Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine hesitancy is believed to be among the top global health threats. U.S. Latinos have disproportionately been affected by the pandemic and have higher COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. This study applied the Vaccine Hesitancy Determinants Matrix to understand COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in a Latino agricultural community.…

Increasing diversity in the physician workforce is critical to eliminating healthcare disparities (Abelson et al., 2018; Washington et al., 2017). Although there are many proven benefits to increasing racially and ethnically diverse medical faculty, representation of these groups remains relatively low compared with their White counterparts and…

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is an economic opportunity for an urban school district in Tennessee. Lack of interest in STEM courses was throughout schools with underrepresented populations. An urban district in Tennessee with few schools implementing STEM initiated instructional practices to increase…

African American women utilize the community college environments as an avenue to attain an education and eventually pursue career and educational goals while remaining in their own communities. However, not much is known about the unique perceptions and experiences of African American women impacting their enrollment and persistence at rural…

We add to a growing literature suggesting that demographic grade gaps should be attributed to biases embedded in the courses themselves. Changes in the structure of two different introductory physics classes were made while leaving the topics covered and the level of coverage unchanged. First, a class where conceptual issues were studied before…

Prior research has documented substantial inequity across, racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines within the population of students identified as gifted. Less attention has paid to the equity of gifted identification for student learning English or those with disabilities and what effect state policies toward gifted education might have on these…

Performance-based funding models for higher education, which tie state support for institutions to performance on student outcomes, have proliferated in recent decades. Some states now tie most of their higher education appropriations to completion outcomes and include bonus payments for historically underrepresented groups to address equity gaps…

Recent insights have underscored the role of context in cultivating intelligence mindsets' influence on students' academic outcomes. Psychological affordances of the social context may encourage an adaptive perspective (i.e., growth mindset). Expanding this novel area of investigation, we examined how students' sense of belonging, as an affordance…

Whether selection processes contribute to group-level disparities or merely reflect pre-existing inequalities is an important societal question. In the context of observational data, researchers, concerned about omitted-variable bias, assess selection-contributing inequality via a kitchen-sink approach, comparing selection outcomes of…

This article applies the critical media concept of organic representation to leadership studies as an analytic of how various creators in popular culture today are not just writing inclusive storytelling but, more notably, modeling new modes of production and self-presentation that are actively challenging hegemonic industry practices and larger…

A study of hidden risks, anxieties and barriers to STEM student transfer from community college to a large, comprehensive university is presented. This qualitative study employed a thematic analysis of student responses to a semi-structured interview that asked students about their hesitancy to transfer to a 4-year institution. Participants…

Hispanic/Latine young adults remain severely under-represented in STEM fields. While structural barriers contributing to these disparities have been thoroughly examined in previous research, the current study brings focus to the strategies young adults employ to navigate the incongruence between the cultures of higher education and STEM and the…

Undergraduate science majors entering their final (senior) year face a critical decision: whether to pursue post-baccalaureate degrees and continue on the path to careers in biomedical, medical or public health fields. Large disparities in socioeconomic factors contribute to the high rate of attrition of under-represented minority (URM) students…

The focus of this study was to examine the implementation and impact of Restorative Justice (RJ) and restorative practices in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) secondary schools. Experiences and perceptions of school administrators, school-level RJ coaches, and central office RJ specialists were examined, and the perceived impact that RJ and…

The retention of first-year college students majoring in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields is a persistent concern in higher education. A variety of high impact practices can contribute to improving the persistence of STEM majors, particularly among underrepresented groups. One specific practice is the implementation of…