Arizona Law Recognized by TLA with #MadeItHappen Award for Expanding Impact of the JD-Next Program
On September 25, 2024, Tech Launch Arizona (TLA) hosted the 2024 I-Squared Awards and Expo. Held at the Health Sciences Innovation Building at the University of Arizona, the annual event honors the university’s top inventors and startups, along with those people and organizations throughout the innovation ecosystem that support the commercialization of U of A inventions.
The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law was honored with the #MadeItHappen award for its work expanding the impact of the JD-Next program. Dean Marc Miller and program principal investigator Jess Findley accepted the award for the college.
"The University of Arizona is a place where we embrace grand challenges while driving social, cultural, and economic impact," said Interim Senior Vice President for Research Elliott Cheu. "I want to extend my gratitude to these entrepreneurial faculty, students, and partners whose innovation and entrepreneurship serve as shining examples of what we can achieve together."
During the 12 years that TLA has been operating at the university, it has worked with over 3,000 invention disclosures, executed over 600 licenses for companies to bring university inventions to market, and launched over 140 startups.
Along with awards presentations to the honorees, the event also included a strolling expo of over a dozen inventive, entrepreneurial faculty and student teams showcasing their impactful innovations and startups.
“I-Squared is our biggest event of the year,” said TLA Associate Vice President Doug Hockstad. “While the year has brought its challenges, we’re so grateful to see so much engagement from faculty, researchers and students alike. Our honorees have all made great achievements and we’re excited to honor them. At the same time, we’re posed to grow our impact in the coming year, especially as we ramp up our Startup Wildcats team and our catalog of services to help cultivate undergraduate student entrepreneurs.”
#MadeItHappen Award: James E. Rogers College of Law
The #MadeItHappen award is a special honor that TLA gives to highlight and acknowledge special achievements made by an individual or company. This year, the #MadeItHappen award went to the James E. Rogers College of Law for its work expanding the impact of the JD-Next program.
The college developed the JD-Next course to empower students with the skills and knowledge to excel in law school. Along with the course, the program includes a test which assesses how successful students might be in their law school education, evaluating their future potential, not judging their past.
Today, the testing standard for getting into law schools has been the LSAT, and more recently the GRE. While representing a standard measure, the LSAT has been shown to have some implicit biases that impact student performance on the test. Alternatively, JD-Next has been shown to resolve those issues and provide a more equitable measure of potential success.
This past June, the American Bar Association approved JD-Next as an alternative measure to use in admissions processes. Through TLA, the U of A has licensed JD-Next to Aspen Publishing, which is taking it forward to expand its use and impact. As of now, it has been implemented in about 40 law schools around the country and has benefited over 2000 students.