Search Influence Heads to AMA 2026 With Harvard Law Co-Presenter, Tara Pope
October 13th, 2026 by
Search Influence’s Paula French is heading back to the AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education this November, this time with a Harvard Law School co-presenter and a workshop built around a single question: what happens after your institution shows up in AI search?
French, director of sales and marketing at Search Influence, and Tara Pope, director of marketing at Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation (PON), will co-lead “Build AI Visibility That Drives Enrollment” on Nov. 10 from 2 to 4 p.m. MST at the 2026 AMA Symposium in Aurora, Colorado. The session is grounded in new data from How Prospects Search in 2026, the latest comparative research from UPCEA and Search Influence, which shows that AI is playing a larger role in program research than it did a year ago.
Session at a Glance
“Build AI Visibility That Drives Enrollment” uses Search Influence’s work with the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School, a Search Influence client, as its central case study. French and Pope will walk through how PON assessed its own AI visibility and developed a plan to improve it, then apply the same process in the room during the two-hour session.
The format is hands-on. Attendees work through their own institution’s AI visibility questions alongside French and Pope, using the PON assessment as the model.
Attendees leave with a handout to run the same assessment on their own campus, including where their programs currently appear in AI search, what’s missing, and where to focus first. French and Pope also cover language for presenting those findings to the stakeholders who control the budget, so the session results in a plan ready to bring back to campus, already tailored to that institution.
How Prospects Are Searching in 2026
How Prospects Search in 2026 found that 58% of prospective students now use AI tools the way they would a traditional search engine, up from 50% last year. Eighty-three percent read AI-generated overviews when one appears, and 64% say being cited in one increases their trust in that source, up from 56% in 2025. For admissions teams, that means a growing share of program research is happening on platforms that reward different signals than a traditional search ranking.
“Build AI Visibility That Drives Enrollment” is built around converting that visibility into applications.
Attending the Symposium
The AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education runs Nov. 8-11 at the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center. Now in its fourth decade, it’s built around peer-reviewed sessions covering higher education marketing strategy, enrollment, and institutional reputation, with the workshop format specifically designed for hands-on work rather than a straight lecture.
Registration is open through the American Marketing Association’s event page. Institutions that want a head start on assessing their own AI visibility before November can also work through Search Influence’s SEO & AI Search Workbook for Higher Education Websites.