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Gender Recognition & Lived Name: Technology Systems

Major technology platforms at UC Davis to reflect lived names this academic year

Common technology services at UC Davis will soon display your lived name and gender, or the name and gender you want to be known by, especially if they are different from your legal name. 

Whether you are a trans or non-binary student, an international student who uses a chosen name, or a member of the campus community who uses a professional name, you will be able to add your lived name and gender to your online campus presence.  

Information and Educational Technology (IET) teams are working to update technology platforms at UC Davis to ensure that accurate gender and lived names are collected, displayed, and utilized in all campus interactions. This page reflects our progress while the Gender Recognition and Lived Name (GRLN) initiative is underway. Please check back for updates. 

Note: The technology ecosystem at UC Davis is broad. The university is working towards solutions to ensure that lived names appear seamlessly for all students, employees, alumni and affiliates across all university systems. In the meantime, separate updates are required for each system, not all systems are available for updating yet, and processes and timelines may differ across groups.  

Major technology platforms will gradually start reflecting lived names

Fall 2023 (expected end of September 2023)

  • Advising Appointment System
  • Identification cards
  • MyAwards
  • Online Advising Student Information System (OASIS) 
  • UC Davis Handshake career platform 
  • Health-e-Messaging
  • And more...

MyBill does not reflect lived names at this time. 

Summer 2023

  • Box.com
  • Google Workspace (DavisMail, Google Drive)
  • Microsoft 365 (email, OneDrive, Teams)

Spring 2023

  • UC Davis Canvas

Updates will appear in 24-72 hours (about 3 days). If it has been longer than 72 hours, please verify the updates in the online campus directory or UCPath as appropriate. Log out and back into systems to also assist in updating the new data. If this persists, please contact IT Express.  Some platforms may not reflect lived names immediately after a change is made. For example, the Microsoft Teams client may cache some data, like display names, for up to 28 days. The timeline of changes may vary across campus systems and services.

What is the impact?

  • Students: can update their lived name and gender in the UC Davis online directory.  
  • Faculty & staff: can update their lived name and gender in UCPath. Technology services and platforms at UC Davis will gradually reflect this information over time.  
  • Campus IT professionals: IET provided the technical infrastructure for gender, lived name, and legal name in identity and access management systems and the Banner student information system. Testing was completed for over 1,000 campus systems that use gender and name data from these sources. Testing for identity systems concluded in mid-August 2023. Banner student information system testing was completed in late August 2023.  

​​​​​​​Technical Milestones 

  • Spring 2023 
  • Planning starts for the technical implementation of the Gender Recognition and Lived Name policy in some IT systems. Assessment of current systems complete. Technical strategy developed.  
  • Summer 2023 
  • IT service owners test the new identity & access management protocols. Testing for technology systems that use student name data from the Banner student information system is underway. 

    Exception process for requesting access to legal names established and communicated. 

    August 15, 2023: Lived names become the default for IET-maintained identity systems. Non-student faculty and staff can use UCPath to update their lived name (previously campus online directory). Students, including student employees, can update their lived name in the online campus directory.
  • Fall 2023 
  • September 23, 2023: Campus technology platforms that rely on student name data from Banner will reflect lived names.

    Students can update their lived name and gender in the UC Davis online directory. Target completion date for student community: December 31, 2023.

Why Gender Recognition & Lived Name?

This project is part of the Gender Recognition & Lived Name Initiative at UC Davis.  

This initiative reaffirms the university’s commitment to digital inclusion and belonging, and advances IET’s strategic goal to ensure that technology platforms reflect the diversity of identities of our community. We also seek to comply with the University of California Gender Recognition & Lived Name Policy.