Louis Rocconi, assistant professor, won an AccessLex Institute/Association for Institutional Research (AIR) grant in the amount of $50,000.

“I am honored to receive this grant and grateful to AccessLex and the Association for Institutional Research for supporting my research.”

The project being funded by this grant is titled “Measuring quality in legal education: Examining the relationship between law school rank and student engagement.”

The purpose of Rocconi’s study is to examine how law school rankings, such as US News and World Report, relate with other indicators of law school quality, especially student engagement. Student engagement more accurately describes what students experience while enrolled and has been linked to desirable outcomes such as high academic performance, diverse interactions, and satisfaction. Rankings play an integral role in students deciding which school to attend and what job placements they receive after graduating. So, it’s important to understand if, and how, rankings measure this experience.

​The AccessLex Institute/AIR Research and Dissertation Fellows Program is a grant competition promoting scholarship on issues related to access, affordability and value of legal education specifically, and graduate and professional education more broadly.