University of South Carolina Expands AI Curriculum with Vurvey to Prepare Students for the Enterprise Workforce

Vurvey’s AI suite of solutions joins UofSC’s Fearlessly First AI strategy courses, giving students experience with technology used by Fortune 500 brands.

COLUMBIA, SC, UNITED STATES, August 27, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — University of South Carolina students will begin using Vurvey Labs, a human AI technology that simulates real responses from audiences, in four College of Information and Communications courses this fall, giving them hands-on experience with tools increasingly used in advertising and marketing.

The initiative expands an existing partnership between Vurvey and UofSC. This fall, students will use agentic AI technology trusted by Fortune 500 brands and agencies to simulate human behavior before products or ideas go to market. Students will integrate the technology throughout the communications process — from researching audiences and developing strategy to evaluating creative ideas and measuring results. The goal is to give students practical experience using AI thoughtfully and effectively before they enter the workforce.

Founded by Chad Reynolds in 2021, Vurvey is built to humanize AI and combines artificial intelligence’s speed with the depth of human insights to build surreal AI models that go deeper than pattern matching or synthesizing publicly available data. Following the recent launch of Vurvey Populations, Vurvey’s agentic AI enables organizations to simulate how real audiences will respond to ideas before they go to market. Powered by the company’s proprietary People Model™, built from millions of real consumer interviews, Vurvey is the first human AI solution that helps organizations make faster, more confident decisions grounded in human understanding.

UofSC’s approach combines foundational skills and critical thinking with hands-on experience using the advanced AI tools students are increasingly likely to encounter in the workplace.

Beginning Aug. 18, approximately 120 students and a team of six faculty members will participate in four, year-long marketing focused courses that integrate Vurvey into every stage of the marketing process. Students will use the platform to conduct deep consumer research, develop strategy, plan media, evaluate creative work, and measure campaign effectiveness, building practical experience with the same AI workflows used across the industry.

The partnership is part of the College of Information and Communications’ broader Fearlessly First AI strategy, which is focused on preparing faculty, students, and the broader community for an AI-enabled future. Alongside faculty development and student coursework, the university is expanding AI education through community outreach initiatives, including recent programs at Fort Jackson, the U.S. Army’s largest basic training installation.

“Our responsibility is to prepare students for a workplace that’s already using AI,” said Tom Reichert, Dean of the College of Information and Communications. “That means teaching the fundamentals and critical-thinking skills that have always mattered while giving students hands-on experience with the AI tools reshaping our industries. Vurvey gives us another way to do both.”

“We’re building a world where AI helps people understand other people more deeply,” said Chad Reynolds, Founder and CEO of Vurvey Labs. “That starts by giving the next generation access to the tools, workflows, and ways of thinking they’ll use throughout their careers. We’re excited to partner with the University of South Carolina because we want to teach the next generation to truly collaborate with AI instead of just using it as another tool. Using Vurvey, they are empowered to apply it to research, strategy, creative evaluation, and decision making while building a deeper understanding of the people behind the data.”

The curriculum builds on work already completed between Vurvey and the university, including projects where students used Vurvey Populations to develop consumer strategies for the NFL. The partnership also extends into the university’s athletics program, where Vurvey is helping uncover deeper insights into student-athlete brand development in the evolving “Name, Image, and Likeness” (NIL) landscape by combining real human data with surreal populations.

About Vurvey Labs:

Founded in 2021 by Chad Reynolds to bridge the gap between humans and machine intelligence, Vurvey Labs is the Human AI simulation technology redefining how brands bring their worlds to life. Built to humanize AI, Vurvey combines artificial intelligence’s speed with the depth of human insights to build AI models that go deeper than pattern matching or synthesizing publicly available data. Its proprietary People Model™, trained on millions of real consumer interviews, creates living, learning populations that think and feel like people, helping teams brainstorm, test, and co-create ideas in ways traditional models cannot.

Trusted by leading brands including Unilever, Vans, Kenvue, and JPMorgan Chase, Vurvey Labs gives marketing and innovation teams the power to launch breakthrough ideas faster, smarter, and with more empathy.

Daniela Quesada
Reverve Agency
danielaq@reverve.xyz

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