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Nearly 30 years ago, Critical Race Theory (CRT) was introduced to the field of education. Ladson-Billings and Tate argued that in order to understand educational inequities in the United States, it is essential to analyze the intersections of race and property. Throughout the past three decades, scholars within the field of education have utilized CRT to gain a greater understanding of educational outcomes and the experiences of students, teachers and administrators of color in schools. Presently, CRT has gained nation-wide attention. Conservative media has co-opted the theory and rebranded it as an indoctrination tool to teach students to hate whiteness. The authors of this paper have found CRT useful in unpacking our experiences as graduate students at a predominantly white public university and in our work as teacher educators. This paper was penned in response to the misinformation campaign targeting CRT. The authors use a tenet of CRT, centrality of experiential knowledge, to discuss their raced experiences within their doctoral programs.

The paper describes the international research conducted in collaboration between the University of Padova, University of North Texas, and Windesheim University of Applied Sciences. The study explores how higher education faculty involved in professionalizing courses for the educational area perceive the pandemic-induced transition to digitalized education (DE), after one year of experience with it. This paper introduces the second phase of a research study that began as early as spring 2020, with an online survey distributed worldwide. It seeks to investigate possible changes after one year of digitalized education related to (1) perceptions of institutional support and professional training offered; (2) potential and challenges of DE; and (3) professional intentions for future uses of DE. Details on the instrument's reliability and structure will also be provided. We are exploring how the DE is changing teachers' routines and whether these changes are paving the way for collaborative, reflective, and student-centred approaches that could have long-term consequences. This is to help focus future training pathways to better support teachers in teaching effectively and efficiently for learning, both in times of crisis and in times of normalcy.

The fields of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have seen massive growth in recent years. Numerous degree programs have started to redesign their curricula to meet the high market demand for people qualified to fill related job positions. In this paper, the authors perform a content analysis of online job postings hosted on Indeed.com and provide a skill classification framework for AR/VR job positions. Furthermore, they present a ranking of the relevant skills for such positions. The paper contributes to the extant literature on curriculum design in degree programs by presenting the popular skills in the AR/VR domain.

This paper offers a meta-analysis scoping study of doctoral dissertations completed in the last 20 years in one doctoral programme of Educational Leadership (EL) at a higher education institution in Texas, aiming at identifying topical foci, epistemology, methodology and main themes. Therefore, we systematically collected, documented, securitised and analysed completed dissertations following the steps identified by PRISMA guidelines. The review aimed to answer the following four questions: (1) What are the general trends of doctoral dissertations in the studied programme? (2) What is the topical foci of these dissertations? (3) What are the prevailing epistemological constructs and genres informing this work? (4) What are the gaps in this research focus within the scope of educational leadership and policy? Based on our analysis, four main key themes were identified: educational leadership and policy, public education, equity and social justice, and race and ethnicity. Further implications, utility of research and future dissertations in educational leadership in this programme and other similar programmes are fully discussed.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore middle and secondary mathematics preservice teachers' (PST) perceptions of the benefits, challenges and impacts of implementing lesson study. Design/methodology/approach: This paper presents a single case study in the university context. Embedded units of analysis included a group of middle and a group of secondary mathematics PSTs, who were in the internship year of a teacher preparation program. Findings: This paper presents several perceived benefits, challenges and impacts according to PSTs. PSTs indicated benefits included their focused student observations and their collaboration in lesson design. Perceived challenges included observing as a nonparticipant observer and aspects of planning. The different impacts occurred in three phases: planning, observing during teaching and reflection. Research limitations/implications: First, the study participants included a small group of middle and secondary mathematics PSTs from one university in central Texas. Second, the PSTs in this study were not able to reteach the lesson, which may have influenced their perceptions. Practical implications: Mathematics teacher educators could use insights from this study as they implement lesson study or other field experiences to support PSTs in their growth as mathematics teachers. Originality/value: This paper examines PSTs' perceptions, which could benefit mathematics teacher educators as they consider how to introduce or implement lesson study with PSTs.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] This paper presents a historical analysis of the development, implementation, research, and assessment of an evidence-based introductory algebra-based physics course. The course is laboratory based and taught with an inquiry-based pedagogy. The course has remained unique and has been taught consistently for over 20 years. It is taught predominantly to health science majors and is completely laboratory based without a lecture and without a required text. Students learn by working through a guided inquiry manual in groups, doing experiments to explore the nature of the world around them. They develop both quantitative and qualitative models based on their experiments. The focus is as much on critical thinking, modeling, and thinking like a scientist, as on physics content. I discuss the course throughout the years, presented in the context of the field of physics education research historically and the state of our department locally. The results of multiple forms of assessment are presented chronologically. The assessments were designed to answer research questions about the students' conceptual understanding and thinking skills, the effects of class size expansion, and questions about learning assistants' pedagogical content knowledge. One finding was that the conceptual understanding of students in the inquiry-based course was significantly higher than students taught traditionally but not significantly different from students taught by other research-informed pedagogies. However, we found that students taught in the inquiry-based format showed more evidence of the application of thinking skills as assessed by our thinking skills rubric in free-response exam problems. We have demonstrated that it is possible to expand a laboratory-based, inquiry-based physics course from sections of 24 students to sections of 60 students with the help of learning assistants and we have developed and validated a set of questions that can be used to measure learning assistants' pedagogical content knowledge or for learning assistant training purposes.

In this paper we demonstrate that using mixed reality (MR) technology can innovate our chemical engineering laboratory curriculum at Prairie View A&M University, a Historically Black College/University (HBCU). Particularly, we describe the development of a MR proof of concept to carry out a traditional fluid mechanics lab -- pressure drop as a function of flow through a straight-run pipe -- that can allow for the possibility of remote instruction for a traditionally hands-on practicum.

States have adopted a variety of policies to encourage universities to expand research production, with the hope of supporting economic growth and competitiveness. This paper considers whether a state-level initiative succeeded in influencing university-based research outputs among regional public universities. We test whether the Texas Research Incentive Program increased research production at a set of state universities as measured by total research spending, federally-funded research spending, the number of scholarly publications, and the share of publications published in high impact factor journals. Using a novel dataset and difference-in-differences analytic strategy, we found that TRIP adoption was associated with a 19%-25% increase in research expenditures at emerging research universities in Texas relative to a matched set of comparable universities. However, TRIP did not influence federally-funded research expenditures or journal publication outputs. We also show that federally-funded research expenditures influence publication outputs -- both in amount and quality -- and that number of full-time faculty influences both federal research expenditures and publication outputs. We discuss contributions to the literature on regional public universities, loose coupling, and research production, as well as implications for policy.

This paper discusses Texas Examinations of Educator Standards Program Languages Other Than English -- Spanish exam (TExES LOTE - Spanish) and its potential bias, particularly against teacher candidates with Spanish as a heritage language (HL) background. In Texas, most teacher candidates, or college students of Spanish preparing for secondary teacher certification, are heritage speakers of Spanish. However, while they are competent Spanish speakers, many fail their TExES LOTE - Spanish exam. In light of recent demographic trends and a growing body of research on HL learners, Spanish teaching in higher education and, to a lesser extent, in secondary schools has begun to move away from teaching so-called prestigious varieties of Spanish (e.g., Spain) toward inclusion of other varieties of Spanish, especially those spoken in the U.S. and those that reflect students' heritage. Despite this pedagogical shift, we posit that TExES LOTE - Spanish exam does not reflect current Spanish curricular content, which negatively affects these students' performance. We provide examples and available exam statistics to support our claim. Through this conversation about the mismatch between student background and TExES LOTE - Spanish content, we hope to start a dialogue about a much-needed revision of this exam in the near future.

The Pell Grant is the foundational need-based student aid program in the United States, providing students of lower socio-economic status a pathway to afford college costs and educational expenses. Currently, over one-third of all U.S. undergraduate students receive Pell. This paper examines federal Pell assistance and institutional costs for students at the 38 publicly controlled regional Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which serve high average percentages of low-income students and students of color. By deploying the University of Alabama Education Policy Center's new Mission-Driven Classification System to enrollment, tuition and fees, and other costs metrics along with federal Pell and student loan data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), a more direct apples-to-apples comparison of the 38 public regional HBCUs to the 182 public regional non-HBCU in the same 19 southern states, is revealed, as are comparisons to the universe of 461 public regional universities nationally. This paper finds that America's most financially disadvantaged students rely on Pell Grants to alleviate financial constraints at public regional HBCUs, where 55 percent of students are Pell recipients, a rate 24 percent higher than their non-HBCU counterparts. Moreover, the data underscore an opportunity for Congress to construct a meaningful federal role in higher education by providing stable and sustainable funding for the Pell Grant program.

Considerable scholarly attention has been paid to various efforts aimed at preparing graduate students for careers as practitioners of public administration. One such approach is hiring practitioners-in-residence (PIR) or employing professors of practice. This paper first reports results of a web content analysis of 355 NASPAA programs that determined the extent of use of PIRs. Results show that only 17% of programs explicitly list a practitioner-in-residence. Given that less than a fifth of programs have practitioners-in-residence on their faculty, this paper provides an in-depth description of one such initiative i.e., Texas State University's experience with the Manager-in-Residence (MIR) program. Numerous ways in which the MIR program helped connect MPA students with the practice side of public administration are described. Finally, the implications of such a program for public administration pedagogy and practice and its potential for adoption by programs are discussed.

This paper presents a mixed method study examining the relationship between teacher advanced degree attainment and student achievement. This study utilizes teacher demographic data along with standardized test scores from 702 public schools in south central Texas. First, OLS regression analyses were employed to measure the relationship between the percent of teachers with advanced degrees and student achievement. The results of these analyses indicate that the percentage of teachers with advanced degrees made a statistically significant independent contribution to the variance in student outcomes on the state exam in English Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies. Following the analysis of the quantitative data, semi-structured interviews were conducted with principals identified as having the top 1% of teachers on staff with advanced degrees within this region. A constructivist approach was used to identify common themes for how these principals recruit and retain faculty with advanced degrees. Five themes emerged. These principals: employ a focused hiring philosophy, foster a learning organization, encourage teacher autonomy, participate in higher education partnerships, and support graduate degree attainment. Each of these themes are explored and practical suggestions for school leaders is presented.

In this paper, we describe an innovative design for a multidisciplinary service-learning course on supply chain management in the industrial distribution program housed in the College of Engineering at a large research university in Texas. The purpose of this course was to increase students' technical expertise and build a mindset and skills needed to tackle current societal issues, raising their social responsibility and enhancing civic-mindedness. The course combined curricular learning with community service, applying the content of academic disciplines to practice. It brought students from industrial distribution and sociology together to help food pantries to improve their operational efficiencies so that the food pantries can serve more people and work toward their goal. In this project, student groups identified the specific needs of community food pantries. They recommended solutions to improve operational efficiency so that they could use their technical skills to address the challenges and make an impact on the communities. In addition, student groups interacted with partner agencies via technologies that aided distance communication, which facilitated partnerships in remote locations. We also evaluated this project. The results reveal that this project had an impact on students' personal and professional development as well as the community.

This study assessed student research papers using a rubric to determine the information literacy skills of students in introductory composition classes. Librarians taught a pilot composition course that infused information literacy (IL) into the traditional English curriculum. The students' IL skills were compared to those of undergraduates enrolled in a traditional composition class, who received only a one-shot library instruction session. Students in the information literacy composition course scored better than their counterparts in six of seven IL skill categories. Results support greater integration of information literacy and composition curricula as a path forward for student success.

Texas A&M University-Commerce has implemented supplemental instruction (SI) for Calculus since the fall of 2013. A direct display of the ABC rates from fall 2005 to spring 2021 only presents fluctuation from semester to semester, and one can hardly deduce that the ABC rates are increasing. In this paper, the "moving average" technique is used to reveal the effectiveness of SI in improving the percentage of students earning a grade of A, B, or C (ABC rates) in Calculus. Our longitudinal data under the "moving average" also shows that the SI implementation increased the ABC rates of major ethnic groups.

The purpose of this study was to examine our music teacher educator (MTE) identity construction. Our research questions were: (a) How did we describe our MTE identity construction during our doctoral education? and (b) What experiences were most salient in our MTE identity construction during our doctoral education? We used basic qualitative methods to conduct a self-study of our transition from music educators to teacher educators. Hermans and Hermans-Konopka's dialogical self theory was our theoretical framework. Through analysis, our findings coalesced around three themes: (a) experiences of uncertainty and tension related to who we were as people; (b) wrestling with uncertainty through internal conflict, open-ended mentorship, gradually adopting nuance, fearing rejection, and seeking acceptance; and (c) an expanded sense of self as we incorporated parts of being an MTE into our whole selves, embraced agency in meaning-making, accepted tension, and began offering transformative experiences to our students. Implications for music teacher education are discussed. [This study was presented at the 2021 International Symposium on the Sociology of Music Education, virtual conference hosted by the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences.]

An emerging body of literature seeks to design, implement, and analyze best practices in service-learning at undergraduate universities. What scholars have not examined as well as service-learning as applied to students at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI's). Given that students at such universities are in unique learning environments, there is a question of how well standard practices in service-learning apply to HSI students. This paper presents the analysis of two semesters' worth of service-learning requirements in an Introduction to American Politics course at an HSI in Texas. Using the feedback provided by the students on the final course evaluations, I conclude that the current pedagogy applies reasonably well to students at HSI's, but there are certain areas in which pedagogy should be adjusted to reflect the unique aspects of students at HSI's, such as accounting for the socioeconomic needs of HSI students.

Misinformation about climate change is a consequential societal issue, causing polarization and reduced support for climate action. However, the seriousness of the problem does not preclude non-serious solutions. There are numerous potential benefits to humor as a strategy to counter misinformation, such as attracting attention and engaging disengaged audiences. This paper describes a humorous serious game--"Cranky Uncle"--developed in the U.S. to inoculate players against climate misinformation. The game combines psychological research into active inoculation, critical-thinking work on misleading rhetorical techniques, communication research into cartoon debunking, and gamification. The game's cartoon humor and the creative potential of active inoculation lends it to classroom applications; educators have thus used classroom activities to complement the game in order to improve students' climate literacy and critical-thinking abilities. We present several qualitative U.S.-based case studies, in formal English-speaking tertiary classrooms and informal public education settings, to illustrate the utility of a humorous, game-based approach to building resilience against climate misinformation. The approaches adopted in our case studies are offered as a model for other educators looking to use interactive games to teach critical thinking.

The purpose of this paper is to document the indirect effects of the Texas Top Ten Percent Plan on professional school degrees awarded and to propose the far reach of the law as an alternative argument in support of race-conscious admissions policies challenged under the strict scrutiny standard. Designed around the two tests of strict scrutiny, this study first highlights the essential need for a diverse constituency of professionals to enable societal advancement as a compelling state interest established by the courts and then provides empirical evidence to support additional narrowly tailored race-conscious admissions policies. Complementary interrupted time series analysis and logistic regression find that current admissions policies fail to improve diversity in professional school degrees awarded.

Field-based education is interactive, hands-on, and based on real world experience and methodology, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has faced special challenges. As many institutions may struggle to maintain this vital component of geographic education, this resource paper aims to illustrate the impacts of the pandemic and provide some strategies to overcome the challenges from the experience of teaching a field methods course at a university in Texas. While many studies have focused on evaluating field instruction amidst the pandemic, our commentary focuses on both a ground-based perception from instructors and students and a comparison before and after the outbreak of the pandemic. We found that virtual attendance is disadvantageous to teaching and learning, and transferable skills like teamwork and communication are compromised due to a reduction in social interaction. However, intrapersonal skills such as observation, note-taking, and organization were better received in students' learning. Students expressed minimal safety concerns about the on-campus fieldwork given the conformity to the safety and health protocols. Based on the existing literature and our experience, we conclude with four generalized recommendations to share with colleagues in a similar situation, hoping to help retain the critical role of field-based education even under disruption.

With the growth of online higher education and the increasing diversification of college and university students, there is a need to focus on addressing the inequities of online learning and responding to the needs of diverse students. Students experience greater challenges in academic performance and in persisting and completing online programs, especially among particular student subgroups and course subject areas. Although research has identified some of the facilitating factors and barriers to online student persistence in coursework, supporting diverse online students requires attention not only to course design and instruction, but also broader institutional commitments. Christian higher education can present unique challenges to these students but might also be able to provide support and remedies that are not immediately available at other types of institutions. This paper synthesizes the literature on the needs of diverse learners in online education and provides an example of how the online campus of Abilene Christian University is attempting to meet the needs of its diverse learners.

This paper examines service-learning case studies in Argentina, Mexico, and the United States. It analyzes whether Andragogy, the study of how to teach adult learners, is equally applicable and effective in different country contexts. First, we argue that service-learning is the most natural and appropriate teaching technique that aligns with the Theory of Andragogy. We then discuss how a clear understanding of Andragogy is the key to helping mature students process knowledge. Two cases of service-learning in an international context provide a research platform for examining differences in learning concepts, constructs, and student competences. We juxtapose Argentina and Mexico governance against U.S. governance, and we differentiate the public policy challenges within the two contexts. Our methodological approach employs grounded theory to identify themes of knowledge transfer through problematic environments. By comparing service-learning strategies in Argentina and Mexico vis-à-vis in the U.S., we find variations in assumptions of public administration practice, teaching methods, and student learning outcomes.

The increased demand for online courses correlates to increased workloads for faculty, staff, and leadership. Hiring, staffing, and other logistical matters often trump the emphasis on course quality. This paper introduces a strategic framework for creating and sustaining a successful distance education model. Tarrant County College Connect Campus is the provider of online courses and programs within a larger, urban, two-year public institution. Established as a campus in 2014, TCC Connect Campus reflects an intentional framework to ensure quality. Ten specific strategies for quality assurance in online delivery include: Online Instructor Certification, Peer Developed Courses, E-Faculty Coaching, Faculty Performance Indicators, Supplemental Evaluation Feedback Form, adoption of external standards, data dashboards, campus data team, faculty and leadership repositories, and course readiness checklist. These research-based tenets may be adapted and modified to address the needs of other distance education providers.

The impact and benefits of undergraduate research experiences (URE) in the first two years of post-secondary education have been well documented. Early exposure to research experiences is effective in recruitment, diversity and persistence in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) degree programs, particularly among underrepresented minority students. The Summer Undergraduate Research Experience Course (SUREC) presented in this paper is a cross-institutional collaboration between a two-year college (2YC) and a four-year college (4YC), designed to expose 2YC transfer students to a rigorous 12-week URE focused on geosciences. Findings from the program evaluation indicate the SUREC increased transfer student's STEM knowledge and skills, science identity, and self-efficacy. Twenty of the twenty-four SUREC participants, representing underrepresented and majority students alike, transferred to a 4YC to continue in geosciences or in a related STEM field within two-years of the URE. A strong cross-institutional collaboration that combined academic, financial, and mentoring support was key to enhancing transfer students' URE experiences. Leveraging teaching and research expertise of 2YC adjuncts as emerging academics and educators was a hallmark of this program.

This position paper discusses the existent research focused on STEM centers at colleges and universities, focusing on their critical role to support students from racially minoritized backgrounds. The objective of this work is to present a potential framework to recast the role of these institutional STEM centers at both community colleges and four-year institutions to ensure effective support and transfer of students, especially those from historically marginalized backgrounds. We discuss the importance of these STEM centers as access points, articulate specific actions these centers should take, and advocate for more robust STEM center networks. We utilize data from a recent Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Pre-Alliance Planning grant to provide some additional evidence for our argument and posit that STEM centers on campuses can be hubs for connection, facilitate engagement in diverse areas of STEM work, and help establish integral relationships for historically marginalized students' success. We will also discuss critical resources needed when developing STEM centers to help serve traditionally marginalized students. Further, STEM centers can serve as pivotal points in a network, especially between community colleges and four-year institutions to assist in successfully transferring students and conferring bachelor's degrees to underrepresented students. As part of a network, STEM centers can facilitate cross-institutional partnerships, support students through the transfer process, and meaningfully address some of the systemic challenges historically marginalized students face.

Institutional practices and conditions at community colleges can improve rates of transfer, as can access to transfer student capital. However, we know little about how institutions attempt to build students' transfer capital, or about students' experiences within community colleges as they accumulate transfer capital. In this paper, we examine how students' institutional experiences, particularly their engagement with student supports at community colleges and transfer destinations, influence their understanding of, and ability to navigate, the transfer process. We view the accumulation of transfer student capital as an interactionist model between the students and their institution, where students' transfer knowledge and success is conditioned by an interaction between their background and institutional conditions. We draw on longitudinal qualitative interview data with transfer-intending community college students over the course of 3 years to understand how students access, receive, and accumulate transfer capital as they work toward their educational goals. By leveraging student experiences, our study can inform community colleges and transfer destinations about practices and policies interpreted as most effective from the perspective of students. Our work also connects to broader conversations about how institutions reproduce, ameliorate, or exacerbate inequalities based on student background.

This paper is a report of a design-based research project undertaken to build a blended teacher education program that focuses on cultivating teachers' competencies for personalized and blended learning in K-12 classrooms. Two iterations were designed and examined in total, with 10 teacher educators and two teacher candidate cohorts. Teacher educators collaborated with the project director to design and redesign online courses for two years, and each cohort took online teaching methods courses and trained at personalized learning schools in Texas over the course of a year. Using a mixed-methods design, teacher educators' and teacher candidates' perception data were collected and analyzed to evaluate the program's effectiveness and identify design implications and elements that inform the design and implementation of the program. The reflections and insights gained through this project offer an understanding of how blended teacher preparation can be designed to directly address the needs of K-12 schools for teachers trained in personalized and blended learning.

Community colleges serve a substantial percentage of college-age students in the United States, many of whom arrive with negative attitudes toward mathematics, despite there being many STEM-related fields available to community college graduates. The current paper summarizes the creation of a day-long activity that assists students in developing applied mathematical skills in a format that aligns with the experiential learning theory. Students at a community college in Texas are learning math by engaging with a popular topic, crime scene investigation, through an annual event, established in 2017, called NVCsi. Students interact with hands-on activities that combine forensics, mathematics, and other disciplines. The implementation of the event is described so that other colleges can develop their own experiential learning event. Planned data collection for future event cycles are described, as are limitations and constraints of the NVCsi event with a discussion of planned modifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual paper analyzes persistent challenges to racially diversify higher education in Texas, paying special attention to trends at this Southern state's most selective flagship--University of Texas at Austin. We apply critical race theorist Kimberlè Crenshaw's frame of race liberalism and her view of equality as either expansive or restrictive to analyze race-neutral approaches intended to remedy longstanding issues of racial diversity. Specifically, we focus on the Texas Top Ten Percent Policy, tracing its trajectory from affirmative action through the recent Abigail Fisher case. This examination clarifies the race-evasive basis of policies designed to improve enduring issues of racial exclusion in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing access to higher education in prison is a topic of growing concern among researchers and correctional staff. The current evaluation analyzed data collected from 109 interviews in California, Texas, and Kansas with currently incarcerated students of a prison-based theological education program called The Urban Ministry Institute (TUMI) and with formerly incarcerated graduates who had participated in the program while they were incarcerated. In addition, 157 surveys were collected from individuals in California, Texas, Kansas, and Colorado who were currently incarcerated and formerly incarcerated program graduates. This study highlighted participants' perceived impact of TUMI, particularly on how they perceive overall program quality, areas for improvement, self-rated psychological well-being, and evaluation of prosocial thinking, behavior, and relationships, all of which contribute to identity change and desistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The corequisite support model is a promising developmental education reform effort that is helping students transition into college‐level coursework more quickly. The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on the critical leadership that has enhanced student success in corequisite courses and hold promise in enhancing equity within developmental education. The findings presented in this chapter are based on data from a multi‐year, mixed‐methods research project conducted at Urban Community College (UCC, a pseudonym) in Texas. We utilize equity‐mindedness as a framework for understanding and operationalizing critical leadership at the community college. We focused not on students' academic abilities, but what faculty and administrative leaders are actively doing to support students in corequisite courses. We specifically draw attention to the exceptional leadership practices of faculty as instructors and administrators who are effective at facilitating success among racially minoritized students and students from low‐income families who are placed in developmental education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students with experience in foster care (SEFC) are an often overlooked student subgroup within the first-generation student population in higher education. The lack of attention on SEFC as a marginalized group in need of specialized support and guidance in higher education is the impetus for this study. In order to address this gap, the Texas Education Code (TEC) Section 51.9356 mandated all 2-year and 4-year state institutions in Texas accepting the tuition and fee waiver to have at least one university representative act as a foster care liaison. However, no guidelines were provided for what this role should include. Based on a pragmatic, problem-driven content analysis of documents from other states with similar roles, this study provides a theoretical rational and conceptual framework for foster care liaisons in higher education, including liaison expectations, training, and evaluation. The study concludes by examining future directions for practice, policy, and scholarship related to training and evaluating foster care liaisons in order to better support SEFC in higher education, and examines the role that social work can play in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]