News & Events

By Shannon Glennon, AI Technology Transformation Specialist, Syracuse University ITS 

Claude now has two new tools available: Claude Cowork and Claude Code. One acts like a project manager, working through tasks on its own. The other builds things: websites, tools, working software. Here’s what each one does and how to try it. 

Cowork: Hand Off a Task, Get Back a Finished Result 

Cowork takes a task, works through it in multiple steps on its own, and hands you a finished result. It can also run on a schedule, doing work even when you’re away from your desk entirely. 

Here’s an easy one to try: say a department has a busy Teams channel, and scrolling through every post each Monday to catch the important stuff becomes time-consuming. Set it up once:  

1. Open the Claude desktop app and switch from “Chat” to “Cowork” using the toggle in the chat window. (Note: Cowork is currently available only in the desktop app.) 
2. Connect the Teams channel you would like summarized. 
3. Tell Cowork what you would like it to do: “Every Monday at 8 a.m., summarize the past week’s activity in this channel and save it as a document.” 
4. Review the plan Claude proposes, then approve it. 

From then on, the summary shows up on its own, no reminders needed. 

Claude Code: Describe a Website, Get a Website 

Claude Code writes real, working code: websites, tools, pages you can click through. You describe what you want it to do and how you want it to look, and Claude Code builds it, then keeps adjusting based on what you ask for. 

Try it on something small, like a newsletter signup page: 

1. Open Claude Code using the toggle at the top of the left sidebar. Claude Code is available both in the desktop app and on claude.ai. 
2. Describe what you want: “Build a simple signup page with fields for name, email and how often someone wants to receive the newsletter.” 
3. Tell it what happens after someone signs up (for example, saving the entry to a spreadsheet). 
4. Review what it builds and ask for changes in plain language until it matches what you pictured. 

Getting Access 

1. Go to getclaude.syr.edu. 
2. Watch the training video for each tool. 
3. At the top of the page, you’ll see “available to request.” Click “Request Claude Cowork” or “Request Claude Code.” 
4. Access usually shows up within about an hour. 

By Shannon Glennon, AI Technology Transformation Specialist, Syracuse University ITS 

AI tools move fast! If you tried Claude back in the winter and haven’t checked in since, here’s what’s changed. 

1. It Remembers You

Claude used to start fresh for each conversation. You’d explain your role, your preferences and your project context repeatedly. As of March 2026, Claude carries context across separate chats automatically, including your name, your writing style and the projects you’re working on. You can view every stored memory, edit it or clear it out entirely by going to claude.ai > Settings > Memory.  

2. It Can Read Much More at Once

Claude can now hold roughly a million tokens of context in a single conversation. In practical terms, that means you can hand Claude an entire semester’s worth of course documents, a full contract or months of meeting notes and it can work with all of it at the same time instead of losing track partway through. There’s no setting to turn on here; it’s automatic on supported models. 

3. It Lives Inside Excel, PowerPoint and Word

Claude’s add-ins for Microsoft 365 apps rolled out across the spring of 2026. Word joined in April, and Excel and PowerPoint reached full availability in May. Instead of copying data back and forth, you can now build pivot tables, charts and formulas in Excel, generate and edit slides in PowerPoint, or draft and revise documents in Word, all with Claude working directly inside the file. You’ll find it on the Home tab, at the far right of the ribbon. It should be there by default, but if it’s not showing up, go to Home > Add-ins (or Get Add-ins) and select/search for Claude by Anthropic. 

4. It Became Noticeably Smarter

Anthropic released a new generation of models this year, including Claude Opus 5 and Claude Sonnet 5, with meaningfully better reasoning, writing quality and follow-through on multistep requests. If you tried Claude months ago and found it fell short on a complex task, it’s worth trying again. You can see and switch between available models by clicking the model name at the bottom of the chat window. 

5. Claude in Chrome

Claude in Chrome is a browser extension that adds a Claude side panel to the right of the page you’re viewing. It can see the page and act on it. It reads, clicks, types, navigates and fills out forms, so you get help without leaving your browser. To try it, open Chrome, install the “Claude for Chrome” extension from the Chrome Web Store, sign in using your NetID, then click the Claude icon in your toolbar to open the side panel. Claude will ask permission before acting on a site the first time, so review what it’s about to do before approving. 

Worth a Second Look 

If your first impression of Claude is a few months old, it’s a different tool now. Open a new conversation and try something you gave up on before. There’s a good chance it handles it now! 

To learn more about generative AI resources available at Syracuse University, visit ai.syracuse.edu.

Syracuse University Information Technology Services (ITS) has announced the availability of Claude Code and Claude Cowork to students, faculty and staff under the University’s enhanced Claude Enterprise license. The addition strengthens Syracuse’s standing as one of the first universities in the country to offer campuswide access to Anthropic’s Claude, building on a partnership that has already reshaped how the campus community researches, teaches and works.

Claude Code is an agentic coding tool that lets users delegate programming tasks directly from the command line or through a desktop app. Claude Cowork brings similar agentic capabilities to non-developers, letting faculty, staff and students hand off multi-step tasks such as research synthesis or document preparation to an AI collaborator that can work across files, tools and systems from start to finish, and even continue running unattended on a schedule. Both tools build on the privacy-first design already in place across the University’s Claude Enterprise license, which does not train on University data, keeping academic and administrative work private and secure.

Information Technology Services will support the rollout with training resources to help the community use both tools responsibly, including guidance on what data is and is not appropriate to share. Faculty, staff and students interested in Claude Code or Claude Cowork can request access after watching a training video at getclaude.syr.edu.

According to Jeff Rubin, senior vice president and chief digital officer, “Giving our community direct, hands-on experience with tools like Claude Code and Claude Cowork is part of how we make sure Syracuse effectively leverages this technology rather than reacting to it. The more comfortable our students, faculty and staff are working alongside AI, the better positioned they will be in the future.”

As colleges and universities around the world race to integrate AI into teaching and learning, Syracuse is pioneering the use of AI tools tailored to the goals of higher education: enhancing instruction, deepening student engagement, supporting innovation and streamlining operations. Claude Cowork and Claude Code augment an extensive suite of resources available to the campus community. For more information, visit ai.syracuse.edu.