Parish Memorial Library’s third annual Fall Lecture Series begins on Oct. 19. Each year, Parish Library staff invite faculty members from the Anderson School of Business and Economics Department to present on their research interests. The three lectures will be held at noon on the main floor of Parish Library.

Oct. 19:
Gamification: Transforming routine activities into fun activities
Associate Professor Nick Flor, Anderson School of Management

Gamification is the transformation of existing activities so that they incorporate traditional gaming elements like scoring, competition, and achievements. The general goal is to make a routine activity "fun," for specific purposes that include skill acquisition, efficiency, and engagement. Flor will review the history of gamification, as well as its evolutionary, social, and psychological motivations and discuss his NSF research on the gamification of educational activities.

Flor is an associate professor of Management with over 25 years’ experience as a technologist, strategist, educator, researcher, and high-level manager. He is the author of “Web Business Engineering, adding online value by leveraging sustainable offline activities.” His specialties are pair programming, autonomous business models, virtual worlds, new/trans-media services.

Oct. 26:
Measuring the impact of electronic health record adoption on charge capture
Assistant Professor Nick Edwardson, School of Public Administration

Edwardson will examine the impact of electronic health record (EHR) adoption on charge capture—the ability of providers to properly ensure that billable services are accurately recorded and reported for payment. His study drew on billing and practice management data from a large, integrated pediatric primary care network that was previously a paper-based organization.

Edwardson is an assistant professor in the School of Public Administration. His research focus is innovation implementation in healthcare—including statistical quality methods, cost-effectiveness, and psychometrics/survey design. Prior to joining the faculty at UNM, Edwardson was the assistant director at the Center for Health Organization Transformation (CHOT), a National Science Foundation Industry-University Cooperative Research Center based out of Texas A&M University, Georgia Tech, Northeastern University, Penn State, and University of Alabama at Birmingham. Edwardson received a Ph.D. in Health Services Research from Texas A&M University and a master’s in Public Policy & Management from Carnegie Mellon University. He served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Nicaragua from 2006-2008.

Nov. 2:
Taking the classroom into the field: An experiment in Social Sciences

Professor Alok Bohara, Department of Economics

The Nepal Study Center (NSC) has begun an experimental pilot program under the initiative called the Sustainable Development Action Lab. The Lab focuses on harnessing all the rigorousness of graduate research activities at the center, then brings a group of graduate students in as mentors for an undergraduate seminar studies class. The two groups collectively analyze scientifically collected real-world data. Starting with the problem-driven research question about river water quality and its human and bio health hazard implications. This pilot experiment aims to come up with a research driven-solution—a long-term ecological monitoring program through citizen science—for an urban community in Nepal.

Bohara is a professor of Economics and the founding director of the Nepal Study Center. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Colorado, Boulder and a master's degree in Statistics from Tribhuvan University in Nepal. His current interdisciplinary research interest lies in the fields of urban social-ecological systems, gender-focused global health, health and environment , air and water pollution, resiliency and climate change, spatio-temporal analytics, and sustainable development  with a focus on the vulnerable populations.

 For more information on the lecture series, contact Todd Quinn at tq@unm.edu.