In the summer of 2020, our team created virtual community-engaged learning (VCEL) modules in response to the need to move classes to online and hybrid delivery styles during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. These modules addressed engaged learning concepts and were designed with faculty, students, and community partner organizations in mind.…

Myriad academic, situational, and organizational factors play an important role in parental decision-making for school choice. We propose a framework for how hot knowledge is processed through the lens of parents' own sociopolitical values (i.e., constraints) to inform preferences. This study employs 8 months of ethnographic case study data from…

Schools experience a plethora of crises from pandemics, school shootings, weather-related traumas, and mass migrations that require school leaders to create solutions to support students and their families. Researchers have explored school leaders' responses to crises but have yet to explore how principals generally and Black women specifically…

The following case study presents an approach to teaching research courses in undergraduate exercise science programs. Research courses are commonly required in the curriculum for this degree. Service learning (SL) is an effective way to promote student learning outcomes (SLOs) by providing hands-on experience for the students, and should be…

Restorative practices are a way of humanizing education. Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words. It can only move forward with true words, with which men and women can transform the world. The essence of human existence lies in the ability to transform and change the world. Humans are not designed to remain in…

On July 14, 2021, the Pennsylvania State Universities Board of Governors collectively approved a proposal to merge six Pennsylvania state universities. The three institutions in the West were California, Clarion, and Edinboro. Bloomsburg, Lock Haven, and Mansfield were consolidated in the Northeast. The board then hosted a publicly available…

This dissertation focuses on identifying essential characteristics of initiatives that build cooperative relationships and solidarity to advance democratically engaged community-campus partnerships. As such, it involves understanding the conditions that undermine these relationships, the critical practices that strengthen them, and the role of…

Children and youth in foster care experience poor K-12 educational outcomes compared to their peers without foster care histories. Child welfare and school professionals hold shared responsibility for ensuring their educational well-being based on federal policies and role expectations. However, professionals often experience challenges in…

This study aims to understand better how undergraduate students become civically engaged graduates. Three Pennsylvania-based institutions were identified to be the focus of this research. These institutions each have less than 5,000 undergraduate students, are part of a small city with under 100,000 residents, and have a civic-engagement component…

For two decades, Ohio's district and school report cards have been the linchpin to a transparent and accountable public school system and have highlighted student outcomes in the state's 3,000 plus public schools and 600 plus districts. Report cards offer key academic information about how students perform on the year's state assessments and how…

The inequalities between Black and White Americans have left Black people with less education amongst other disparities. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. The Board of Education ended racial segregation in public schools. Today, sixty-nine years later, Black children often still attend highly segregated and underfunded schools.…

This research examines emergency health communication with college students during the early phase of the 2019 coronavirus pandemic to provide better insights for emergency planning and to ensure success in early-stage communication efforts. Trust and confidence in various spokespersons are tested, along with students? levels of cooperation with…

Community partnerships present opportunities for expanding students' learning experiences outside traditional classroom settings. However, under-resourced low-income communities often lack access to such opportunities. This qualitative study explores how high school teachers, community liaisons, and community partners establish and sustain…

Notions of "student success" feature prominently in emerging educational discourses and policy orientations. Current policy frameworks focusing on equity, performance, and reconciliation claim to offer validation for perspectives of Indigenous peoples and other racialized communities, but they are simultaneously raising the stakes for…

Folklife, a type of inquiry that focuses on "ways of life" as its central lens, is constantly changing. Rather than focus on cultural loss or salvaging, folklife inquiry is more powerful when it is positioned to offer insights about human experience through the sharing of personal lived histories in safe and supportive environments. At…