Higher-ed teams are stretched thin just as students demand faster, more personal help. Enter Bolt Agents, unveiled at Engage 2025: tireless AI coworkers inside Element451 that free humans from repetitive tasks, already saving one college 381 workdays (183,000 minutes) and giving campuses the power to boost enrollment and retention without adding staff.

Meet the AI Workforce

Element451’s Bolt Agents help institutions attract, enroll, and retain students. At Engage Summit we unveiled our agent “teams,” each targeting a core higher ed function—marketing, engagement, admissions, or student success.

Marketing Team

Today’s overwhelmed students will only pay attention to timely, relevant outreach. But delivering personalized messaging at scale was previously an impossible ideal. Now, a Bolt Agent can watch student behavior, then deliver the right message—on phone, email, or text—at the exact moment attention peaks. The result? Staff can step back and set the strategy, while the funnel moves, automatically.

→ Learn more about the Element Marketing Team

Engagement Team

The Engagement agent team is your digital front line, ready to help students  on any channel and even your website. Students get immediate help so they feel heard, while counselors stay focused on high-value conversations rather than tab-surfing.

→ Learn more about the Element Engagement Team

Admissions Team

Application season typically results in flooded inboxes and exhausted admissions staff. Bolt Agents give admissions professionals time to breathe. The Application Reader Agent, for example, conducts detailed first reads of applications and provides scores against your custom admissions rubrics. Recruiting Agents find qualified prospects and nurture them from applicant to enrolled student.

→ Learn more about the Element Admissions Team

Success Team

Retention is won (or lost) between advising appointments. Success agents keep watch 24/7, surfacing risk signals from your LMS, sending just-in-time nudges, and briefing advisors before meetings. Their focus: keep learners thriving.

→ Learn more about the Element Success team

More Teams Coming Soon

These four teams are just the start. At Engage we also announced two more teams coming soon:

• The Career Team will guide non-traditional learners to discover and register for the right courses, within a powerful new online portal: CourseHub. It’s built especially for today’s non-degree seekers and adult students who need just-in-time, judgment-free support.
• The Advancement Team will take the stress out of alumni engagement, so development officers can focus on cultivating donor relationships instead of chasing RSVPs.

Manage Bolt Agents with Ease

For agents to deliver this level of impact, they need to be coordinated. At Engage Summit, we unveiled Bolt Jobs, our innovative agent orchestration platform.

Setting up AI agents can be complex, but with Bolt Jobs, we’ve made it easy. Simply choose an agent, a goal, and explain what you need in plain english, and the agent handles the rest. 

With Jobs, agents can encourage prospects to start their applications, help struggling students book appointments, and much much more.

More Channels to Further Reimagine Engagement

Advanced Voice Mode gives agents a voice. Agents can talk to students on the phone or audio web chat.

Applicants can call and speak directly with a Bolt Admissions Advisor to check their application status or register for an open house. Current students can ask about financial aid, check their grades, and more.

And agents don’t just wait for calls, they connect with students on their own. Our Academic Advisor Agent can call a struggling student to offer support and book them into a tutoring session.

We also announced full support for WhatsApp, allowing our agents to reach international students more effectively than with SMS.

We’re not stopping there. Coming soon are two additional AI features:

• Call Center Team (coming soon): AI-powered inbound and outbound calling with intelligent routing between agents and staff.
• Conversational Insights (coming soon): Analyze agent conversations to surface trends, sentiment, and opportunities for improvement.

Admissions, Reimagined

Two new powerful agents are helping admissions teams save time and resources.

With the Application Reader Agent, every read is a second read. It uses custom assessment criteria to evaluate incoming applications. This helps your staff process applications faster, more accurately, and more consistently.

The Fraud Detection Agent scans for suspicious patterns in applications and flags concerning applications to safeguard your admissions process.

Soon a Transcript Evaluation Agent will also join the team - with the job of automating transcript reviews for credit evaluation and assessing applicants’ academic history.

New Integrations that Power Student Success

Element451 has long been easy to integrate with other on-campus systems using our powerful API. But we’ve now made it even easier to quickly import course and enrollment data to empower Bolt Agents to proactively reach out to students—often before staff are even aware there’s an issue. Because early, targeted support keeps students on track and improves outcomes.

At Engage Summit we announced one-click native integrations with Canvas, Blackboard and Brightspace. OpenLMS is fast on their heels, as is Ellucian Banner and Colleague via Ethos.

On the horizon: Academic Planning Agents that will help students stay on track toward graduation with AI-powered degree planning. And Bolt Agent Plugins that connect Bolt Agents to your SIS or other systems to answer questions like “Do I have an account hold?” or “What’s my account balance?”

The AI Revolution for Higher Education Is Here

What we unveiled at Engage Summit 2025 isn’t just an evolution for our platform—it’s the dawn of a revolution in higher ed. Element451 is the only AI workforce platform for higher education, where your staff and Bolt Agents work side by side, transforming how work gets done from marketing to advancement.

To learn more, book a 20-minute AI workforce walkthrough or test drive an agent now! 

And get ready—because the future of higher ed isn’t coming. It’s here.