About This Episode

In this episode, Dan Weinert, provost at Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa, shares how he went from skeptic to enthusiastic user of AI. Palmer is the founding college of the chiropractic profession, and Dan has spent three decades there as a clinician, biochemistry teacher, and academic leader who now oversees academics, clinics, and student affairs. He explains how he uses AI tools to create images, short learning videos, and prompts that make complex science easier to understand.

Listeners will hear Dan Weinert's argument that the real risk for colleges is not adopting AI but ignoring it, and why automating transactional back office work frees staff to focus on student experience. He describes turning policies and syllabi into tagged, structured documents to reduce hallucinations, why institutions should budget for learning and enterprise licenses with the right security, and why humility keeps leaders learning. This conversation is for education leaders ready to start with AI safely.

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[0:00] Basement design, trust, and the leadership lesson behind saying yes

[1:08] Humility, asking for help, and admitting what you don't know

[3:08] Dan's role at Palmer College and his winding path into chiropractic education

[5:17] Why education matters and how great teachers shape leaders

[6:45] Teaching biochemistry, making complex ideas simple, and health education

[9:28] Palmer College philosophy, chiropractic, and why the cause matters

[13:11] Muscle mass, quick fixes, and the truth about long-term health

[17:23] Dan's AI workflow: ChatGPT, Gemini, Higgsfield, and video creation

[21:12] Why AI improves student experience and reduces transactional work

[28:51] Palmer College campuses, facilities, housing, and 30 years of growth

[32:30] Using AI to create better content, notes, videos, and learning tools

[36:06] Why the risk is not adopting AI and how institutions can start safely

[41:21] Prompting, article summarization, and reducing hallucinations with structure

[44:38] Palmer College website, campus visits, and where to connect

Episode Transcript

[0:16]  Welcome back to the Heart and Huzzle Podcast. My name's Efrain. This is Mr. Dan. Dan, I love the the office here, man. This is this is is this

[0:23]  Thank you.

[0:24]  like a movie room? Is this where you come to chill when you've had a long day doing what you do?

[0:28]  You know, we redid our basement. We had Megan from next level design come in and stretch my comfort zone. So I had black doorways with gold knobs and some sort of a sea blue color. I would have never picked myself, but I'm very happy that she was able to lend her expertise and guide me to a better home office.

[0:46]  I love it. I actually went black doors in my home as well, but I have more of a gloss. I think I had to so now I want to sand it down. It just seems too glossy. But that those black doors, man, definitely look chic.

[0:57]  when she said it, I I had a very pregnant pause. I'm like, I I I don't know if I could go there. And then I did, and

[1:03]  Yeah.

[1:03]  I'm very happy with it. I was like a little trust.

[1:06]  You know, sometimes as leaders we just gotta trust others, right? That that know more than us. Do you ever find yourself in those places where you you feel, I'm really leaning towards this way, and especially in the academic space, leaning towards this way, but somebody says, No, but Dan, you have to see it this way. Do you recall one of those moments?

[1:24]  on a daily basis. Humility is something like if you lose it, you're done. So you have you had better keep your humble nature, otherwise you stop learning. So every time something comes up, even if I'm in a crowded room, I try to be like, might be embarrassing, but I'm gonna say I don't know what that is. So we're

[1:41]  Yeah.

[1:41]  doing some reconstruction around campus and somebody's saying something about an HVAC system. I don't know what those terms mean, but I gotta interject. I'm like, hey, what do you what are we doing? Help guide me on this. Otherwise, you know. You just kinda apathetically go there and stuff happens and it's out of your control.

[1:58]  To me, that it was leading the organization as we kind of talked to prior hit recording and the endowment piece. I had no idea what that was. And we were talking about it, Dan, and and even you just educated me a little bit more. And I love the way that you kind of put that. But those one of those moments I'm like, what is this money? What is an endowment? What is it really doing? And having to actually, you know, maneuver through something like that. So I love it. I think as leaders, I I I was telling someone, as leaders, we always have to drop our egos. It's not about ego. And and a lot of times you may see a leader with a lot of ego that's just not the best leader. Do you recall a a bad leader that you learned from? And what did you learn from them?

[2:37]  gosh, bad leaders? Yeah. probably you see a lot. You can see them where they're in close proximity from a distance, that sort of stuff. So whether it's in politics or right in your organization, you see the folks and you endure, but they tend not to last really long. They they kind of burn hot and go away. And good folks tend to stay a little bit longer. So I I won't get I won't name names, but I'm like, I was glad to have met them and kind of see them fade into the past.

[3:08]  Yeah, yeah, I know for sure. Man, I'm I I always say there's something to learn from every person. and and you just got to learn what is for you and what's not for you. so I'm glad, Dan, that you're in this space. Dan, what is the school you're representing today and what is your your role with them?

[3:21]  I'm at Palmer College of Chiropractic. This is where the profession started in Davenport, Iowa, over 125 years ago. I am the provost. So I oversee academics, clinics, student affairs, a few other things. So I've been with the college, like I said, for 30 years. So I started a long time ago going to school, just kind of pursuing what I liked: biology degree, master's in exercise science, but it wasn't incredibly employable. So I I kind of was in seven years into school, deep into some stuff. And next thing you know, I was strike, I gotta I gotta find something that works out. So I had a a mixed doubles tennis partner who was a chiropractor. I hung out with her, went to the office, and and then from there I'm like, well, maybe this is kind of synergistic because I was in a program where I had started, I had finished up my masters and I was getting a PhD in Exercise biochemistry. So we were studying glucose transport proteins, but it involved a lot of animal research, which I I could not stand. I was like, you know, we were taking rats, you exhaustively swim them, you got to take stuff out of the muscle. I'm like, I can't do it. So I I I jumped out of that. I took a job at a gym for seven bucks an hour. And I my joke was, you know, seven years of school, seven dollars an hour, probably not the best ROI in the world. So I I found a lot of synergy in chiropractic. I loved the philosophy. I I it was a kind of a perfect fit. So I came down to Davenport, spent three years there, and then kind of planned to go out and open a practice. Came full circle. They had a residency program for sports injury rehab. I stayed for three years, worked as a clinician, and then I got to be in the classroom. Some positions came up. And I ended up teaching the classroom. I absolutely loved it. I taught biochemistry for over a dozen years. I went back to school. I got a PhD in higher ed leadership, University of Iowa. And then I've been in administration now for probably, I don't know, 15 years or so. So it's been wonderful. I I absolutely can't see enough positive things about Palmer. Great friends, great program, great facilities. Love it.

[5:26]  What do you love about education, man?

[5:29]  you know, it really is where you get to be on a continuing learning cycle. And I think I've heard you say on podcasts, Efrain, that you've had some teachers that greatly impacted you and helped your trajectory. Same here. I've had some wonderful teachers, and in education, I I think I've always admired those folks. I wanted to be one. And in education, you get to be creative, you get to see people learn and discover and kind of help them on their path.

[5:58]  Yeah. I I didn't get to be a teacher, but I became a facilitator for the airline industry. And I never would have thought people had told me that I should be a teacher or facilitator. And I'm like, I'm not teaching kids, but I taught adults that act like kids. But it it was still fun. It was to me, it was always how do I make something make sense? Right. Like I would always teach something from the from the I would say from the front of the room, but then I would always love that I get to see someone that thought they couldn't do it. And by the end of a you know, it was like a week or two week course. By the end of it, how they just have this, my God, it all completely makes sense. So yeah, it is pretty cool to just see someone that didn't believe in themselves. And by the end of it, that they believe in themselves because you just made it make sense, right? damn, I'm pretty sure you had some of those moments. What what what are some of those stories that just continues to always, I would say feed the why? Because so many times it's so easy for us to forget our whys. But what are some of those stories that you can share?

[6:53]  Well, you know, like I I taught biochemistry for a long time. And I'm like I told you pre-podcast, we're gearing up. Palmer's having a giant homecoming where we get a thousand people on campus. It's kind of crazy. And I I'll lecture on stuff, and you know, this one's kind of about how your nervous system connects with your immune system and how chronic inflammatory pressure kind of upsets the mix and whatnot. And it is really kind of cool to be able to be on this learning process and impact folks. And I walk, you know, you look around the country. And you look at a hundred million pre-diabetics, you look at people that have kind of lost their way. So in trying to aim up, do the right thing, and really lean in, trying to find those things that are greatly impacting the health of Americans and teach those in a way that makes a difference in somebody's practice. I think it was Einstein that said if you can't explain it simply, you probably don't know it. So taking those kind of complex topics and breaking them down to say that, hey, There's some pretty simple things you can do to make a profound difference in your life. So I kind of shoot for that when I'm doing the lectures. And when students would first come into a chemistry class, I hate chemistry. I'm like, do you eat? Yeah. Do you like to exercise? Yeah. That's what exercise and and and nutrition is all about. That's chemistry. It's carbs, it's

[8:12]  Well

[8:13]  fat, it's protein, it's how you burn it, how do you build it? So if you can relate it in those terms and make it easy and useful for them. They kind of light up and with better strategies, you get better results. You see people doing some really weird stuff out there. And it's like if they can just adopt some simple, simple habits, makes a profound difference. So I'm moving forward to it. Like homecoming, like I said, big deal for Palmer. Always love this time of year. You get to see people you haven't seen. I've been there for 30 years. So you'll see folks that, hey, these folks were from years one to five, then there's a 10-year-old, this and that, and you catch up. So it's a really great time for everybody involved.

[8:48]  You're probably seeing generations, right? You've seen right,

[8:52]  my gosh.

[8:53]  that's always cool to well know that not only did someone graduate from the school, but they also brought their children to come back. And that's always speaks volume on who the school and what the school does.

[9:00]  When I see my my students' children as students, that's that gets a little different. So I'm fifty nine, so you know, I started then at Paul, like I said, thirty years. So some of the students have had, they've graduated, got into practice, and sent their kids to school, like, you know my dad. And then I have that senior moment. I'm like, my gosh,

[9:18]  Yeah.

[9:18]  you know, like I guess it has been that long. Yeah, I know.

[9:21]  Am I really that old? Sometimes we don't know. We're just having fun. It seems like you're having fun over there, Dan, especially when you talk about homecoming. I I could just see how excited you are about it. What's so special about Palmer? I mean, different university when you think about it, for those that may have never heard of it, what what makes you guys so special?

[9:37]  Well, you know, like chiropractic is they always say that it's a science, an art, and a philosophy. And the philosophy with any brand is kind of like resonates with some, not with everybody. But it was kind of born of like, hey, your body is innately intelligent. It has the ability to be well, and we're here to remove the interference from that. It might be biochemical, it might be biomechanical, it might be something else, but we're trying to help people get well. And you look at today's philosophy where A lot of people relegate their health to somebody else and say, Hey, give it away and somebody else insures it, or I have high cholesterol, so I take a statin. Well, it doesn't get rid of the molecules in your body. They go off and get it in trouble elsewhere. Or they want to lose weight and they're on a GLP and it's like, okay, that you you could take a medication that's gonna make you nauseous and you might lose muscle and your heart rate instantly elevates. It's like those are kind of short term fixes to try and get at the issue. Chiropractic really, you know, they said there's a big idea to it, which is about the cause. So, what's the cause? And a lot of it is trying to create a stronger capacity system so that you can deal with stressors. And a lot of it is removing the negative. So if you're doing some things that aren't right, correct those things, and then you'll find that the body has that innate ability to be well. So the philosophy starts there 120 some years ago. And it is the founding college. It's the founding College for the profession. Chiropractic didn't exist before Davenport. And I didn't know that. You know, I was studying exercise. I liked all that stuff. It seemed to be great.

[11:11]  Yeah.

[11:11]  I think it's you can do a lot with nutrition, a lot of great things. And it was just kind of a really good fit for me. And I like being part of it. It's really a good way to look at things. And for those individuals, you see all these people that are getting their kinesiology degrees and exercise science degrees, it tends to resonate with them and they want to get into something where they learn movement science. They learn how to. correct subluxations and they learn how to make sure that people move well and restore them to health. So it really is a it's a great profession and it's a privilege to be where it started, right in Davenport, Iowa.

[11:45]  Man, were you born and raised in Iowa?

[11:48]  I was born and raised way north, the upper peninsula, Michigan, way north of Wisconsin. People are like, is that north of Detroit? No, it's north of Wisconsin. So when I came down to Iowa, it is tropical for me here. So I enjoy the weather. It's absolutely fantastic. But I was born a like in, I was born in Minnesota, but spent most of my life in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Very small town. You know, when McDonald's came to town, it was a big deal.

[12:13]  my god. McDonald's, you know, we're I was just seeing something on how the evolving buildings, right? A lot of these buildings used to have really different shapes to it, but now it's like they all look the same. And I I miss the old McDonald's. I miss seeing these very cool looking McDonald's, but they all start to look the same now, man. and even thinking that when you talk about just health, how we used to eat McDonald's and it used to be a good thing to to do, and now we're like as you talk about chemistry. I really look at it and I'm like, I don't know if I want to eat that hot and spicy or those fries anymore. As much as they taste good, I'm

[12:47]  Mm-hmm.

[12:47]  definitely in that trying to learn that chemistry, as you mentioned. I've been doing obviously working out, but creatine, not realizing that it's actually good for the brain. And I was actually asking my wife, I says, She's starting to work out. I says, Hey, love, have you looked into creatine? And she's like, For what? And I'm like, You have to actually look at the science right behind some of these things that is actually good for the body. so I love it. I love that you're in this space, man, where I can imagine you you probably ruffle feathers when you start to bring in some of your your knowledge to to the table. Is that correct?

[13:18]  Yeah, possibly. You know, there's

[13:19]  All right.

[13:20]  there's a lot of opinions. People ask you about this, that, whatever. And it's one of those where people try to get like a lot of times there's like a quick fix for something, like I wanna take this and I wanna get this, and they they try to do something real quick. And a lot of a lot of health is by avoiding things you shouldn't do and then proactively going after things. So if you look at predictors and say like, you know, they've got great people on podcasts and and and Talking about longevity and health and so forth. There's a lot of really good stuff out there. Muscle mass is one of them. Don't lose it. So when, you know, this GLP thing kind of scares me where if people lose a lot of muscle and then they, you know, like head into their older years, it becomes incredibly valuable. You know, when you mention French fries, it's like, you know, a few french fries isn't a bad thing. And it's kind of like if that's a certain amount of carbohydrate, a lot of it has to do with the body it meets. So if muscle is a sink for all the carbohydrate coming in and you lose it, well then that carbohydrate ends up going to your liver, turning into fat, getting deposited, causing inflammation, and you go down a bad road. So one like big strategy, don't lose your muscle. Do you know, continue to be active, make sure you maintain that as you age, and that'll be a really, really good thing for you. And short-term fixes of taking this or that or whatever, there's not a lot of panaceas out there. I would say there's none. And a lot of people are trying to find the latest, the greatest, the whatever it is that's gonna tip the scale.

[14:51]  I I'm always that just put in the work. Like I get it, it it may a it's a good starting point, but you still gotta put in the work. Like nothing comes easy, right? I mean, you where you're at today, there's a lot of work. Just imagine you can take something that puts you there, Dan. I don't think that you appreciate it as much.

[15:09]  I think, you know, when you say put in the work, I think you're spot on, Ephraim. I think that's the big deal. Most things come because of effort. And I think it's like was it Jordan Peterson, the narcissist is someone who wants status without earning it, right?

[15:24]  Yeah.

[15:24]  And I think there's molecular narcissism. You you know, you want low cholesterol, but did you earn it? You know, you you you want extra muscle, but did you earn it? So it it kind of comes with a sacrifice of saying I'm gonna avoid certain things, but I'm also gonna put in the work to get those things. So it's it is kind of a merit based system.

[15:43]  And it's hard, man. I I would tell you, I had a neighbor, and and kudos to him putting the work, but he was about to be 50 years old, and jokingly I I looked at him and I said, Man, you look pregnant, right? We work out together. And he was so mad that I said that. He says, Are you serious? And

[15:58]  Yeah.

[15:58]  then he's like, Do you know who I am? We ended up making

[16:01]  Sure.

[16:01]  a bet who can get abs first. And man, that took a lot of work, Dan. I had to really watch

[16:07]  Yeah.

[16:07]  what I was eating. No more late snacks. Stop eating the

[16:40]  I don't know.

[16:40]  kid's snacks and really look, you know, the protein intake. and it was funny because he he would he was easily saying, you got to do a lot of abs. I actually did not do a lot of abs. You know, I wasn't doing a lot of running. I sh literally had to go and and learn the ways and really do some research. Shout out to AI that really helped me, you know, through the journey as well. I kind of gave it what my diet plan was, who I what my age and all these things and it gave me a blueprint. And I followed that blueprint to the T and then I won. I won, you know, because it took work. It was consistency.

[16:43]  What's your what's your favorite AI right now?

[16:45]  I'm using Cloud, man. I broke up with ChatGPT, even though I feel like ChatGPT now is doing really good in images. I've seen a lot of great images come out of that. But I like the way that Cloud just kind of almost dummies it down at times. they're both great though, man, and in their own ways. I think AI in general is good. but I like Cloud and Cloud Cowork, seeing that

[17:08]  Yeah.

[17:08]  kind of do its thing as well. And I was just talking to a friend yesterday and showcasing, showing her. my CRM and gave her access and he she's just talking to it and it's pulling from the CRM and is giving her all this data and she's like, I don't even gotta go to the CRM. It's le it's you know, there's a c there's so many connectors and APIs and I think people still don't understand AI. But what do you think, Dan? Are you guys using AI?

[17:32]  I broke up with chat for just a little bit and I got back together in a hard way because chat 6.0, the anthrax, and I you know, since I talked to you last time, in prepping for homecoming, I could do my presentation. So I was making images and I and I I started falling in love with video creation. So I I did a prompt in chat and it gave me a so-so video. And then I got my 20 bucks a month into Gemini and it got me better videos. But when I do it, I put in three video prompts, that sort of stuff, and it would time me out for the day. So it was like, my gosh. And then I found this Higgs field, which is kind of an entry into all these different video makers. So you can have C dance or the Higgs Field one or Omni or whatever the thing is. And

[18:18]  Mm-hmm.

[18:19]  I splurged and I got into it, and now I'm creating these videos where I use chat to make images. So if I want an immune cell and I want my B cell to be this blue thing with little antibodies on it. I create a character and I save my image profiles. And then I think good teachers tell crazy good stories. They're great storytellers. So if you create a cast of characters and do an image profile, load them into the videos and let Higgsfield do its thing, you now have 20, 30-second unbelievable videos. So everything I've ever done before, I'm I'm kind of almost disgusted with like that's not good enough. So now I'm like, my favorite prompt is. Create me a 16 by 9 graphic illustrating and then trying to get better at prompts to create videos. Because I think, like I said, break, you know, my daughter's about to go to college next year, so we're visiting. And I'm asking, you know, what do you have for educational materials? And I think there will be an absolute revolution in what is offered to students by high-end colleges, ones that are doing it well. So think

[19:25]  Yeah.

[19:25]  of everybody on TikTok and social media, they're consuming short videos. Short form video is going to be a huge thing for all of education. And I think we got to lean into it hard. And I think education has to lean into AI in a hard way too. I know there's those that are kind of giving it the Heisman and saying, Don't you dare, but I think it's it is such a reality and it's such a cool thing that will allow us to give students a broader, deeper quality of educational materials than they've ever had before. And if you want to tell a story and use videos and images. Wow, is this stuff incredible?

[20:00]  Love it, man. I love that you're using it as a tool that it is, right? It's not a replacement, but it does allow us to do things incredible at a at speed that we've haven't been able to do so. I'll tell you, we have the Hall of Fame coming up. We ended up with like 71 nominations. And we had to kind of vote on these. I'm like, how do I put all this kind of in a PowerPoint to make it easier? And Claude Created a slide for every single person with the story, with the name, how many nominations within minutes that I didn't have to sit here spend to create this slide show for our team. yes. I know.

[20:31]  Imagine how much time you would have spent creating that if you had to do it by scratch.

[20:34]  I know. Yesterday I had a friend, we had to now drop all these nominees like on social. And I was like, my god, I gotta go and copy and paste all these names. And she says, Ephraim Claude. I'm like, you're right. So I went to Claude and says,

[20:47]  Yeah.

[20:48]  Hey. Give me the list of every single person and bullets so that I can easily copy and paste. Within minutes, man, 71 people showed up. I was able to copy these names here, copy these names here, paste it. I already had the graphic. And I'm like, man, this is so cool. But I I love that you you mentioned it. It's truly the what do you think about those people that are are are afraid of it? When in reality, it's not here to replace the human, but it's really allows us to to do more of the things that we love, I would say. What is your thoughts on all that, Dan?

[21:18]  I think you know, people people can be resistant to change and they can they can fear something, but this is one of those where if you try it, the utility or useful of this will just explode in front of you and you will be so like it's amazing. So I I I'm less than a year into this, maybe six months ago. Less than six months ago, I I didn't even know what an agent was. I hadn't created images, I hadn't done anything. And just started to dabble with it. And now I like walk out of my office amazed. I gotta call somebody in and be like, Can you can you believe this? And I had a I had a certain amount of guilt because I used to spend so much time working to create things that I guess there's a certain value in that product. And now that you can make it like that, you're kind of like, and now I'm over the guilt. Now, if somebody's comes in and shows me how long they worked at something, I'm like, I don't I don't know that you're kind of getting it. Because the reality

[22:15]  Yeah.

[22:15]  is If people are allowed to have all this work taken care of, that allows the interface, the personal interface, to be better. So colleges, n I believe, need to focus on student experience, need to offer depth and breadth with educational materials. So, like at Palmer, for example, we do a Palmer prom. Students get together and they have a beautiful dance together. We do the Palmer Games. We have all sorts of experiential stuff that happens. If you had sunk a whole bunch of cost into heavy transactional, non-people-facing type jobs, well then you don't get that. So organizations that can appropriately use AI can now start to focus on human-to-human interaction. It's not, it may displace work, but the person-to-person work is still the most important thing, and you can do it better now. So instead

[23:09]  Yeah.

[23:10]  of saying, my gosh, I got a 26-page report. I've got to fill this out, I've got to analyze that, I've got to create a spreadsheet, I've got to do the workload document, I've got to do whatever. If those things are automated, so even if like we're big, our big project now is to take documents and turn them into metadata. We have policy, we have syllabi, we have all the boring things you would imagine. And when you create those things, you need to send them someplace so that they can be organized and instantly called upon and generate reports from them. If you take in the Microsoft world and say, you know what? You have this thing called SharePoint and you can tag your documents and you can create little data blocks on them. Once you do that, you have push button reporting. You have dashboards that instantly populate and let you know how things are doing. That's the type of stuff where if you use AI and all these wonderful things that exist nowadays, the transactional heaviness that used to exist gets to be displaced and you can focus on the more important things. So I hope, you know, like I think good organizations will recognize that. Old ones will probably kind of hold tight to the old processes. And, you know, like they like animals, if they don't adapt to new environments, the possibility is they go extinct. You

[24:28]  Yeah.

[24:28]  know, one of the things when I was in dissertation mode, Blockbuster had what, 3,600 storefronts, tons of resources. The

[24:35]  Blockbuster.

[24:36]  environment changed dramatically. They're extinct. I think there's one store storefront historically still out there. You

[24:43]  Yeah, yeah.

[24:44]  know, if you said, well, where's Kodak? Where where are these companies that had tremendous resources but such cultural inertia in the way they used to do things that they couldn't adapt to a new environment? And this, Efrain, I I think we're on the front edge of something bigger than the Industrial Revolution. You know, they talk about

[25:03]  Yeah.

[25:03]  the singularity, they talk about this stuff. It is unbelievable what is happening with AI.

[25:09]  Yeah, definitely part the evolution happening right in front of us. And and I would also say like this has kind of been around for a very long time. I think it's just now this fancy word, you know, or acronym that we've kind of given it. But it's when we think about the our phones knowing what we were going to text before we were texting it, right? It's already been there. It just I think now over the last couple of years it's really being magnified into this space. But one of the biggest things that you mentioned about AI in general. Is prompting. That matters so much because you could sit here and talk to AI, type to AI, whatever you do, but if you're not giving it the prompt, one, you're wasting your tokens because all of this is all about tokens and that's how the money's being made on the back end. But that that you're you're you're also just not utilizing it the best way. So I almost think that at some point we're gonna have organizations looking for prompt engineers, right? that's what's going to really move the needle, is you have to have good prompts and understand what is it you're asking for 'cause it's not going to give you the good stuff. Do you agree, Dan?

[26:11]  100%. And here's what I do. So if I'm going to make a video in Higgsfield, I go over to chat, I create my images and whatnot. And I'm like, chat, here's what I want to do. Can you create the prompt for me? So then it creates a beautiful prompt and then it says zero to five seconds. The shot does this and it does all this stuff.

[26:30]  Yeah.

[26:30]  And it lays out this incredibly nice prompt that I can just copy, bring over, and then all of a sudden my video has a lot, you know, I don't know a huge token burn. Because I, you know, like it's kind

[26:41]  Yeah.

[26:42]  of like a present when you hit something and you want to generate this cool 3D, but kind of almost like a 3D comic type video. You sit and it spins for a few minutes before you get it. You don't know if you're gonna get something that's junky or something that's really cool. When it comes out awesome, it's like Christmas. So I always

[26:58]  Yeah.

[26:58]  like to go and I'm like, I s I'm like, no Dan prompts. They're gonna be Dan advice, chat prompt, bring it over, then I get something really nice.

[27:08]  Love it. You're dropping gems for those that have not ever used AI or using it and asking themselves, how do I get better? That is definitely one of those good ways is being able to create and then tweak it. You know, a lot of times people think

[27:19]  Yeah.

[27:19]  it's just copy and paste. It's no like look at it, make it your own. You still have to go in there, maybe change a couple of different things, but it gave you the blueprint to work from instead of sitting here for you know, sometimes days trying to create this great masterpiece. So I love it. And I do love when it provides you something. Sometimes it's not, and you're like, What what is this? But when it does, you're like, wow, I would have never been able to do this. Like it makes you feel good.

[27:44]  I I was trying to get a I was trying to get a character of a liver and it came out with like three arms and it was all over the place. And I'm like, come on now. So it was just kind of and I'm like, Did do you really see this? And I always try to get I love kind of a black backdrop. So trying to create a true champ transparent background around an image, it fails left and right and it's different things. It's getting better and better, but you do get really good at prompts. And I I haven't done this yet, but somebody was like, Well, you should get your skills. And I'm like, What do you mean skills? And apparently you can within ChatGPT and whatnot, once you learn how to do something, you can set it as a skill, and then

[28:23]  yeah.

[28:24]  it'll continue to do exactly that for you. So once you really get good at something, image creation or report generation or whatever, create a skill and then you call upon that skill, and then the task is repeated and done well.

[28:37]  Yeah. There's definitely a lot of things, man, when it comes to AI that people, if you know, you know. If you don't, you're you're still, you know, kind of here. But there's people that are really utilizing, as you mentioned, agents that are really running their business on some of these agents. I think it's pretty cool. kind of going back to Palmers, how big is is Palmer's man? Is this a huge institution?

[28:56]  we have two campuses, one down in your neck of the woods. It's right by Daytona and Port Orange. And then the original

[29:03]  Okay.

[29:04]  college here in Davenport, we have about a thousand students on each campus. It's very singular. It's a doctor of chiropractic program, a small bachelor's completion program. But everybody on campus, singular goal to be a doctor of chiropractic. So the one here in town in Davenport, over 125 years old. We just put Probably 50, 60 million dollars into a campus renovation. Absolutely gorgeous. And it's kind of cool because you know, the cost of living in Davenport, it's not a big city, but it's big enough. So the cost of living is pretty low. So it's a great place to live, raise kids, great place to go work. We put a gorgeous rec center in. Everything's connected by skywalks and whatnot. We built some housing outside of it that is, you know, when I'm looking at dorm rooms with my daughter. You know, we've accumulated, it feels like hundreds of sweatshirts. Every time we go to a volleyball tournament, we get a new sweatshirt and they're adorning a room like like in the periphery.

[30:04]  Yeah.

[30:04]  So I'm like, how are you gonna live in a dorm room? These things aren't air conditioned. You have a tiny shared little bathroom down a hallway. You've got one little desk and that sort of stuff. So when Palmer built its housing and there are these really nice places, I was like, we gotta market this. Students coming out of like these nice universities, their dorms are pretty minimalist. So

[30:25]  Yeah.

[30:25]  these these are nice things. So it's got good places to live, nice great campus. I can't say enough about it. It's given me a 30-year career. I've been able to be a clinician, teach different topics in the classroom, go back to school, get a degree in higher ed, work in administration, and I've developed lifelong friends there. It's been, you know, like the people I've worked with. I just had a guy who retired, awesome guy, good mentor. he worked there for forty some years. I worked thirty years with him. And just it's kinda cool to be able to hang with a friend for, you know, thirty years of employment and accomplish some really con like some real cool, fun things.

[31:05]  Yeah. you talk about those dorm rooms really quick. It's all part of the experience, man. That just, you know, showcasing that, right? It it's gonna give a better experience of, as you mentioned, those smaller dorm rooms, shared living spaces that sometimes could kind of be horrible for the experience. But you're talking about almost state of the art here, so I can only imagine that is definitely something people always kinda go to. But look at this dorm.

[31:25]  Well, when I went to Northern Michigan University, right off Lake Superior, you don't need air conditioning. But if you're going to like the University of Iowa, Iowa State, you're gonna have a couple months where it gets a little gamey in those dorm rooms, and you might want some AC, and not all of them have it. the one thing I will say though, when you tour some of these schools, what they have for cafeterias is unbelievable. So we went to Iowa State and they got Panda Express, Chick-fil-A. You you walk in there and you get these. Meal tickets where you can eat as much as you want, whenever you want. If I went there and as the 18-year-old Dan, I would come out about 350, 400 pounds.

[32:04]  Ha ha.

[32:04]  My parents probably wouldn't recognize me. I mean, they had I mean, pull a lever and get ice cream as much as you want, whenever you want. Are you kidding me?

[32:11]  Yeah, that's crazy.

[32:12]  That is a temptation beyond my resistance tolerance. You know.

[32:14]  A hundred percent. Dan, man, you just talked about some some, you know, great expansion that you guys had. you talked about your thirty plus year career. What are some of the things that you would love to also see come to life, man? being there for so long and seeing, you know, what these colleagues have become family. Where do you guys see yourself in three to five years? What are you expecting?

[32:36]  for Palmer? I tell you, you know, like in the AI revolution, I really, really want to see us lean in hard to producing better content for students. So that's kind of the reason why I was jumping into the Higgs field stuff to say, here's a video producer. Because I a buddy of mine, the dean of our program, we went down to a local shop and said, Hey, if we were going to shoot just videos for a classroom so we could post content, students can consume it asynchronously. It was gonna be like 8,000 bucks for a day of filming. And I'm like, well, that's not doable. Imagine every class, you've got a 50-minute lecture. How you can't scale that. But

[33:16]  Yeah.

[33:17]  then you go to something like this with AI and say that within our learning management system, you can have a beautiful note set that you can study from. You can have long and short form videos that you can consume that'll get you interested in the topic. You can gamify it, everything from a crossword puzzle to a succeed and release release the next chapter of something. So we've got a good learning management system and getting this stuff in the hands of all the faculty. If you can imagine, let's say you've got 30, 50 people that are leaning in hard to creating content, that's a differentiator for a college. If you go and somebody's got a A a stale white PowerPoint 16 by 9 or God forbid 4x3 background with black text that they read to you, and they continue to be sage on stage where I am the owner of knowledge and I Ephraim, I will dispense it to you at my leisure. Not so much. You you really all the information a student could ever want is sitting there with chat, Claude, or whoever. So this is about the student experience and giving them a breath of educational materials. And making the experience something that is awesome. Chiropractic, hands-on. So you never lose that. So we want to really focus on our facilities, which we did, and have crazy nice things to practice hands-on, adjusting, assessing one another, so forth and so on. Beautiful clinic space. So, Palmer, big, big deal. Make sure that educational materials is awesome. And then also in the world of data, my gosh. metadata documents and making sure that we get efficient and use the power of things like SharePoint, Power Automate, Power Query, all the different things that are in that world so that you don't have to devote the resources to that heavy backroom transactional stuff. You do those things, and I'm hoping Palmer will, then we're positioned to make that student experience many factors better and better and better.

[35:18]  Then I'm actually really surprised how much you guys are leaning into AI. I've spoken to maybe 50 different leaders just this year alone. yeah, about probably, or or maybe a little less. and there's a lot of people not leaning into it. You know, there's the people being afraid of it, people asking themselves, is it actually worth it? but I love that you are you guys are tuned in. And and I don't know if it's because of the size of universities, right? Like some of these major universities just maybe feel like that's a a huge ticket, right? High ticket price, and they may not be able to do that. What do you say to your colleagues that are in the space of higher education that are are asking themselves, should we be leaning into it? Is it safe for us? Cause I think that's another factor is that safety and that risk that people are thinking. What what do you tell those individuals, man? Cause you guys are all in.

[36:09]  The risk is in not doing it. So, you know, when I was, when I was, when I went back to Iowa for my PhD, my dependent variable thing I was studying was adoption of innovation, change. People will ask a question, hey, is it good for me or bad for me? Kind of a personal valence question, any change? And then they also say, is it easy? Is it useful? But it's it's one of those where self-efficacy, am I capable of doing it? And if I'm not, this could harm me. So they stay away from it. And in this, the environment is changing so rapidly, and there's such a misconception about AI to think that it's somehow difficult. Anybody that's kind of dabbled with it is probably amazed at how easy it was. You don't even have to type. You hit that little microphone and ask a question, and it'll give you everything from life advice to a spreadsheet to a workflow to whatever. If you're not doing that, you risk bringing your organization to extinction. So imagine the cost, and if your margin is thin and it's gonna get more and more competitive, because remember, OB3 hit the one big beautiful bill. There are sweeping changes that are hitting colleges. There's changes in federal Title IV funds to colleges, there's earnings tests for degrees, there's all of these things happening. Now is the time to make sure that you are finding efficiencies and really getting there. And if you think your students aren't gonna use this, When I walk the hallway, I'm I'm looking at the students and they're they're

[37:38]  Yeah.

[37:39]  using Quizlets and all this other stuff. They'll take a professor's notes, put them into AI, and then start creating a bigger, broader educational portfolio or note set alongside of it. Then they create practice tests and then they share those things. So the students are creating their own materials, they're creating all of the stuff. And it's amazing if you think of all the money you spend for little softwares out there. So we were looking and saying, like, I want to make sure the images in people's presentations are not violating copyright, that they're good, and so forth. So we're looking at, let me look at I won't name brands, but this one right here, for fifty thousand dollars, you can get access to our library of images. I can have a good prompt. Have the intellectual property for an image just like that. So

[38:32]  Yeah.

[38:32]  colleges that don't lean in, that's the risk. The ones that do, this is an exponential thing. This is going crazy fast, and it is like surfing a wave. You're gonna have to really lean in and lean in fast and keep up with it. I would say take a certain portion of your budget and start buying certain things. Like if your folks don't have If your organization doesn't have an enterprise license for an AI, whether it's co-pilot, ChatGPT, Claude, or whatever, because that allows it to look inward on your processes. Set the security right so you're not violating HIPAA and FERPA and all the other things, but you need to lean into this and make sure that you're keeping up with it and devote a certain portion of your budget to learning. So the Higgs field thing, there's a few thousand bucks, but I'm like, my gosh. I have learned so much in a matter of only a few weeks about prompts, what it can do, what it can't do. And every time it it gets a little better and you see these newer versions come out, you gotta be on that wave. You've you've got to be in on the mix to make sure that you're keeping up with the best available. Because can you imagine if Ephraim in like three years what it might look like?

[39:50]  I I was just about to say that. my co host Keenan would always say, Efrain, the crazy part is we're at the worst that AI will ever be.

[40:00]  Yeah.

[40:00]  We're at the worst of it. We're just getting started. You are right. Three years from now, we laugh at what AI was today. It's like looking back at the box TVs, right? That was black and white. It's like, look what's happened. I mean, we go from I was just telling my daughter nine eleven obviously today. I was listening to this on the radio. Of the 9-11, I was at home. Who's listening to our radio nowadays? Right? We

[40:24]  Yeah.

[40:25]  our phones. Everything is on this phone. I can go to the something happens tragic in our world, it's going to be all over our phones. Social media, text messages,

[40:34]  Yeah.

[40:34]  alerts, whatever that may look like. AI is just at the beginning stages. And if you're not really there today, what you're really falling behind. And I I hope that, man, people really take your advice then, that people do kind of lean into it, test it. Because I remember a leader I was talking about. She was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. And she tried it and she messaged me, say, Efraine, over the weekend, I couldn't stop. I love

[40:59]  Yeah.

[40:59]  it.

[41:00]  That's it. It's like if you just give it a try, because if you have doubt in your ability, it really isn't a crazy thing. You know, back in the day when we had to type C colon disc X copy whatever with our five

[41:14]  Yeah.

[41:14]  and a quarter, you know, three and a quarter and five and a half floppies and whatnot. I mean, I grew up on an Atari 2600. I'm playing Halo Infinite on a hundred-inch screen nowadays, so I'm like The world is very different and these things are super easy. AI is crazy easy. If you said, I can't believe like I got my chat GPT for twenty bucks a month or whatever it is, I open whenever I open a computer, the number one thing that pops up, that's what I go to. Like, you know, it used to like, hey, I'm gonna jump on Google or Google Scholar and I'm gonna search something. In prepping for homecoming, I would have to download all these articles and read them and and then highlight and I just have them scattered all over the floor and and try to put together with this and that. Now, my gosh,

[41:57]  man.

[41:58]  I I feel so guilty because I can take an article, drop it in, give me the main point, show me where it says, I check to make sure it's accurate, that I'm not making anything up. And then you got the naysayers like, well, AI hallucinates. You know how you end hallucinations is you get your documents and stuff right. So what we're doing at BOM, we're trying to get documents as metadata. If you said, I've got all these documents, some are syllabi, some are policy, and they're everywhere, and my my agent has to look in every file and every version, whether it's draft, final, archived, it has to go everywhere. It may hallucinate. If you tag it and structure it right and do the work right, hallucinations don't happen as much. And if you know your content, but the ability to produce content. is at such a fraction of the time and cost that it's absolutely amazing. Just love this stuff. I I can't, you know, like every day I'm just I walk out and I go to my buddy across the hallway, our chancellor, Denny Marchiori, and I'm like, look, you gotta come see this. Look at what this just did. He said, you know, I was I was doing stuff on you know what A1C is when you get your blood checked, it's kind of like if your

[46:48]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[46:48]  hemoglob if you got too much sugar in your blood, it sticks to your hemoglobin and it kind of gives you a sense of how sugared up you are. Well, made this little protein character and I stuck it on a red blood cell and it's going through the blood. It looks really cool and stuff. He's like, you know what you ought to do? You ought to get a person walking out to their mailbox, opening up a letter, seeing their A1C, and getting depressed, make them look kind of, you know, deconditioned or whatever. So I punched that in. So I went from inside the body with a red blood cell, getting splashed with kind of a glucose creature, you know, reminiscent of like space ghost, saying splash it on there. To this guy walking out to his mailbox, getting depressed, looking at it, and then it zooms inside of him, and then it shows the little blue glucose guy splashing around the blood and throwing blue goo on his hemoglobin. And it's crazy what it can do. So, whatever your imagination is, you start creating these like ridiculously cool videos. And if you tell

[46:52]  No.

[46:52]  the story well, people will remember that. So I'm this homecoming, I'll be unveiling a few new videos. So we'll see how they see how they go. I'm pretty excited about it.

[46:53]  I mean, I'm excited just talking to you about AI. Not everyone can have the same kind of energy around it, but it seems like you definitely leaned into it. I appreciate the conversation, Dan. This has been a lot of fun and hope that people are really taking AI serious. It's here to stay, it's not going anywhere. You can try to fight it all you want to. It's a battle you would lose. because let's be honest, it's here. where can people find more information, man? They want to know more about Palmer's. What is the socials? What are the websites?

[46:55]  You know, Palmer.edu is the website. the best thing is, you know, like I they they say, you know, in branding, brand experiences, you can see it from a distance. If anything, if anybody's interested, boy, I tell you what, pay a visit to one of the campuses. We get such a like once people visit and they're like, wow, if the philosophy resonates with you, you know, especially with all those exercise science, kinesiology majors that are kind of into their health. that know it takes a sacrifice, that know that it takes, you know, put the work in kind of thing. If you want to learn about movement science and being well, Palmer's a fantastic place. You meet people that become lifelong friends. it is it is something that's awesome. And you keep touch with them for like I said, these people coming back. I've known for 30 years. It is a real cool thing. We're on Facebook. I have yet to get an Instagram account. My kids are on TikTok. I am not. I'm gonna I'm gonna try to go there. Because the latest thing I did Chat makes websites. So I just built three of them. And one of them I'm gonna

[46:55]  Ha ha ha.

[46:55]  have for all my intellectual stuff. But the other, you talk about transactional cost. I need to know what's happening in the world of accreditation. I need to know what's happening in state licensing. I need to know what's happening in all these things. Every morning at 5 a.m., chat, one of my websites, scrapes every state licensure website. It scrapes all the accreditation news and says, Dan, here's what here's what's important. Here's the action steps you need. So imagine your organization and you just said, my gosh, I have to worry about all these things. Have Chat GPT or Claude or whoever, scrape the sites,

[46:55]  Mm-hmm.

[46:55]  tell you what to do. So But Palmer's on all that stuff. We look to be real good in our social media. It's like it's it there, we get some good folks that do some really cool stuff. So I'm sure the younger guys and girls, they can look at TikTok and find a lot of our stuff there, Instagram too. I, as a near geriatric, I gotta go there, but I haven't yet.

[46:55]  Dan, thank you so much for your time, man. It's definitely been a pleasure and look forward to when you're in Florida, you know, where we said down Daytona, I gotta come see this campus.

[46:55]  I gotta connect with you. I'd love to learn more about the world of podcasting and setting all these things up, Ephraim. It was fantastic to meet you.

[46:55]  Yeah, same here. I'm Efrain. This is Dan. Make sure you guys like, subscribe, and comment. We'll catch you guys on the next one. Latus.

[46:55]  All right, thanks.

dw
guest
Dan Weinert — Provost, Palmer College of Chiropractic
Education

Dan Weinert is the provost at Palmer College of Chiropractic, the founding college of chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa, which also has a campus in Port Orange, Florida. He oversees academics, clinics, and student affairs. Over three decades at the college he has worked as a clinician in a sports injury rehabilitation residency, taught biochemistry, and moved into administration after earning a PhD in higher education leadership from the University of Iowa. In this episode, he discusses AI adoption, learning content, student experience, and health habits like preserving muscle mass.

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