continuing to learn. He also spoke about Amazon’s values, singling out being customer-obsessed, curious, and collaborative, and argued that these rise above technical skills: without them, all the technical expertise in the world is of little value.
Jory Hadsell, Vice Chancellor of Technology and Innovation at Foothill-DeAnza Colleges, met the students just before their final presentations and reinforced the importance of showing up: “You got a spot and showed up. That’s the first test. Leverage that energy, put it into your pitch.”
Final presentations and awards
The program culminated in a pitch competition. Nearly 100 students in 15 groups presented their technical solution to judges and peers over five hours, each team taking eight minutes to cover problem, solution, mechanism, and next steps, followed by two minutes of questions.
- First place. AI chatbot concept for Lemoore College, helping students get real answers about admissions, financial aid, and registration
- Second place. Student-centered scheduling to prevent required course conflicts
- Third place. AI transcript assistant to process out-of-state and private transcripts accurately and quickly
Additional prizes recognized empathy and collaboration, cognitive offload, moving quickly and removing blockers, creative problem-solving, deep customer focus, ethical AI use, tackling the unexpected side problems, and simply being someone everyone would want on their team.
Impact
As Ryan Matteson, Director of Technology and Training at DxHub, put it in his closing remarks: “Don’t be a stranger.” He and many of the other speakers and mentors made the point that networking and following up after a workshop like this makes a world of difference. Those who stay curious and stay in touch end up with more opportunities to engage, practice, and grow.
The five-day program left about 100 students transformed: satisfied with what they accomplished, grateful to those who led the workshop, and ready to keep learning. Their clients will be building on these projects, and some of these students may well be hired by those clients, by AWS, or through the networking they do in the weeks ahead.