AI Readiness Diagnostic

Prepared for: Office of the President · Carver State University · regional HBCU, ~7,500 students, ~$210M operating budget · planning a $20M enterprise AI rollout for FY27 · illustrative scenario

1 · The brief, as we received it

Carver State's President asked Cross Suite Advisory a direct question: "Before we commit $20M to an enterprise AI rollout, are we actually ready — and if not, where do we start?"

This Diagnostic answers both. It scores the institution across six readiness dimensions, names the one constraint that must be cleared first, and lays out a 30-60-90-day roadmap sequenced so that scarce dollars and federal matches are not left on the table. It is written to be read by the Board in five minutes and defended by the CIO in an RFP.

Evidence base: 11 stakeholder interviews (President, Provost, CFO, CIO, General Counsel, CHRO, two deans, two faculty, one student-success director) · IT asset and data inventory · two existing vendor contracts · the draft AI task-force charter · three peer institutions (anonymized).

2 · Executive scorecard

16/30 Developing Peer context: regional-HBCU median ~14/30 · R1 median ~19/30 (anonymized cohort)

1 · Strategy & Executive Alignment

3 / 5

2 · Governance, Risk & Oversight

2 / 5 — binding constraint

3 · Data Readiness & Infrastructure

3 / 5

4 · Workforce & AI Literacy

2 / 5

5 · Use-Case Portfolio & Value

3 / 5

6 · Ethics, Equity & Compliance

3 / 5

Bands: 6–13 Nascent · 14–19 Developing · 20–25 Established · 26–30 Leading.

3 · Dimension findings — with evidence

Dimension	Finding (cited)	Score
Strategy & Executive Alignment	A clear ambition exists at the top, but it is not yet a written strategy. The President and Provost describe AI as "central to FY27"; the CFO has budgeted $20M; yet no document ties spend to measurable outcomes. Source: President & CFO interviews; FY27 budget draft.	3 / 5
Governance, Risk & Oversight	No standing body owns AI decisions. The task-force charter is unsigned; decision rights are undefined; there is no AI-use registry. Two vendor tools are already live with student data and no documented privacy review. Source: draft charter; vendor contracts; Counsel interview.	2 / 5
Data Readiness & Infrastructure	Core SIS and data warehouse are sound; identity and access are managed. But data is siloed across advising, aid, and the registrar, and there is no data-quality owner for AI inputs. Source: IT asset inventory; CIO interview.	3 / 5
Workforce & AI Literacy	Pockets of enthusiasm; no baseline literacy program. Faculty are split on classroom AI; staff have had no training; there is no plan to build the skills the $20M rollout will require to land. Source: faculty & CHRO interviews.	2 / 5
Use-Case Portfolio & Value	Several promising uses identified (advising triage, retention prediction, financial-aid modeling), but none has a value case or an owner. Risk of funding the flashiest pilot over the highest-value one. Source: dean & student-success interviews.	3 / 5
Ethics, Equity & Compliance	Strong mission instinct toward equity; no operational mechanism. No bias-audit routine, no FERPA-specific AI review, no disparate-impact testing for student-facing tools. Source: Equity & Counsel interviews.	3 / 5

4 · The binding constraint

Governance (2/5) is the one thing that must be cleared first. Carver State can buy infrastructure and tools in Q1, but without a governance instrument — decision rights, a use registry, and a privacy review gate — every dollar spent compounds risk instead of value, and the institution cannot demonstrate the oversight that federal AI funding now expects. The roadmap below defers infrastructure spend in Q1 and prioritizes a governance build — a sequencing change that also unlocks a $4M Title III federal match in Q3 that the original plan would have missed.

5 · Prioritized 30-60-90-day roadmap

Each milestone is tagged to its NIST AI RMF function: Govern Map Measure Manage

Window	Milestone	NIST function
Days 0–30	Convene the AI Council and name decision rights; issue an interim AI-use policy; freeze new AI procurement pending review; inventory the two live tools.	GovernMap
Days 31–60	Board adopts the governance charter; stand up the AI-use registry and the privacy-review gate; complete a data-quality baseline. Defer Q1 infrastructure spend.	GovernMeasure
Days 61–90	Launch a workforce AI-literacy cohort; rank the use-case portfolio by value and risk; assemble the Title III application around the governance + credentialing build to capture the Q3 $4M match; re-sequence the $20M rollout behind the governance gate.	ManageMap

6 · Top 5 deployment risks & mitigation owners

#	Risk	Mitigation	Owner
1	Ungoverned "shadow AI" spreads before policy exists	Interim policy in 30 days; registry + review gate by day 60	Provost / AI Council
2	$20M rollout fails to land for lack of skills	Workforce literacy cohort begins by day 90, ahead of deployment	CHRO / CIO
3	FERPA exposure through student data in vendor AI	Privacy-review gate; counsel review of the two live contracts	General Counsel
4	Vendor lock-in and sunk cost on low-value pilots	Value-ranked portfolio; procurement held behind governance	Procurement / CFO
5	Disparate impact in advising / aid models	Bias-audit routine on all student-facing tools before launch	Office of Institutional Equity

7 · Peer benchmarking

Carver State against three anonymized institutions in its planning cohort.

Institution (anonymized)	Profile	Composite	Band
Carver State (you)	Regional HBCU, ~7,500 students	16 / 30	Developing
Institution A	Regional public, ~9,000 students	13 / 30	Nascent
Institution B	Regional HBCU, ~6,000 students	15 / 30	Developing
Institution C	R1 research university, ~24,000 students	21 / 30	Established

Carver State leads its closest peers on strategy and use-case ambition, and trails the R1 cohort almost entirely on the governance and workforce dimensions — the two this roadmap targets first. Closing them moves the composite toward "Established" within two cycles.

8 · Procurement-ready language

Paste-ready for the CIO's RFP, so vendors are held to the institution's governance standard from the first page.

"The University operates under a board-adopted AI governance framework. Respondents must (a) document all data the proposed system ingests, processes, and retains, including any student or employee personally identifiable information; (b) attest to FERPA alignment and provide a data-processing agreement reviewable by University counsel; (c) support bias and disparate-impact auditing of any model that informs a decision affecting a student or employee; and (d) map proposed controls to the NIST AI Risk Management Framework (Govern, Map, Measure, Manage). Proposals that cannot meet these conditions will not advance."

9 · Section 132 eligibility note

Where the readiness build includes workforce AI credentialing, employer-provided training may qualify as a working-condition fringe benefit under IRC §132 (or as educational assistance under §127), potentially excludable from employee income when it maintains or improves skills required for the job. This can lower the net cost of the literacy cohort. Confirm treatment with tax counsel; eligibility depends on program design and documentation.

10 · What this Diagnostic is — and is not

This Diagnostic is a decision instrument — a scored, evidence-based readiness picture and a sequenced roadmap the institution can fund and defend. It is not a technology selection, a guarantee of grant award, or a substitute for counsel, procurement, and governance processes already in place. Cross Suite Advisory provides senior-grade strategy counsel; the institution decides.

Reviewed and signed by Vernetta Kinchen

Chief Executive Officer & Principal · Cross Suite Advisory — N M E D LLC

The AI agent assembled the scoring, the evidence synthesis, and the roadmap; my judgment set the band thresholds, named governance as the binding constraint, and made the call to defer Q1 infrastructure to capture the Title III match. This Diagnostic does not leave the firm until I sign it.

How this deliverable is produced. Cross Suite Advisory's agents are built on Anthropic's Claude AI, designed around the Principal's three decades of practice across executive advisory, governance, and senior leadership development — including direct experience with university-sector institutional architecture. The firm's intellectual capital — frameworks, judgment, hard-won knowledge — sits inside the agents; Claude provides the reasoning engine. Every final report routes to the Principal for review and signature before it reaches a client.