2023-2024 LevelUP Fellows

This project aims to revolutionize our Masters in Public Administration (MPA) program by implementing a Portfolium project across the curriculum. The initiative involves integrating all major courses to create a cohesive assignment, requiring students to identify objectives, learning goals, and professional outcomes. Throughout their studies, students will build a comprehensive portfolio, highlighting acquired skills, knowledge, abilities, and professional development from each course.

This holistic approach not only helps students recognize the MPA program's unique contributions to their career preparation but also empowers them to confidently communicate their experiences to the community and prospective employers. The Portfolium project acts as a transformative tool, bridging academic learning with practical applications and enhancing students' preparedness for success in their professional pursuits.

This project introduces an innovative Canvas hub tailored to meet the specific needs of pregnancy and parenting students in the student affairs domain. Focused on Career & Self-Development, the hub empowers students to proactively manage and relate their academic and personal journeys. It emphasizes continual learning, self-awareness, navigating career opportunities, and building meaningful networks. The hub encourages effective communication, emphasizing information exchange within and outside the academic environment.

A core objective is to equip students with communication skills for self-advocacy, fostering engagement through discussions, collaborative projects, and activities. The hub integrates a resource-centric approach, connecting students with community and campus resources for academic and parenting responsibilities. Ultimately, the Canvas-based hub aims to provide essential skills and tools for navigating challenges, fostering a supportive community, and serving as a model for similar courses in Student Affairs.

This project proposes to develop a career readiness technology toolkit for instructors to guide their efforts at infusing technologies and developing student competencies in the technology domain. Technology is the major disruptor and source of value, driving innovation and change in organizations and across industries. Today's college graduates need to be prepared with the these technology skills, both the universally important and discipline-specific. These skills span areas such as data analysis, team communication, project management, artificial intelligence, and more. 

Instructors will be given a small lesson to promote more digital media in the classroom to provide students with more ownership and confidence in their work. Students are arriving at the University of South Alabama with little to no experience with the current formats needed for the traditional academic essay. By using multimodal approaches of digital rhetoric (YouTube, TikTok, Twitter/X, etc.), students will be more apt to participate and excel in composing arguments without the obstacles of learning new forms of argumentation.

Instructors will be given a small exercise to promote new technologies and digital rhetoric in the classroom to promote equity and the NACE competencies needed to prepare students for an academic career. This small video exercise can be completed within a week and provides immediate results regarding comprehension of argumentative genres. 

This comprehensive online guide supports incoming transfer students as they transition to the University of South Alabama. Available before their transfer date, this resource provides essential information and actionable steps to ensure a smooth and successful integration into academic and campus life.

The guide includes an overview of available degree programs, helping students explore majors and connect with academic advising resources. It also provides information on career services, including career counseling, internship and job opportunities, resume workshops, and networking events specifically designed for transfer students. Additionally, students find details on scholarship and financial aid opportunities, including transfer-specific scholarships, funding options, and important application deadlines.

Psychology is often thought of as a major in which students have few career options unless they attend graduate school. A sophomore level “Careers for Psychology Majors” course was created to help psychology majors explore careers options with a bachelor's degree in psychology as well as careers that require graduate study. This course is purposely placed during the sophomore year in order to expose students to this information at a time when they can use this knowledge to influence their own degree progress. This project is being conducted to show that the course is effective in increasing career decision self-efficacy, academic motivation, psychology career information, and major satisfaction in students taking the careers course over psychology majors who have not taken the careers course. 

Students in the course this semester for the first time will also complete the LevelUp “Set” Activity. They will be compared to students who have taken the careers course in past semesters without the “Set” activity to see if the “Set” activity also further increases the same measures. 

 

The Geography Program at the University of South Alabama has had a program-level outcome that has been used for over a decade. It seeks to measure student’s readiness to transition to their next step. The outcome's success was measured with a single question asked the graduating majors on their perception of preparedness.

This project seeks to increase the number of measures used by incorporating students and faculty identifying the Knowledge, Skills, and Activities (KSA) students should acquire from the upper-level Geography courses classified in the Curriculum Map as being at the Mastery/Assessment level. Course instructors will identify an assignment or project to be measured for the outcome. A rubric will be developed, and the Outcomes function in Canvas will be used to streamline the process. 

The result of this project was a Canvas module to help provide guidance and support to individuals who are in the early stages of their professional journey. These services aim to assist individuals, often students or recent graduates, in making informed decisions about their careers, developing essential skills, and successfully transitioning into the workforce. Creating a canvas module for early career exploration that is major specific can be an engaging and informative way to help individuals explore and plan their careers. Canvas modules are versatile tools that allow for visual representation and organization of information. 

The purpose of this project is to examine the relationship between explicit instruction of critical analysis in a Graduate Seminar course and MCAT scores, with an ultimate goal of tracking medical school acceptance rates. Application to medical school is a highly competitive process. The applicant must meet several minimum criteria but, more often than not, the applicant must exceed the minimum criteria to be considered by the admissions committee.

A competitive score on the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) is a major hurdle for most students. According to a recent report by the Association of American Medical Colleges, the current average MCAT score is a 501.3 for all test-takers, yet 511.7 was the average score of matriculants for 2022-2023. Given the scientific literacy required to do well on the MCAT, an increased focus on critical analysis and reading comprehension could help students achieve better scores. 

This project aims to design and integrate standards and specifications education into the civil engineering curricula across different levels within the Department of Civil, Coastal, and Environmental Engineering. To achieve this, we will develop five standalone learning modules tailored for freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, and graduate levels. These modules are designed to seamlessly integrate into existing courses. For lower-level courses, our approach includes hands-on activities that establish meaningful connections with industry, inspiring and introducing students to the world of standards and specifications.

Additionally, team-based learning modules will be incorporated into the Civil Engineering Materials Lab course, enhancing student engagement and mastery of standards related to materials. As students progress to higher-level courses, they will actively participate in mock standards development activities. This hands-on experience is intended to further refine their skills, ensuring they are well-prepared for industry standards and specifications, thus bridging the gap between academic learning and real-world application.