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Few studies have examined the growing trend of teacher-legislators, specifically teachers' trajectory to elected office. Drawing on qualitative data and raced-gendered frameworks, this article examines how three female teachers of color in one Southwest state leveraged their teaching experiences to shape their policy priorities and how they navigated policy and political environments. The teacher-legislators in this article created counter-narratives on teachers and their abilities. Their experiences illustrate how teacher-legislators resisted and transformed state policies that affected urban students.

This article examines how university presidents who led their institutions to achieve Carnegie "R1 Highest Research Activity" managed policy tensions created by prestige priorities and worked with groups and coalitions internally and externally. Striving to achieve R1 status requires U.S. universities to re-calibrate their focus, resources, and messaging both internally and externally. Using four elements of policy entrepreneurship (PE), the three cases included in this article illustrate the critical role of university presidents as PE in maintaining a sustained effort over an extended period. University leaders displayed their social acuity and built teams by cultivating their social and political capital with influential constituents and groups. As PE, university presidents were deliberate and thoughtful about the language they used to define and describe policy problems and solutions. The findings expand our understanding of the role of university presidents as PE.

In this case study, I draw attention to key Nevada Latina/o legislators' policy ways of knowing and their higher education policy priorities. A focus on the policy actors uncovered structural, racial, and cultural assumptions in policy-making often absent in the exclusive analysis of policy interventions. Their policy ways of knowing were shaped in at least three ways: acknowledging and naming the sources of structural inequities, embracing political humility, and challenging policy knowledge-generating practices.

Abstract Background The large-scale production of G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) for functional and structural studies remains a challenge. Recent successes have been made in the expression of a range of GPCRs using Pichia pastoris as an expression host. P. pastoris has a number of advantages over other expression systems including ability to post-translationally modify expressed proteins, relative low cost for production and ability to grow to very high cell densities. Several previous studies have described the expression of GPCRs in P. pastoris using shaker flasks, which allow culturing of small volumes (500 ml) with moderate cell densities (OD600 ~15). The use of bioreactors, which allow straightforward culturing of large volumes, together with optimal control of growth parameters including pH and dissolved oxygen to maximise cell densities and expression of the target receptors, are an attractive alternative. The aim of this study was to compare the levels of expression of the human Adenosine 2A receptor (A2AR) in P. pastoris under control of a methanol-inducible promoter in both flask and bioreactor cultures. Results Bioreactor cultures yielded an approximately five times increase in cell density (OD600 ~75) compared to flask cultures prior to induction and a doubling in functional expression level per mg of membrane protein, representing a significant optimisation. Furthermore, analysis of a C-terminally truncated A2AR, terminating at residue V334 yielded the highest levels (200 pmol/mg) so far reported for expression of this receptor in P. pastoris. This truncated form of the receptor was also revealed to be resistant to C-terminal degradation in contrast to the WT A2AR, and therefore more suitable for further functional and structural studies. Conclusion Large-scale expression of the A2AR in P. pastoris bioreactor cultures results in significant increases in functional expression compared to traditional flask cultures.

For researchers in the global South, international recognition in science arguably involves engaging with the norms, ideas, and people leading research activity in the global North. This article explores the relationship between international research collaboration and the publication activity of highly cited researchers in Brazil, a country that exerts regional leadership in scientific production in Latin America, but remains relatively peripheral to global science. This study examined the career trajectories and publication patterns of highly cited researchers based in Brazilian universities, using Web of Science and CV data. Our findings show a pattern of international mobility among the Brazilian highly cited researchers from the early stages of their careers. With few exceptions, engagement with the academic Anglosphere is central to their achievement of highly cited status, which is derived from co-authored publications with collaborators from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia in large teams.

This study explored students' perceptions about school counselor influence on college aspirations in the fifth largest school district in the nation. Using 2015 survey data from 12th graders, the findings indicated that students who selected their school counselor as the most helpful person for college advice were more likely to intend to go to college, as compared to students who selected other individuals. Practical implications highlight the important role of school counselors in urban districts with significant first-generation college student populations.

Drawing on intersectionality and representational identity theory, this article centers Black women legislators' collective and individual experiences to examine how their experiences shape their policy ways of knowing and education policy priorities. The women were guided by their own lived experiences of witnessing unequal educational opportunities of students of color and shaped a policy agenda that shifted the widely endorsed cultural norms and policy behavior of the state. As individuals and as a collective, they deployed their Black feminist narrative to promote racial literacy in public policy, reimagined a new policy culture, and sought education parity and equality through multiple policy paths. The women approached education policies not exclusively through the domain of education issues; rather, they recognized the interconnectedness of the historical and present social, economic, and political lives of Black and communities of color. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the geographic lens on Latinx politics has focused on regions with a history of Latinx population, there is less analysis on states that are on the tipping point of Latinx political coalition building and incorporation. Recent changes in urban-education politics in Las Vegas, Nevada, offered an example of the unfolding of Latinx political power and representation. Las Vegas is a majority-minority metropolis, and its 2.2 million residents make up 75 percent of Nevada residents. By 2013, a new cohort of urban Latinx legislators entered politics and shifted the narrative of who was deemed worthy of policy and public investment. The progressive legislators, primarily from low- or working-income and immigrant backgrounds, brought with them critical perspectives to policymaking and drew from their lived experiences and their urban communities' experiences to inform how they coalesced with other groups, the bills they championed, and how they shaped an education policy agenda. In less than a decade, urban Latinx legislators and their allies introduced, lobbied, and passed $425 million of new public education investments to benefit English language learners (ELLs) and high-poverty students. As the Latinx population continues to grow in urban regions and school districts, there are several reasons to study their experiences and participation in education policy and politics. Navarro and Rosales argued that it is necessary to understand how Latinx political power unfolds in the largest urban regions to see the possibilities and limitations of coalition building, agenda setting, and the evolution of the Latinx presence at a national level. (1) Navarro and Rosales suggested that because Latinx groups do not have an overarching historical identity such as the Black/White experience, the Latinx population has been one of political invisibility and exclusion. Moreover, Latinx groups have experienced different political formations, strategies, and political outcomes in different urban settings. Building on frameworks that center race in the study of urban politics, policy, and coalition building (2,3) and incorporating Latinx critical race theory, (4,5) the purpose of this case study analysis was to examine the growing presence of Latinxs in one urban region and to analyze how they reshaped education politics and policy agendas and organized coalitions to counter deficit education narratives. By centering race, I examine how Latinx advocacy for education evolved over a three-decade period, the motives for Latinx political involvement, and the key components that contributed to the development of a Latinx political advocacy infrastructure in the Las Vegas region., Latinx Participation and Influence on Education Politics and Policy Latinxs have long been on the frontline of education politics, policy, and coalition building within and across multiple communities. For instance, [...]

There is limited research on how postsecondary institutions prepare to become HSIs. This chapter examines organizational change through a group of emerging HSIs and their governance, policy, and leadership.

This chapter synthesizes the authors' recommendations for academics and practitioners as colleges and universities prioritize institutional policies and programs to ensure Latino/a student success.

Community colleges serve as the point of entry for the majority of Latinos in higher education, offering low-cost, smaller-scale educational opportunities in the communities where students live and providing the preparation for four-year colleges and universities that may have been lacking in their K-12 education. The challenges to community colleges in providing services to Latinos are great, but their potential to facilitate the achievement of Latinos is vast.