Dr. Eric E. Fredericksen is the Associate Vice President for Online Learning and Professor in Educational Leadership at the University of Rochester.

Eric has almost 30 years of leadership experience in online education in positions at the University of Rochester, Cornell University, and the State University of New York System Office.

His research includes studies of the student and faculty experience in online courses, and more recently Leadership for Online Learning in Higher Education through the national CHLOE project. Eric served on the Board for the Online Learning Consortium, was President 2018-2019, and was honored as a Sloan-C Fellow.

Dr. Bethany Simunich is the Vice President of Innovation and Research at Quality Matters (QM), an educational non-profit dedicated to quality online learning at all levels of education. In this role, Dr. Simunich leads efforts to help institutions, faculty, and staff make data-driven, research-based decisions to implement quality assurance best practices and promote online student success. In her 20+ years in higher education, she has held faculty roles for both in-person and online teaching, and also worked in educational technology, instructional design, and faculty development for online learning. As an online learning administrator, she has created and managed instructional design processes and teams, led faculty development for online teaching, and served in leadership and consulting roles for institutional, state, and national efforts for online quality assurance. Dr. Simunich is also co-Director of the CHLOE Project (the Changing Landscape of Online Education), which presents the unique perspective of senior leaders in online learning from U.S. higher education institutions, and co-author of High Impact Design for Online Courses (HIDOC), which presents an instructional design model purpose-built for the unique considerations of online learning modalities.