Elizabeth Narajo Hayes Earns Academic Innovation Award

Joanna Hubbard, assistant professor of biology, and Elizabeth Naranjo Hayes, assistant professor of Spanish, were the fall 2022 winners of the Truman Academic Innovation Award.

Hayes was recognized for building intercultural competence through proficiency-based projects. This proficiency-based assessment is one of five that she uses in her lower-division language classes, where she gives students a real-world scenario and they use all the course content to that point to complete the task. In this project, students were Mexican ROOMGO agents who set up clients with shared living spaces worldwide based on their needs. Students presented their clients, roommates and lodging they selected, with classmates voting for the most creative presentation and best client/lodging fit.