EDGE Portfolio Workshop — a co-curricular program from zero
Design · Delivery · Evaluation — Trulaske EDGE, 2026
Graduating seniors enter an AI-transformed job market where a résumé alone doesn't differentiate. Trulaske's EDGE professional-development program needed offerings that produce tangible career assets — not just attendance points.
A one-session workshop where students use AI to mine their own coursework, jobs, and projects into a structured portfolio dataset, then build and launch a personal portfolio website — no coding required. I designed the full system: a two-step AI workflow (research agent, then build agent), four design templates, walkthrough guides for paid and free tooling, and a signature "AI Collaboration Profile" section that teaches students to present how they work with AI — increasingly the first thing employers ask about. The college approved it at 15 EDGE points; comparable outside-consultant workshops carried 10.
Promoted in-class and at finals. Students brought their own material and left with a live site and a reusable AI assistant for future updates.
What it proves: designing, delivering, and evaluating a professional-education offering end-to-end — and the model scales to alumni, executive, and corporate editions.
The classroom as an agency — Digital Marketing Immersion
Course Design & Instruction — Trulaske College of Business
Marketing students graduate having written plans for imaginary companies. Employers hire people who've survived real clients.
A course that runs like an agency. On Pitch Day, local businesses pitch real marketing challenges Shark-Tank-style; student teams — organized with agency roles, project manager to creative director — select clients live and work the engagement all semester: persona, site evaluation, organic and paid search, content, social, and retention, capped by a client presentation and handoff documentation. Grades carry peer-accountability adjustments, the way real teams carry performance reviews. Alongside client work, students earn eight industry certifications sequenced to the curriculum.
Student teams produced near-professional work — enterprise search campaign structures and competitive briefs for companies from B2B SaaS to consumer brands — and clients returned in May to receive final presentations.
What it proves: employer partnerships, experiential program design, and professional-conduct systems — the exec-ed practicum model, running inside a degree program.
Rebuilding a course around the customer — Digital Customer Experience
Course Rebuild & Program Evaluation — Three semesters
An inherited course needed to teach customer experience the way industry practices it — and prove it was working.
A full rebuild across three semesters: portfolio-worthy assignments instead of busywork, assessments designed for an AI-saturated world, and a final project that runs the real CX toolchain — personas, journey maps, survey design, and user interviews against live brands. Then I turned the evaluation lens on myself: each semester ends with "DCX Wrapped," an analysis of student reflections treated like customer feedback — mindset shifts, skill gaps, growth areas — published as a public recap. Teach DCX by practicing DCX.
Students applied the toolchain to brands from beauty to beverage; one caught a compliance violation an AI had completely missed. When evaluations flagged course organization, I rebuilt the operations infrastructure the next semester — the same closed feedback loop I teach.
What it proves: program evaluation as a discipline — measure, publish, improve — plus the marketing instinct to turn outcomes into the program's own story.
An SEO course built like a product — in one semester
New Course Build — From a standing start
Launch a brand-new senior course — modern enough to cover AI-era search, rigorous enough to certify real skills — from a standing start.
A hybrid build: a publisher simulation platform for the fundamentals, with a fully custom layer on top — 349 slides across ten original decks, three projects, a 419-question verified test bank, and a course design system. Students ran seven rounds of a simulated SEO management role (the Simternship), audited AI-generated content against their own writing, and did live optimization work for Columbia businesses they could walk to. The semester closed with a written retrospective for the department chair and an improvement log already feeding the next run.
48 students, near-zero non-submission all semester.
What it proves: speed and rigor aren't a trade-off — full design-deliver-evaluate cycles in a single semester, with simulation-based training that maps directly to professional education.
COMO AI — a sold-out learning community from zero
Co-founder & Program Lead — Center for Transformative Tech, Trulaske
Visit comoai.org ↗Mid-Missouri professionals had nowhere to learn applied AI together — no venue connecting industry, faculty, students, and founders.
Co-founded COMO AI, hosted by the Center for Transformative Tech at Trulaske: a monthly format I designed around live demos ("AI Mixtape") and small-table conversations, backed by a partner network spanning corporate, healthcare, higher ed, and economic development. I built the website, the newsletter, and the distribution engine — and now lead a team of Trulaske students who maintain the site and run the program's marketing as applied professional development.
The first event sold out in 48 hours. The second was standing room only. The program sustains a monthly cadence with a roadmap to sponsorship revenue.
What it proves: the whole Novak job in miniature — program design, audience growth, cross-sector partnerships, and students developing inside the program itself.
The practitioner-moderator — executive education on national stages
Track Chair, Moderator & Workshop Facilitator — B2B Online
Conference panels are usually forgettable. Extracting real substance from executives in 40 minutes is a craft — and a teachable one.
A repeatable moderation system: prep-call intelligence, timed question frameworks with redirect tiers per panelist, and a structured post-event self-review that sharpens the next session. After moderating at B2B Online 2025, the organizers brought me back as a track chair with four sessions across three days — opening remarks, panels with leaders from Grainger, Ferguson, Cargill, Schneider Electric, and Thyssenkrupp — and invited me to facilitate a standalone workshop on recruitment and mentorship in the AI economy. Every session feeds my classroom: case studies, reflection prompts, and guest speakers, including a Fortune 500 VP I recruited to lecture at Mizzou.
What it proves: designing and delivering executive learning experiences — and converting industry access into student value.
Founders under pressure — coaching as curriculum
Embedded Advisor — Missouri Startup Weekend 2026
At a 54-hour startup sprint, three teams need different advice at the same time — and the coaching has to stick after the weekend ends.
As embedded advisor at Missouri Startup Weekend 2026, I coached three student-heavy teams in parallel — a healthcare SaaS, an edtech platform, a fintech — through customer interviews, pricing validation, market sizing, and pitch development, with a $100K investor allocation on the line. The frameworks I built live that weekend became six reusable coaching modules. It's the latest chapter of fifteen years volunteering, competing, and mentoring at Startup Weekend, alongside ongoing advisory work with a pre-seed venture fund.
What it proves: leadership development at its rawest — and the instinct to turn every coaching engagement into reusable curriculum.
COMOCamps — a community resource, built and shipped
Founder & Builder — Launched solo in one season
Visit comocamps.com ↗Columbia parents piece together summer plans from Facebook threads and word of mouth.
A free community directory — 60 camps and 12 events at launch — with a seasonal content engine that follows the school calendar, distribution through PTA networks and parent groups, and a sponsorship model designed to keep it free for families. Researched, designed, built, and launched in a single season.
What it proves: the builder habit — see a community need, ship the program that serves it, market it so it gets used.
I'm local. Let's talk.
I've spent twenty years helping Mizzou students become professionals and programs become institutions. I'd love to hear where the Novak Leadership Institute is headed — over coffee, anywhere in Columbia.