Prestigious Recognition for EPHE Assistant Professor Relles

Assistant Professor Dr. Stefani Relles was recently honored with a Faculty Opportunity Award for her research project entitled “Write to College”. It is the second such award this year for the Department ofEducational Psychology and Higher Education (EPHE) as fellow colleague Dr.Matthew Bernacki was also recently recognized.

Dr. Relles’ project focuses on the academic under-preparation of low-income students for college writing and their transitions to postsecondary settings. It will be piloted with a cohort of 10 high-achieving students who will matriculate to UNLV in the fall of 2015 from high-poverty public high schools in the Clark County School District.  Dr. Relles’ project is an example of how EPHE faculty members are utilizing their research to cultivate relationships in Las Vegas to work directly to impact our community.

The Faculty Opportunity Awards were created for the purpose of supporting faculty research through financial support with the potential for continued external funding.  The awards come through the Offices of the President, the Executive Vice President and Provost, and the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, at a total value of $400,000.  Over 40 faculty members submitted applications for this year’s awards, of which about half of the applicants were selected. Dr. Relles was awarded approximately $19,000 for her research.

EPHE Assistant Professor Earns Distinguished Awards to Aid in Research

Dr. Matt Bernacki

Dr. Matt Bernacki is an Assistant Professor for the EPHE Department, and is one of the most recent additions to the department faculty.  Although new to the department, Dr. Bernacki has already established himself as an outstanding asset to the faculty team.

Recently, Dr. Bernacki has been earned two distinguished awards for his research: The Individual Investigators Award for the 2014 Faculty Opportunity Awards, and the UNLV Doctoral Graduate Research Assistant Competition for 2014-2017.

The Faculty Opportunity Awards were created only two years ago, but for the monumental purpose of supporting faculty research through financial support with the potential for continued external funding.  The awards come through the Offices of the President, the Executive Vice President and Provost, and the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, and totaled $400,000.  Out of 44 applicants for both Innovation Technology Awards and Individual Investigator Awards, only 23 applicants were chosen. Dr. Bernacki was awarded over $19,000 for his research entitled "Building Capacity for Research on Learning via Analytics and 'Big Data'."

The UNLV Doctoral Graduate Research Assistant Competition for 2014-2017 is highly emulous, and only chooses 40 faculty members/teams  to receive a full-time doctoral graduate assistant for three consecutive academic years.  The GA's are to support the faculty members/teams in their research.  Dr. Bernacki wrote a successful proposal, and will be able to hire a GA to aid him in his research "Educational Datamining Under the Supervision of Learning Theory: A Learning Sciences collaboration Investigating STEM Learning".