How San Diego Miramar College Built 24/7, Equity-Centered Student Support with AI Agents

At 11 pm at night, a single parent enrolled in San Diego Miramar College's EOPS program is finally sitting down to check on their grant status. There's no one in the office to ask. That gap, between when students have questions and when staff are available to answer them, is exactly what Dr. Monica Demcho set out to close.

Monica serves as EOPS & CalWORKs Faculty Coordinator at San Diego Miramar College, SDCCD Institutional Innovation and Effectiveness Faculty Specialist, and CCCCO AI Ambassador. Over the past year, she's built something most community college support offices haven't yet attempted: a pair of AI agents that give students real, personalized answers around the clock, in more than 115 languages, without replacing the human relationships EOPS is built on.

The Challenge: Manual Process, Disconnected Systems

Miramar's EOPS & CalWORKs office supports four programs (EOPS, CARE, NextUp, and CalWORKs) serving low-income students, foster youth, and single parents, many of whom are juggling full-time jobs and family responsibilities on top of coursework. Staff are tasked with managing applications and appointment follow-up almost entirely by hand: downloading eligibility data, checking it manually, and reaching out to students one at a time. The process is slow, disconnected from the college's CRM, and cumbersome to manage.

"We know that our students are working at 10, 11 o'clock at night and they have questions."

— Monica Demcho, EOPS & CalWORKs Faculty Coordinator

The Solution: Two AI Agents, Built With Equity in Mind

Monica started with the fundamentals: she compiled every program document the office had, from contracts and FAQs to pamphlets and videos, into a 10–12 page knowledge base, using AI to catch inconsistencies (like conflicting unit requirements) before any of it ever reached a student. That knowledge base became the foundation for two agents built inside Element451:

Opie, a personalized chatbot agent students can talk to anytime, and Casey, an automated agent that follows up on missed appointments so no one falls through the cracks.

"AI doesn't replace the human relationship at the heart of EOPS — it removes the friction that prevents students from ever reaching it."

— Monica Demcho, EOPS & CalWORKs Faculty Coordinator

The Results: 24/7 Support, District-Wide Momentum

Opie and Casey have been live long enough to show what changes when students get answers around the clock instead of waiting for office hours.

Personalized support, in any language, any time of day

Students log in with their college credentials, and Opie pulls their real record, including grant amounts, bookstore credit, and benefit eligibility, to answer specific questions instead of generic ones. In a live demo, Opie switched fluently into Spanish mid-conversation for a parent's question. "My dad had a full conversation back and forth with it," Monica said. Element451 supports more than 115 languages in both text and voice, and Monica's team has also tested the agent in Vietnamese, Farsi, and Portuguese.

Automated follow-up that still feels human

Casey checks whether a student has attended their required EOPS appointment and automatically reaches out to those who haven't, so no staff member has to pull a list. The first version was almost too dedicated, messaging students nearly every day. Monica's team tuned Casey to a weekly cadence, alternating email and text, and built in two-way replies so the conversation continues naturally instead of stopping at a single automated message.

A foundation for district-wide growth

Miramar College first adopted Element451 for top-of-funnel admissions and outreach. EOPS's success with Opie and Casey is now inspiring other departments to build their own agents: Monica has presented these use cases to the Student Services Leads division and two of the district's four colleges so far, with a goal to focus on hands-on training labs rather than one-off sessions. The San Diego Community College District recently renewed its Element451 contract for five more years.

"It's great to have this level of support — obviously, having that buy-in from leadership is key."

— Dan Roberts, CRM Manager, San Diego Miramar College

Looking Ahead

Monica's next goal is automating EOPS application eligibility processing: checking criteria automatically, communicating status to students in real time, and freeing staff to focus on complex cases and relationship-building instead of data entry. Also on the roadmap: appointment reminders, application status nudges, and behavior-triggered engagement campaigns for first-time users and students who haven't connected with EOPS in 30 or more days.

"These automations build on the foundation we've already created — each one reduces manual work and ensures no student falls through the cracks."

— Monica Demcho, EOPS & CalWORKs Faculty Coordinator

The Takeaway for Student Support Teams

Miramar's story is a useful blueprint for any support office that's stretched thin: EOPS, CARE, TRIO, financial aid, advising, or anywhere staff are outnumbered by the students who need them. The office didn't replace its team with AI. It gave that team two agents that never sleep, never forget to follow up, and never make a student wait until office hours to get an answer.

That's the model behind Bolt, Element451's AI Agent Engine for higher education: specialized agents, purpose-built for the student lifecycle, that work across phone, text, email, and web chat in more than 115 languages, plug into the systems you already run, and are trained to support students, not replace the people who serve them.

If your team is doing EOPS-style outreach and follow-up by hand, it may be worth seeing what a Casey or an Opie of your own could take off your plate. Learn more about Bolt agents here