Academic Integrity Isn’t Just About Catching Cheaters. It’s About Teaching Students to Own Their Mistakes.

We got really lucky as our first guest was none other than Dr. Tricia Bertram Gallant, Director of the Academic Integrity Office and Triton Testing Center at UC San Diego, and one of the top thought leaders in the academic integrity space. Along the ride for these amazing conversations, is my colleague Bradley Emi, Pangram’s CTO, Co-founder, and cohost who is the most!

Our Conversation

A huge takeaway from me happened when Tricia provided this mic drop moment: “People of integrity aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. But the difference between people of integrity and people without it is that people with integrity say, ‘I made a mistake, I messed up,’ and they choose to learn from it.”

She also dropped some knowledge booms when she pointed out that academic integrity is not about punishing students but rather more about how to create systems that help them understand their decisions and how they can learn from them. This is exactly why her office at UC San Diego is focused more on education than resolving cases.

Bradley and I spoke with her about AI detection and how it fits into that work. Her answer left no doubts about what we need to do: “We need secure assessments. We cannot graduate people… unless we’ve had some secure assessments.”

So basically she is saying that AI detection is part of the puzzle but more importantly, creating a culture where academic integrity matters is a bigger piece that requires human effort, resources, and policies that support not only students, but faculty as well.

Why This Matters

During our conversation, I learned something that really surprised me. Many universities in the US (there are more abroad) still don’t believe in and thus don’t have dedicated academic integrity offices. Tricia also pointed out that while tech like Pangram helps, it’s not enough on its own.

If you are interested in how higher education is adapting to AI while keeping academic integrity at the forefront, I recommend listening to her full episode.