UNIVERSITY OF LYNCHBURG
The Druid partnership In March, the university began a partnership with Druid, an AI chatbot platform provider, after Sandra saw a conference presentation by Georgia Southern University in which the presenters raved about the impact the technology had had on their work.“ On our way back from the conference I just could not stop talking about it,” she remembers.
Since then, Lynchburg and Druid have teamed up to create a tailormade chatbot which they have named Dell, after the university’ s mascot. Dell is able to answer questions about admissions, courses, athletics, technology support – basically anything Lynchburg-related.
What’ s more, the implementation of the system required very little effort from the team at the university, with Druid taking a very active role in the corporate relationship. Every week, Charley and Sandra meet with Druid to discuss and analyse how the system is performing and where it could improve.“ They’ re updating us on what they’ re doing to help us,” says Charley.
This kind of customer service has been a huge bonus for the duo.“ I don’ t think I’ ve ever worked with a company that was as responsive,” Sandra says. Faculty and staff testing the system were impressed immediately, with the accuracy and ease of use surprising everyone.“ Charley and I look like rock stars,” Sandra grins.
Phase Two of Druid’ s implementation, which is imminent, will integrate AI with the university’ s academic systems. The idea is that students will sign in
with credentials to access personalised information, where Dell will help them schedule classes and plan academic pathways.“ This is a work in progress, but Druid’ s going to be instrumental,” says Charley.
The effect on research and administration For the more mature academics at the University of Lynchburg, AI is transforming research without fundamentally changing its nature, speeding up processes that previously took hours or days.“ You can put in one prompt and hit one tool button,” Charley explains.
290 December 2025