Grant Awards

Jay Plasman, Assistant Professor, Department of Educational StudiesJay Plas

This project will be the first to evaluate the efficacy of engineering career and technical education (E-CTE) courses and to understand how these courses might link to the transition from high school into engineering fields in college as well as career aspirations with an emphasis on potential benefits for students with learning disabilities. Specifically, the project will identify which E-CTE courses students with learning disabilities are taking, how E-CTE coursework may encourage persistence along the engineering pipeline (e.g., STEM attitudes, college enrollment, earning an engineering credential), and the link between E-CTE participation and engineering-related career aspirations.

Matthew Mayhew, Professor, Department of Educational Studies

With this grant funding, the Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey- United Kingdom team will explore through survey and case study research how different campus climates enable or impede positive relationships among students of different faiths and worldview perspectives, including varieties of faith, spirituality and non-religion. The project will enable universities and religion and belief-focused organizations to enhance inter- and intra-faith relations among students, better equipping them to relate respectfully to those with a different outlook from their own.

Laura Justice, Professor; Executive Director of the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy (CCEC)

Oral clefts are among the most common birth defects, affecting 1 in 700 live births. Although problems with language and literacy have been well-documented in children with clefts, there are currently no studies of interventions to address these problems. This study will be the first to test the efficacy of a shared reading intervention, developed to meet the needs of children with oral clefts and their caregivers, in improving language and literacy outcomes.

David Julian, Program Director of Equity, Engagement and Evaluation

With this grant funding, the CETE Equity Engagement and Evaluation Team will provide support for the Ohio Interagency Council for Youth (OICY) through a variety of planning and evaluation services including strategic planning, logic model development, outcomes definition, random assignment, and experimental evaluation. The OICY was convened in part to improve treatment access and quality of services for youth and emerging adults (ages 12-25) with substance use disorders (SUDs) or SUDs and co-occurring mental health disorders.

Arya Ansari, Assistant Professor, Human Sciences

The main objective of this project is to provide a more nuanced understanding of associations between school characteristics, classroom processes, and students’ language, academic, executive function, and social skills. The first aim focuses on the associations between school characteristics (i.e., academic performance, strain, and organization of resources) and students’ early learning. The second aim explores the degree to which school characteristics are associated with children’s experiences in classrooms (i.e., classroom interactional quality, teacher-student relationships, instructional rigor), and the degree to which these classroom processes mediate relations between school characteristics and students’ learning. The third aim explores moderators of the association between school-level characteristics, classroom processes, and student learning. When taken together, the constructs examined in this study represent malleable factors that could result in improvements in children’s school success.