FRESNO STATE LAUNCHES NEW AI TOOL

Fresno State officially entered the age of AI with Barkly, a new AI-powered assistant for students.

The path to launching Barkly began in February 2026 after the Western Association of Schools and Colleges accreditation team identified that students might have a hard time finding the services they need

“It feels like in order for them to get to a certain service, they have to understand where the service is and then find a way there,” said Phong Yang, vice president of student affairs and enrollment management.

The name Barkly is short for Bulldog Assistance, Resources and Knowledge. As with any AI tool, Fresno State does have safeguards in place to make sure the information given to students is accurate.

Fresno State announced an AI task force during the 2023-24 school year. But with the Barkly announcement, Fresno State also furthered its relationship with AI in a different way. 

Three faculty members at the university received a $30,000 grant from Adobe to support multimodal student writing and AI Critical Ethical Literacy.

A question with any AI model that gets raised is the accuracy of information coming back from it to users. “We have a dedicated staff who is monitoring not just feeding information to AI, but monitoring the type of questions that are coming back our way,” Yang said. 

“​​Barkly is another mechanism that students can lean on at any time of the day to be connected to any office, any department, program, service staff or faculty member,” said Ruby Sangha-Rico, associate vice president for student success services

Barkly is online and available for all students to access via their student connect portal. Fresno State has said students will begin receiving outreach from Barkly this semester, including text message check-ins that allow them to respond directly with questions or requests for support.