As part of my work with UC Davis Academic Technology Services, I wrote a proposal to the UC Davis Academic Senate, arguing several things: (1) that a policy put in place at the beginning of our online education efforts in 2011 to restrict online courses from offering take home exams at a faculty member’s discretion should be rescinded; (2) that a pilot testing center program should be expanded and made permanent; and (3), that an online proctoring service be reviewed.

For this effort, I convened a meeting between myself, the vice chancellor of undergraduare education, and the two faculty members included on the report: Arnold Bloom and James Carey, both of whom I helped to develop their successful online courses and maintained close ties with throughout my campus tenure. While their names appear as 1st and 2nd author, I did write the entirety of the proposal document with the exception of their supporting statements that appear at the end. Keeping campus politics in mind, we of course wanted to highlight that this document represented the opinions of faculty teaching online courses.

I am proud of this effort, which I think demonstrates my commitment to enacting change where I think it is needed in a way that is consistent with campus procedures. Within a year of this meeting, all of our proposals were adopted: ProctorU was evaluated and adopted by campus faculty, the testing center was expanded, and take home tests were once again allowed in online and hybrid courses at a faculty member’s discretion, mirroring the campus policies pertaining to traditional face-to-face courses. This proposal was cited by the Academic Senate as the document that sparked the conversations that allowed all those things to happen.