Jenna Heath (Liberal Arts) and Kathryn Raffety (Life Sciences) recently received fall 2019 Academic Assessment Mini-Grants through the office of academic assessment.

Health and the College of Liberal Arts received the award for “College of Liberal Arts Student Success Through Service Learning Pilot Project,” an ambitious, faculty-driven service-learning project that builds on an existing service-learning program fostering academic and professional development through community engagement, and aims to increase the number of service-learning courses across the college while connecting students and faculty to local organizations and initiatives. The goal is to improve student learning at UNLV

Rafferty received the award for the proposal  “Does Public Presentation of Course-based Research Projects Improve Student Effort and Project Quality?” This project tests the idea that the pressure of having one’s work evaluated by unknown people in a public setting will elevate student effort and project quality. Students created research posters of their BIO 473 projects for public presentation at the office of undergraduate research Fall Research Symposium. The students' creative work was then assessed using summative rubrics completed by the instructor, course classmates, and unaffiliated symposium attendees. The goal of this innovative project is to improve student learning at UNLV!