Charge
The Steering Committee was charged with:
- Developing a comprehensive, actionable plan for implementing the recommendations of the Artificial Intelligence Council, integrating the Academic Senate's feedback, and identifying priorities, timelines, and responsible units.
- Recommending policies, standards, and procedures to ensure that AI tools are adopted and managed in a manner consistent with UC Davis's ethical, academic, and operational standards.
- Identifying areas where additional consultation, investment, or policy development is required to support responsible and equitable AI integration.
- Suggesting structures for ongoing oversight, accountability, and evaluation of campus AI practices.
- Coordinating with relevant campus offices, governance bodies, and systemwide initiatives to ensure alignment and transparency.
Subcommittees
The Steering Committee's work was carried out through four subcommittees.
- Academic AI Subcommittee: Developed strategies for applying and implementing AI in teaching, learning, and research settings and for educating students and faculty across both campuses. The subcommittee documented its strategies in an implementation plan, developed in conversation with the other subcommittees and campus stakeholders, specifying objectives, activities, accountability, timelines and milestones, dependencies, resource requirements, and success metrics.
- Administrative AI Subcommittee: Developed strategies for applying and implementing AI in administrative settings and for educating staff across both campuses. As with the Academic subcommittee, this work was captured in an implementation plan covering objectives, activities, accountability, timelines and milestones, dependencies, resource requirements, and success metrics.
- AI Governance Subcommittee: Proposed a comprehensive AI governance model for academics and administration, including policies, operational procedures, and accountability mechanisms for AI evaluation, approval, and ongoing oversight, as well as a structure for continuing campus governance of AI beyond the Steering Committee's term. The subcommittee's approach balanced innovation and risk, allowed for agility, and built on existing processes where feasible, and was supplemented with an implementation plan specifying objectives, activities, accountability, timelines, dependencies, resource requirements, and success metrics.
- AI Investment Subcommittee: Consolidated the resource needs identified by the other subcommittees, identified tool, infrastructure, and capacity gaps, and determined the financial investment needed to support the proposed implementation plans. The subcommittee submitted a prioritized investment proposal.
Membership
Co-Chairs
- Aisha Jackson, Chief Information and Digital Strategy Executive
- Katheryn (Kadee) Russ, Chair, Academic Senate
Members
- Ron Amodeo, Chief Strategy Officer, UC Davis Health
- Kent Anderson, Executive Director, UC Davis Health Enterprise Analytics and Data Services
- Simon Atkinson, Vice Chancellor, Research
- Joseph Avery, Chair, Staff Assembly, UC Davis Health Chapter
- Eliza Bliss-Moreau, Chair, Research Committee, Academic Senate
- Michael Bradford, Vice Provost & Dean, Undergraduate Education
- John Cook, Associate Chief Information Officer – Innovation Technology, UC Davis Health
- Raissa D'Souza, Associate Dean of Research, College of Engineering
- Karl Engelbach, Associate Chancellor and Chief of Staff
- William Garrity, University Librarian and Vice Provost of Digital Scholarship
- Eleonora Grandi, Chair, Graduate Council, Academic Senate
- Amrita Julka, President, ASUCD
- Ari Kelman, Faculty Advisor to the Chancellor and Provost
- David Kyle, Chair, Undergraduate Council, Academic Senate
- Luna Loganayagam, President, Graduate Student Association
- Jeremy Mason, Chair, Information Technology Committee, Academic Senate
- Viji Murali, CIO and Vice Provost, Information & Educational Technology
- Emiliano Nolasco, Undergraduate Advisor to the Chancellor
- Olivia Raxter, Chair, Staff Assembly, Davis Campus Chapter
- Mi'Zauni Reese, Undergraduate Advisor to the Chancellor
- Pablo Reguerin, Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs
- Zainab Shakoor, Senior Campus Counsel and Campus Privacy Officer
- Clare Shinnerl, Vice Chancellor, Finance, Operations and Administration
- Rohit Thomas, Executive Council, Academic Federation
- Renetta Tull, Vice Chancellor, Inclusive Excellence
The AI Steering Committee produced the following vision statement for AI strategies at UC Davis:
The University of California Davis envisions a future in which artificial intelligence serves as a catalyst for human ingenuity, amplifying discovery, enriching learning, improving the delivery of services, and advancing the health and well-being of the communities we serve. Guided by the UC Responsible AI Principles and grounded in our land-grant mission, UC Davis will integrate AI thoughtfully and equitably across instruction, research, administration, clinical practice, and outreach so that students, faculty, staff, and patients all share in its benefits.
Our approach rests on a commitment to responsible innovation: embracing the transformative possibilities of AI while safeguarding accuracy, fairness, privacy, transparency, human agency, and mental health. We will build governance structures and support systems that are agile enough to keep pace with rapid technological change yet deliberate enough to ensure that every application of AI on our campus reflects our values. AI competency is becoming essential to student preparation for the workforce and for responsible citizenship. UC Davis will ensure that every student—undergraduate, graduate, and professional—has the opportunity to develop competency with AI tools appropriate to their discipline, to understand the ethical dimensions of AI use, and to critically evaluate AI-generated outputs. Faculty and teaching assistants will be supported through accessible, discipline-relevant professional development, communities of practice, and hands-on workshops that build confidence in AI-aware pedagogy and assessment design.
Equity stands at the center of this effort. We will proactively address the needs of all students by providing low- or no-cost access to campus-licensed AI tools, expanding workshop offerings across central service units, colleges and professional schools, and inviting students to contribute to policy development. Clear, consistent guidance on academic integrity will help students navigate the evolving expectations of scholarly work in an AI-enabled era.
Research and Scholarly Discovery
UC Davis aspires to conduct world-leading research both on AI and with the aid of AI— responsibly and ethically. UC Davis scholars and researchers are working to advance AI technology, to understand its social, cultural, and environmental impacts, and to address the ethical and philosophical questions raised by its adoption. Across disciplines from precision medicine and food systems to astrophysics and the creative arts, AI is already accelerating discovery by enabling the analysis of complex datasets, automating experimental workflows, and opening new frontiers for interdisciplinary collaboration. Our vision is to ensure that every researcher who can benefit from AI has reliable access to the computational infrastructure, large language model platforms, and expert support needed to advance their work.
To achieve this, UC Davis will invest in scalable high-performance computing capacity, advocate for systemwide preferred-pricing agreements with AI platform vendors, and expand AggieAI capabilities for common research tasks. We will foster a culture of collaboration by connecting researchers with AI expertise across campus, facilitating multidisciplinary partnerships, and building a visible research portal that makes it easy to find collaborators and resources. At the same time, we will strengthen training in the responsible conduct of AI-enabled research—addressing authorship norms, data handling, bias mitigation, and compliance—so that our scholarly contributions meet the highest standards of integrity.
Administrative Excellence and Workforce Readiness
AI offers UC Davis the ability to streamline operations, reduce administrative burden, and improve the quality and responsiveness of services for students, patients, faculty, and staff. Our vision is to build a workforce that is confident and capable in using AI tools— from foundational awareness through advanced application—and to pilot AI solutions in areas where they can deliver meaningful efficiency gains without compromising the human judgment and care that define excellent service.
UC Davis will create structured AI competency pathways for staff, expand communities of practice for peer learning, and recognize innovative AI integration through awards and showcases. Through platforms like AggieAI, Gunrock, and Rocky, the university will continue to develop secure, institutionally supported tools tailored to UC Davis needs— while rigorously evaluating build-versus-buy decisions for every use case. Sandbox environments will empower departments to experiment responsibly, and successful pilots will be documented and scaled so that lessons learned benefit the entire institution.
