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Mandated under Article 1, Section 2 of the United States Constitution, the decennial census determines the distribution of power and resources based upon population counts. College students are a hard-to-count population with limited knowledge about why the census matters and how to complete it. Politics and the global health pandemic made the 2020 Census exceptionally challenging. A university's center for civic engagement and students in a political science class collaborated with local, state, and national partners to develop and implement a campuswide 2020 Census Education and Engagement Program. Assessments of 2020 Census knowledge were administered to almost 2,000 students on a required university-wide Assessment Day. Subsequent data collection indicated knowledge about the 2020 Census is malleable, as evidenced by sizable gains over time as well as a positive relationship between census completion and participation in the 2020 Census Education and Engagement Program.

In a challenging world, the spotlight on children's wellbeing has strengthened. There is extensive research about the ways in which well-designed arts education programs positively impact children's wellbeing. Despite this, arts education continues to be marginalised in schools. When researchers with arts education and leadership experience teamed up to consider the intransient nature of the resistance to arts education in primary/elementary schools, they conducted a collaborative autoethnography (CAE) to see if this offered new insights. The iterative process of sharing and interrogating personal stories to distil collective meanings (themes) highlighted four features of education programs that provide sustained support for children's wellbeing: centering in a discordant world; effective leadership; experiential processes, engagement, and trust; and harnessing the transformative potential of the arts. The CAE also pointed the team towards conducting future inquiries about the currently under-researched role of the school principal in instigating cultural change that sustains meaningful arts education.

Asthma morbidity disproportionately impacts children from low-income and racial/ethnic minority communities. School-supervised asthma therapy improves asthma outcomes for up to 15 months for underrepresented minority children, but little is known about whether these benefits are sustained over time. We examined the frequency of emergency department (ED) visits and hospital admissions for 83 children enrolled in Asthma Link, a school nurse-supervised asthma therapy program serving predominantly underrepresented minority children. We compared outcomes between the year preceding enrollment and years one-four post-enrollment. Compared with the year prior to enrollment, asthma-related ED visits decreased by 67.9% at one year, 59.5% at two years, 70.2% at three years, and 50% at four years post-enrollment (all p-values< 0.005). There were also significant declines in mean numbers of total ED visits, asthma-related hospital admissions, and total hospital admissions. Our results indicate that school nurse-supervised asthma therapy could potentially mitigate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequities in childhood asthma.

Two middle school educators earned a Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching fellowship. A Fulbright Finland Foundation inter-country travel grant provided the grantees with a unique opportunity to connect and collaborate at the University of Helsinki. Within this research, they described their inquiry experiences. The research included examining authentic student-centered learning continuums and phenomenon-based learning in Finland and teachers' adaptability in relation to meeting the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse math classrooms in the Netherlands. This paper summarizes how cross-cultural dialogues, classroom observations, and informal interviews with educators, students, and thought leaders informed each grantee's discovery of how student-centered learning is structured, delivered, and valued in Finland and the Netherlands. This article (1) describes how communication empowers middle school mathematics students, (2) analyzes the learning-to-learn framework, and (3) provides insights into how to utilize language diversity in a mathematics classroom.

The dearth of historically underrepresented minorities (URMs) in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty positions is one of the most significant challenges in higher education in the U.S. Increasing underrepresented groups' success in academia through achieving and retention in tenure-track faculty roles has been the central goal of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program. In the present study, we draw on organizational change theories in higher education reform and interpret the landscape of AGEP project alliances through mapping their theories of change, barriers to success, levels of change, and foci of change, based on semistructured interviews with 17 AGEP alliances' core teams. Our mapping reveals local structures as well as interesting patterns across AGEP alliances that inform national trends. We identify alignment and misalignment between our analysis frameworks and AGEP projects which amplifies contemporary questions of providing direct student support within a deficit mindset context as well as sustainability and scalability for both the AGEP community and the broader community of diversifying STEM.

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) created guidance documents that were too complex to be read and understood by the majority of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities who often read at or below a third-grade reading level. This study explored the extent to which these adults could read and understand CDC documents simplified using Minimised Text Complexity Guidelines. Method: This study involved 20 participants, 18-48 years of age. Participants read texts and responded to multiple-choice items and open-ended questions to gather information about how they interacted with and understood the texts. Results: The results provide initial evidence that the Minimised Text Complexity Guidelines resulted in texts that participants could read and understand. Conclusion: Implications for increasing the accessibility of public health information so that it can be read and understood by adults with extremely low literacy skills are discussed.

Emory University has had a long relationship with His Holiness the Dalai Lama through the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative. Recently the Tenzin Gyatso Science Scholars, who are Tibetan Buddhist monastics that reside and take courses on Emory's campus, were enrolled in a novel science research course designed and taught by undergraduate students at Emory. The goal of this study was to build a research community of Buddhist monastics who worked alongside undergraduate and graduate mentors to complete projects in R1 research laboratories, and the course was designed as preparation for these efforts. The course covered aspects of the scientific method and focused on enhancing engagement and motivation of the Scholars to pursue science research. Knowledge acquisition was assessed through quizzes, affect changes were assessed through focus group interviews, and overall course success was measured through Principal Investigator surveys. Conceptual knowledge and overall average improvement increased significantly week-to-week. Changes in affect for self-efficacy, belonging, knowledge, and future applications/drive trended towards improvement in each respective category. Finally, all seven Monastic Scholars who participated in the research curriculum were enrolled in R1 research experiences after conclusion of the course, and their principal investigators positively evaluated the preparedness and motivation of the monastics. The curriculum detailed here and its implementation facilitated cross-cultural education and successfully transitioned students from the classroom into research laboratories.

Research has shown that undergraduate research experiences can have substantive effects on retaining students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). However, it is impossible to provide individual research experiences for every undergraduate student, especially at large universities. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have become a common approach to introduce large numbers of students to research. We investigated whether a one-semester CURE that replaced a traditional introductory biology laboratory course could increase retention in STEM as well as intention to remain in STEM, if the results differed according to demography, and investigated the possible motivational factors that might mediate such an effect. Under the umbrella of the Authentic Research Connection (ARC) program, we used institutional and survey data from nine semesters and compared ARC participants to non-participants, who applied to ARC but either were not randomly selected or were selected but chose not to enroll in an ARC section. We found that ARC had significant effects on demographic groups historically less likely to be retained in STEM: ARC participation resulted in narrowing the gaps in graduation rates in STEM (first vs continuing-generation college students) and in intention to major in STEM [females vs males, Persons Excluded because of Ethnicity or Race (PEERs) vs non-PEERs]. These disproportionate boosts in intending STEM majors among ARC students coincide with their reporting a greater sense of student cohesiveness, retaining more interest in biology, and commenting more frequently that the course provided a useful/valuable learning experience. Our results indicate that CUREs can be a valuable tool for eliminating inequities in STEM participation, and we make several recommendations for further research.