Kara is the Academic Assessment Lead for the Center for Educational Effectiveness in the UC Davis Office of Undergraduate Education. A proud alumna of UC Davis, Kara happily accepted the offer to become Undergraduate Education's first assessment coordinator in 2012. Since then, she has provided campus-wide leadership for developing and implementing sustainable approaches to undergraduate academic assessment in courses, programs, and colleges. Kara partners with faculty, staff, and other campus partners to promote a culture of curiosity about student learning. 

Kara's areas of expertise include: equity-minded assessment of student learning; development of literate identity/ies; feminist theories; educational research in higher education settings; and the intersections between language, culture, and identity. In October 2020, she co-authored an Occasional Paper for the National Institute of Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) titled There is no return to normal: Harnessing chaos to create our new assessment future. 

Prior to returning to UC Davis, Kara held several academic positions, including four years as an Assistant Professor of Curriculum & Instruction / Literacy at New Mexico Highlands University; five years as an instructor-of-record for the University of Nevada, Reno Core Writing Program; and four years as visiting literacy faculty for an HHMI-funded summer bridge program at the University of Nevada School of Medicine.