By Steven Slivka (Director of Communications, School of Integrated Health Sciences)

Professors Jennifer Nash and Kara Radzak were honored with the School of Integrated Health Sciences’ Summer Fellowships for their efforts to revise, or in some cases, to create a new class supporting UNLV’s Top Tier 2.0 initiative.

Nash, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy, and Radzak, an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Nutrition Sciences, will discuss their new classes and review their findings during a ‘Lunch and Learn’ session to be held on campus March 1.

“I’ve been teaching this course for five years and I wanted to make it more accessible, align it with new national exam standards as well as entry-level physical therapy competencies about Neurologic Rehabilitation recently published,” Nash said in regards to DPT 786, otherwise known as ‘Neurological Rehabilitation.

Nash incorporated a few new initiates into DPT 786, including pro bono balance exercise classes which students taught to seniors across the Las Vegas Valley. She also added a clinical partnership so students could have more opportunities to shadow in-patient rehabilitation.

Students also had the opportunity to connect with alumni from the Department of Physical Therapy, who provided them with critical advice to help them complete their rigorous curriculum and allowed them to observe patients with neurologic disorders during treatment.

“Our students really enjoyed the community partnerships and the balance screenings we added, not to mention that they engaged with more mentors and alumni than years previous,” Nash added. “Those were the hallmarks of the Fellowship outcome.”

As part of her efforts, Radzak revised KIN 458, an organization and administration course for athletic training students during their senior year. For their service-learning project, students were required to create a key stakeholder educational section about concussions.

Students went to West Tech, a local high school, and met with students from their sports medicine program. They spoke with them about the different members of a sports medicine team (athletic trainers, physicians, sports psychologists, etc.) and took them through a key study about concussions.

“The big takeaway is that the teacher of the West Tech sports medicine program was really receptive and their students really enjoyed working with our students,” Radzak said.

In addition to revising KIN 458, Radzak also created a new sports component of KIN 494, ‘Applied Kinesiology.’

“The class that I created is the best example of how the Fellowship is really helping the students in the long run from a bigger impact,” she said. “The class is very fun because the students go through the whole process of understanding and writing their own research. By the end of the semester, they have created their own mini-study and created it in journal form. More than half the class said that KIN 494 was their favorite class that they took at UNLV. It felt amazing to create a class that got such an overwhelmingly positive response from our students.”

“Dr. Nash and Dr. Radzak have done a remarkable job creating new learning opportunities for their students and are well deserving of the Summer Fellowship,” said Ronald Brown, dean of UNLV’s School of Integrated Health Sciences. “Their commitment to the university’s Top Tier 2.0 initiative is helping our students to be better prepared for when they graduate.”

Sharon Jalene, Associate Dean of Academic and Student Affairs for the School of Integrated Health Sciences, lauded Nash and Radzak for the steadfast support they provide their students inside the classroom.

“Dr. Nash and Dr. Radzak's efforts clearly demonstrate their commitment to our students, and it is so inspiring to see," she said.