April Ursula Fox, a recent graduate of UNLV’s Ph.D. program in Educational Psychology, received UNLV’s highest graduate student teaching honor: the 2025–2026 Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award. Recognized for her innovative and transformative approach to education, Fox creates classroom experiences that blend intellectual rigor with creativity, reflection, and hands-on engagement.
As the teacher for EPY 303: Educational Psychology, Fox redesigned the course around immersive weekly themes exploring behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, motivation, memory, cognitive development, and more. Her classes became dynamic spaces where students learned through interactive activities, experiential exercises, collaborative discussions, and creative projects that encouraged them to connect psychological theory to real-world experiences, personal growth, and future careers across diverse fields, including many who will become part of the next generation of educators.
Among her most celebrated assignments were student-led “class takeovers” and a multimedia zine project that invited students to reimagine educational psychology through intentional composition, creativity, storytelling, and deep content reflection. Students described the experience as transformative, memorable, and unlike any other course they had taken.
Fox’s teaching philosophy centers on the belief that learning should be active, reflective, and personally meaningful. Through a framework she calls “Performatic Learning,” she encourages students to see themselves not simply as recipients of knowledge, but as creators of meaning, bringing their own experiences, identities, interests, and future goals into the learning process.
Beyond the classroom, Fox has presented her research on innovative teaching practices at national conferences, including presentations at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meetings from 2023 through 2026. Her work has explored topics ranging from applied educational psychology and self-coherence to the use of zines and multimodal creativity as tools for deeper engagement and learning.
