In 2026, charting a course through college and beyond is more difficult than ever. Choosing the right courses and electives can feel overwhelming. Networking and extracurricular opportunities vie for students’ limited attention. And upheaval in the entry-level job market, driven by AI, raises the stakes.
BluePrint, an AI-powered advising engine developed by DePaul University’s Driehaus College of Business, offers a path forward that keeps personalized, human guidance at the center.
Drawing on data from across the college, BluePrint crafts a customized roadmap to help each student navigate their unique journey from college to career. In generating this roadmap, the FERPA-compliant tool cuts across multiple, often-isolated dimensions of the college experience. It identifies not just courses but extracurriculars, workshops, networking events, and other resources that a student can leverage to meet their individualized goals.
“Students arrive at DePaul eager to take advantage of the many opportunities available here,” said Dan Clark, Director of the Kellstadt Career Management Center. “But how do all these opportunities come together to form a bigger picture? How do you choose the right experiences to get you to the next level in your career? We developed BluePrint to help students, together with their career coaches and other advisors, answer these questions.”
BluePrint doesn't just give students a starting point. It also elevates conversations between students and their mentors. Program directors, academic advisors, and career coaches no longer have to spend precious time establishing the basics of a student’s past experiences or future goals. BluePrint provides a shared playbook.
BluePrint also provides valuable programmatic-level insights. The tool can help leaders identify institutional gaps or trending student needs.
Perhaps most important of all, BluePrint was designed with a human-centered perspective in mind. The personalized nature of the tool keeps the focus on each student. What experiences do they bring to the table? Where do they want to go? And how can an academic program help them get there?
Powered by AI, BluePrint takes that personalized approach and makes it feasible at scale.
"My favorite part about BluePrint is that it allows our conversations to begin at a deeper, more individualized level sooner, which improves the value we provide students,” said Jim Mourey, Associate Dean of Graduate Programs for Driehaus and Kellstadt. “In this way, BluePrint is really Vincentian personalism for the modern era and an example of how we (DePaul) innovate to support our students' experience."
Committing to an academic program demands that students invest considerable time, energy, and financial resources. BluePrint helps ensure that students, supported by faculty and staff, can make good on that investment.