At the start of the week, a participant in the Mark Cuban Foundation’s Agentic AI Academy pilot at Ivy Tech Community College in Bloomington, Indiana, built a website for a newsletter. After talking with classmates, they realized the site could be more useful and turned it into a hub for the whole program, using AI tools and features to manage the newsletter.
From October 19 to 23, 31 participants learned how to use and assess AI agents in their own work. Ivy Tech hosted this free five-day accelerator, which was the program’s second pilot after Dallas College. Each day ran from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., covering a new topic in the morning and another in the afternoon, for a total of 10 topics. Wren Hoffman led the pilot, and Chief Learning Officer Charlotte Dungan was also there.
The group included a variety of learners. Community college professors and retirees joined those planning to start a business, as well as business owners hoping to improve what they already have. Some wanted to learn new skills for their next job, while others were curious about how AI could help in everyday life.
Participants used each session to work toward their own goals. For example, one person who runs a graphic design business used an exercise designed to find job opportunities to create a market analysis and a list of target markets.
Students collaborate during Mark Cuban Agentic AI, a weeklong pilot program hosted by Ivy Tech Bloomington. (Credit: Mark Cuban Foundation
Bloomington covered the same 10 topics as Dallas College. Each topic gave learners something to take away, like a career plan or a live website built with an AI coding agent. Since the program is still a pilot, some sessions were a bit different as the team tested new content and activities. The group was especially excited about the continuous learning session, where they created their own apps.
The variety of goals among learners led Hoffman to focus on a key question about the curriculum.
“How do I adjust the curriculum and material so everyone gets what they need?” Hoffman said.
Leaders from Ivy Tech joined the group twice. On Wednesday before lunch, Eric Coyne, chancellor of Ivy Tech Community College Bloomington, talked about how he uses AI and how the college is discussing it. On Friday, Vice Chancellor Adam Gross and Heidi Schulz, executive director of development for the Ivy Tech Foundation, shared how AI has influenced their own work.
Students work through a module during Mark Cuban Agentic AI, a weeklong pilot program hosted by Ivy Tech Bloomington in partnership with the Mark Cuban Foundation (Credit: Mark Cuban Foundation)
Participants also learned from each other between sessions. During lunch and side conversations, they shared ideas and picked up new approaches for their own projects. These discussions led to the newsletter site becoming a program hub.
The group shared laughs and spent the week asking the Foundation team about their dinner choices. By the end, participants joked that their brains felt like “mush” but still wanted more learning opportunities. They said they wanted to keep in touch and invited the team to return.
Ivy Tech Bloomington is one of the Academy’s pilot sites at community colleges in six states for the 2026-27 school year. The next pilot will be at Clark State College in Springfield, Ohio, and the Foundation plans to start a larger national rollout in late 2027.
To learn more about the Agentic AI Academy, visit markcubanai.org/agenticai.