Dr. Lana Jackson, chair of First-Year Experience at Amarillo College, has been chosen to join a prestigious quintet of Texas professors charged with engaging teachers in adapting educational tools designed to improve student success.

Jackson emerged from a competitive application process to be appointed a LEAP Texas Faculty Fellow and as such will help launch the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Faculty Collaboratives Project.

Texas is one of five states in which LEAP Faculty Fellows will lead statewide conversations and build collaborative networks over the first two years (phase one) of the Faculty Collaboratives Project. Their work will be aimed at advancing the practical application of existing and emerging educational tools in order to optimally leverage learning, ultimately nationwide.

LEAP is the acronym for Liberal Education and America’s Promise, and is an initiative of the AAC&U. LEAP Texas, meanwhile, is a collaborative of more than 60 higher education institutions and is not driven by a particular institution, system of institutions, or even a state office.

The five LEAP Texas Faculty Fellows are:

• Dr. Doyle Carter, Angelo State University
• Dr. Jennifer Edwards, Tarleton State University
• Dr. Lana Jackson, Amarillo College
• Dr. Maureen Cuevas, Our Lady of the Lake University
• Dr. Terenzio Di Paolo, Dallas County Community College

The two-year appointments are inclusive of stipends and travel support.

“I am thrilled to be chosen to join this group of creative and energetic faculty,” Jackson said. “Expanding the use of innovative educational tools and high-impact practices is a very exciting and worthwhile prospect.”

Jackson is no stranger to student-success initiatives. She served as director of AC’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), from which emerged the College’s First-Year Seminar that helps establish a learning framework for first-year students. She also has served in a leadership capacity for Transition Texas, a progression-to-college effort of the Texas Education Agency.

“I have been fortunate to lead projects through the QEP and Transition Texas that have resulted in perceivable, positive impacts on student success,” Jackson said.

“That’s why, when I learned about the Faculty Fellows Project, I was immediately drawn to it; I felt it would be another excellent opportunity to engage with my peers across higher education in something that will make a difference. I expect to learn a lot.”

The AAC&U, long an advocate of developing cutting-edge educational tools—VALUE Rubrics, General Education Maps and Markers, etc.—launched the Faculty Collaboratives Project in 2014 to establish viable means by which such resources can be assimilated to the fullest scope.

Each of the five states involved in the first phase of the project have been charged with creating Innovation Hubs in which the collective work this project and other ACC&U student-success initiatives can be stored, interconnected, and accessed by faculty everywhere.

Resources developed by the project will therefore be available to all faculty members, regardless of field, discipline, or contact type, both within individual institutions and in states and state systems.

July 6, 2015