An AI knowledge assistant trained on the Internship in Building Community's own handbook, policies, and training materials — so every RA has command of the information, instantly.
The IBC runs on information. Every summer, ~125 newly trained interns become the front line for the safety and experience of nearly 2,700 high-school students — and the handbook says it plainly: authority is having command of information. The challenge is that the information lives in a 60-page handbook, a separate Conduct & Community Standards guide, Canvas decks, GroupMe blasts, Lionmail threads, and a dozen forms — and it has to be recalled correctly, often at 11 PM, by someone three weeks into the job.
We propose to build the IBC Assistant: a private AI assistant trained exclusively on the program's own documents. An RA can ask it anything — in plain language, in any language — and get a direct, accurate answer with a citation to the exact handbook passage it came from. It never invents policy; when something isn't in the materials, it says so and points the RA to their SRA or ibc@columbia.edu. It is live and working today — you can try the working demo here, built on the real Summer 2026 handbook and training rosters you already use.
Give every intern instant, cited answers to the questions they actually ask on the floor — curfew rules, duty rounds, who to call, what to do when a student is in distress — and give your leadership team a live view of what the staff is unsure about, so training and the handbook keep getting sharper. Lower the load on SRAs and admin; raise the floor on consistency and safety.
Bishop Switzer — an IBC Resident Assistant this summer — raised this with your directors, who expressed strong interest. Working from inside the program, here is the gap we see, in the program's own terms:
The handbook is excellent and thorough. That thoroughness is exactly why recall is hard under pressure:
The IBC Assistant uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). In plain terms: it does not "make things up" from a general model. For every question it (1) retrieves the most relevant passages from your documents, then (2) composes an answer grounded only in those passages, with a citation back to each source. If the documents don't contain the answer, it declines and escalates rather than guessing.
The accompanying demo is the real thing, built on your Summer 2026 Residential Life Handbook and the BCD & CPR/AED training rosters. Ask it "What time is curfew on Friday?", "A student is 40 minutes late — what do I do?", "A student tells me they're feeling depressed," or "¿A qué hora es el toque de queda?" — and watch the "under the hood" panel show exactly which passages it retrieved and used. → Open the demo
Question → retrieve the most relevant handbook passages → answer grounded in those passages, with citations → if not found, decline and route to the SRA / program office. For any emergency, surface "call Public Safety 212-854-5555 / 911" first.
A complete, managed system — not a chatbot bolted onto a generic model. The scope below is what TSD delivers and operates for the IBC.
Every reply is drawn from your documents and shows its sources, so staff (and leadership) can trust and verify it. No invented policy.
Emergency, self-harm, abuse, and medical questions always surface "call Public Safety 212-854-5555 / 911" first and route to the documented reporting protocol. It never plays counselor, Title IX adjudicator, or doctor.
When the answer isn't in the materials, it says so and points to the SRA, RD, or ibc@columbia.edu — the handbook's own "find the right voice" behavior, automated.
Ask and answer in 90+ languages — English, Spanish, Mandarin, and more — for your international interns and students, from the same single source of truth.
We ingest the Residential Life Handbook, the Conduct & Community Standards guide, Canvas decks, rosters, and forms (PDF, Word, slides). Updates are simple — re-upload and the assistant is current.
A private dashboard of what staff ask most, what the assistant couldn't answer, and where confusion clusters — a live map of where the handbook or training has gaps.
An RA/staff assistant, an optional student-facing assistant with a narrower, student-appropriate corpus, and an admin view — each sees only what it should.
A clean web app for phones and laptops, an embeddable widget for Canvas or a program site, and optional SMS/GroupMe access so it meets staff where they already are.
Your team can pin canonical answers, correct or override a response, and add FAQs that aren't yet written down — so the assistant improves with your guidance.
| An intern asks… | The assistant does |
|---|---|
| "A student is locked out of their room at 2 AM." | Returns the master-key procedure (verify the roster/Orah, confirm ID, contact the Housing Coordinator on call for a temporary card) — cited to the handbook — instead of a call to a sleeping SRA. |
| "A student tells me they're feeling really depressed." | Surfaces the distress protocol — console, then contact the Wellness Coordinator and submit a Maxient report; call Public Safety if there's immediate danger — and explicitly reminds them not to take it on alone. |
| "When are my duty rounds?" | "15, 45, and 75 minutes after curfew; tell your SRA after each; duty report at 8:50 AM." Cited, instant, correct. |
| "¿Cuándo es la mudanza de la Sesión B?" | Answers the Session B move-out dates in Spanish, from the same English handbook. |
| "What's the wifi password for the gym?" | Declines honestly — "I don't have that; ask your SRA or ibc@columbia.edu" — rather than guessing. Trust is the product. |
This program serves minors and handles sensitive student information, so trust and compliance are first-class requirements — not an afterthought. Our commitments:
The Summer 2026 pilot can be built entirely on non-student policy documents — the handbook, conduct guide, and training materials — so it carries essentially no student-data risk while proving the value.
We recommend a pilot-first path: prove the value this summer on the staff-facing assistant, evaluate with real usage, then expand. Indicative timeline:
A short scoping call, a data-handling agreement, and ingestion of the Residential Life Handbook, Conduct & Community Standards guide, and key training materials and forms.
Brand it for the IBC, tune the safety guardrails and escalation rules with your team, and validate answers against the handbook with a few of your SRAs.
Launch to the IBC staff via web + an embeddable widget (and optional SMS). We monitor accuracy, gather the analytics, and refine weekly through the Practicum.
A usage & impact readout — questions answered, deflection from senior staff, gaps surfaced — and a recommendation for whether and how to expand.
Optionally add a student-facing assistant, Canvas integration, year-round coverage across Pre-College sessions, and additional document sets — scoped after the pilot proves out.
TSD offers every deliverable two ways — Managed (we host, maintain, and keep it current; you change things by asking) or Owned (a one-time build handed off with source, credentials, and a runbook for your IT to run). The figures below are indicative ranges to frame the conversation; exact pricing is set after a 30-minute scoping call and delivered as a written proposal within 48 hours.
| Option | What's included | Indicative investment |
|---|---|---|
| Summer 2026 Pilot Recommended start |
Staff-facing IBC Assistant on your policy corpus — ingestion, configuration, safety/escalation tuning, branded web app + embeddable widget, leadership analytics, and weekly refinement through the Practicum. | $4,500 – $8,500 one-time pilot build |
| Managed operation | Hosting, monitoring, document updates, model & security maintenance, and support. Can run seasonally (summer only) or year-round. | $300 – $700 / mo or a seasonal flat fee |
| Full rollout | Student-facing assistant, Canvas integration, additional corpora, and year-round coverage across Pre-College sessions. | Scoped after the pilot |
| Owned alternative | One-time build handed off to Columbia IT — source code, credentials, and runbook are yours to host and run. | Quoted on request |
Indicative figures for discussion only; not a quote. Final pricing depends on corpus size, integrations, and Columbia's security/procurement requirements, and is confirmed in a written 48-hour proposal after a scoping call.
TSD Modernization Solutions builds practical AI and modern web tools for organizations whose operations have outgrown their tooling. We specialize in exactly this kind of system: private, document-grounded AI assistants that answer from an organization's own knowledge — with citations, guardrails, and honest "I don't know" behavior — deployed as clean, maintainable products.
Bishop Switzer can coordinate directly with the IBC leadership team, or reach TSD at nashdavis@tsd-ventures.com. We can have the staff-facing pilot live for interns this summer.
This proposal was prepared at the request of an IBC Resident Assistant for discussion with Columbia University Pre-College Programs leadership. "IBC Assistant" is a proposed TSD product and is not an official Columbia University system. References to the IBC Residential Life Handbook and training materials are to documents provided by program staff and are used here solely to illustrate the proposed assistant.