Jarod T. Giger, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Greenspun College of Urban Affairs, where he has served on the faculty since 2022. A fifth-generation farmer and first-generation college graduate, he brings more than a decade of direct social work practice and a sustained commitment to communities—experience that informs his scholarship on health disparities, policy, and applied research.

Before joining UNLV, Giger held the Vernon Wiehe Excellence in Social Work Endowed Professorship at the University of Kentucky and served for six years on the interdisciplinary editorial board of The Journal of Rural Health. His interprofessional education work was recognized through his induction as an associate of the University of Kentucky Center for Interprofessional Health Education.

Giger earned his Ph.D. in social work from the University of Missouri and completed interdisciplinary training in the university’s College of Engineering through its Interdisciplinary Lab and Center for Eldercare and Rehabilitation Technology. He later completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the National Rural Health Association, focusing on national telehealth policy and cross-state licensure challenges.

His current research spans eHealth literacy, natural language processing, causal inference/counterfactual methods, and community development—bridging academic research and real-world implementation to improve outcomes in rural and urban communities. He also holds a business analytics science certificate from UNLV, with training in SQL, Tableau, and strategic data modeling.

Committed to forward-thinking pedagogy, Giger completed a full credential set through Auburn University’s Teaching with Artificial Intelligence program. He is a UNLV Teaching with Generative AI fellow, selected for the program to advance the responsible, ethics-centered integration of generative AI in higher education.