Illuminate

Research initiative proves to be a success

Liberty University showcased its plans for student learning improvement by launching its Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) with QEP Week March 21-25 and Research Week March 29-April 2.

Elisa Rollins, director of the QEP and the Center for Applied Research and Scholarship (CARS), said the QEP is a five-year plan to improve a specific area of student learning.

“The Quality Enhancement Plan is a requirement designated by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) of reaffirmation for accreditation,” Rollins said. “Our QEP focuses on enhancing student learning in the area of research and scholarship.”

Rollins said the program, titled “Illuminate: Cultivating a Community of Research,” has been in development since the fall of 2013, and she started with gathering ideas and information from faculty, staff and students.

“It’s a plan that we began working on two-and-a-half years ago with a call for topic submissions from our faculty, staff and students,” Rollins said. “It was really a grassroots campaign to try and find … areas that our students, faculty and staff (want to expand).”

Rollins said they received around 130 topic proposals in total. Through a content analysis of those topics, they found that “research and scholarship” and “faith integration” were the two most requested topics.

In order to present this program to the students, CARS hosted two weeks’ worth of events — QEPWeek and Research Week.

Rollins said QEP Week was a tremendous success and was hosted as a marketing campaign to provide awareness of the plan to faculty, staff and students.

“(QEP week was held) so that they would understand what the QEP was, why it was important, what Liberty’s focus was, how it would benefit them, and what opportunities would be available,” Rollins said.

Rollins said they held a Q&A tent outside of the Jerry Falwell Library Monday, March 25. Current student researchers from the school of heath sciences were there to answer students’ questions about what it is like to do research on campus, and QEP office staff were in attendance to answer any questions regarding specifics of the QEP.

Rollins said Research Week was a success, with more than 350 students involved in the week’s events, through participation as a presenter or by volunteering at the event.

She said Research Week is actually an initiative that came out of the QEP proposal. It is a combination of undergraduate and graduate research symposia from years past and has been expanded to include additional exposure to what research can do around the world.

“This year we added a keynote speaker, Dr. Raymond Damadian, the inventor of the MRI,” Rollins said. “He came on Tuesday evening and spoke about the process that he went through to discover and develop the MRI method.”

Rollins said this was an example of what can happen when research is taken from the classroom and applied to a real-world environment.

She said that while research is the main focus of the QEP, faith integration is equally as important.

“Participating in a culture of inquiry and participating in opportunities of discovery allows (students) to know God in a deeper way,” Rollins said. “The more we study creation and the world around us, the more we begin to understand him.”

Research Week was the last big event for the QEP for this semester, but Rollins said students should keep an eye out for more opportunities coming up in the fall.

Rollins said if students are interested in doing research, they should talk to current student researchers and faculty to become more aware of research that is happening within their programs.

More information about the QEP can be found online at www.liberty.edu/QEP.

GEE is a news reporter.