Ph.D. in Psychometrics, Morgan State University
B.S. in Psychology, Morgan State University
A.A. in Psychology, Prince George's Community College

Dr. Avis Jackson joined the Center for Predictive Analytics in the summer of 2020 as Program Coordinator. Currently, she is assisting with several projects including Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) NIH SEPA grant, Medical Education Resources Initiative for Teens (MERIT)- Baltimore NIH SEPA proposal, Noncognitive Instrument Construction (NIC) - Determining Indicators of Success/ETS-FACETS, and others.

In 2015 she was trained and hired to facilitate mentor training for the initial year of the Summer Research Institute (SRI) of the ASCEND program at Morgan State University, one of the ten National Institutes of Health (NIH) Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity sites (BUILD). With the materials and training guides from the National Research Mentor Network (NRMN), she has participated or developed and conducted the mentor training for each consecutive year for mentors and students.

In 2018, she was the Director of the ASCEND SRI, where she directed ten staff in the facilitation of the program curriculum, using Student-Centered Teaching and Backward Design pedagogy. In fall 2019, she co-designed and co-taught BIOL498.002: Current Approaches and Questions in Health Science Research. This class is the ASCEND SRI redesigned as a semester course in the BUILD II grant.

She also participates as a co-facilitator of the Mobile Scientific Institutes (MoSI) annual training with other Morgan State University Professors partially funded by ASCEND and the Center for Excellence in Teaching. MoSI training seeks to assist faculty with the adoption of Student-Centered Teaching and Backward Design pedagogy into their teaching with the development of mini-modules or tidbits. She co-facilitates the Backward design and Peer Evaluation sessions. For the 2020 MSU MoSI, she is also a co-director.

Her other responsibilities included summarizing assessment data from the SRI and conducting critical thinking assessment for the Biology and Chemistry Departments using the Critical thinking Assessment Test and the Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment. She evaluated both programs to maximize effectiveness and to assist each program in reaching its programmatic goals.

She is a graduate of Morgan State University's Psychology Department and the Psychometric Program of the same department. Her dissertation developed a model of engagement for adult African and Hispanic Americans at Minority Serving Institutions.

Area of Specialization: College student & professor support; Program intervention assessment
Secondary Area of Specialization: Mentor Training, Critical Thinking, Program Assessmen

Recent Undergraduate Courses: SCIE200/BIOL498.002: Current Approaches and Questions in Health Science Research

Recent Graduate Courses: Principals and Methods of Research