Grant Awards

Sarah Lang, Assistant Professor, Human Development and Family Science

The Virtual Lab School (VLS) provides child care professionals an opportunity to advance their knowledge and skill set through an easy to navigate online professional development system. Designed for the U.S. Department of Defense, the VLS is used by military-affiliated child care and youth development providers to ensure all staff working with military families are equipped to provide holistic, developmentally-appropriate care for children. The flexible nature of the VLS training material allows participants to learn at their own pace, from evidence-based content, videos, and interactive learning materials while receiving support from highly-trained coaches. The VLS training content offers distinct learning tracks for center-based professionals including direct care providers (infant/toddler, preschool, and school-age), coaches and program managers, as well as family child care providers. Read More about the Virtual Lab School grant

James Austin, Program Lead of Assessment Services

The Technical Testing Project operated by CETE Assessment Services includes two key components: design of test items (i.e., questions) and delivery of tests for the Ohio Career-Technical Education (CTE) Technical Testing System. Test delivery also requires end-user support for the field, especially at peak times of the year, month, and day. Read more about this grant

Traci Lepicki, Associate Director of Operations and Strategic Initiatives

Since 1995, CETE has provided leadership and coordination of statewide adult education activities in collaboration with the state Aspire office at the Ohio Department of Higher Education, local programs, and a network of professional development providers. We use a process of continuous improvement to realign to the state Aspire office strategic goals and priorities, ensuring that activities align with the best interest of Aspire programs and adult learners throughout Ohio. Read More about the Ohio Aspire Professional Development Network grant

Christopher Zirkle, Associate Professor, Department of Educational StudiesChristopher Zirkle

This grant from the Ohio Department of Education provides funding to support the licensure program in career and technical education in Workforce Development and Education. Activities funded by the grant include a summer workshop for new career-technical education teachers and outreach and technical assistance to more than 30 Ohio school districts, including onsite teacher mentoring.

Edward Fletcher, Associate Professor

Using a funds of knowledge approach and mixed research methods, the investigators plan to study the school supports, schooling experiences, academic engagement, course-taking patterns, and family support systems of high-achieving African American male students. In addition to providing narratives of how African American male students succeed in high school and in STEM, the research project will help to pinpoint those factors that support the STEM participation and success of high-achieving, low-income African American males participating in high school STEM academies. Findings from this research will be shared through academic publications as well as through podcasts, webcasts and research briefs. These findings can inform the development innovative high school strategies and programs that encourage and promote the academic and career success of high-achieving, African American males, who are interested in STEM. Additionally, the findings have implications beyond the African American males in the study; they have applicability to other African American males, as well as other groups underrepresented in STEM. Project Details

Michael Betz, Associate Professor, Consumer Sciences

This project addresses a critical need in Ohio’s opioid mitigation strategy by creating a sustainable opioid prevention framework that compliments existing treatment and recovery efforts in the state. The Ohio Prevention Partnership (OPP) is a collaboration between The Ohio State University and local community partners to develop sustainable community teams who deliver coordinated implementation of quality evidence-based and evidence-informed opioid prevention programs in high-need communities. Our project will leverage OPP’s experience creating community prevention frameworks and use SAMHSA’s Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF) to assess local community partners’ technical capacity to plan and implement successful community-forward programs. Once communities are assessed, OPP will help communities form multi-disciplinary teams committed to a shared interest in opioid prevention programming. OPP will then guide the community in selecting evidence-based and/or evidence-informed opioid prevention programs from the broad categories of family-based parent/child relationship skill building, school-based youth resilience training, youth and adult mental health crisis identification and response training, and prescription opioid safety. This project will serve some of the highest need rural communities in Ohio, a state that has led the nation in overdose deaths for six consecutive years.

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

This exploratory experiment is designed to determine the extent to which the socialization experiences and social, behavioral, and linguistic skills of preschoolers with language impairment (LI) can be improved. This study uses peer-mediated intervention in inclusive preschool classrooms to improve the socialization processes and experiences of children with language impairment (LI). Using an innovative social-network approach and extensive observations and technologies to monitor dynamic socialization experiences over an academic year, we examine intervention effects on children with LI in terms of peer interactions and peer talk, as well as mediated effects on social, behavioral, and language development. Project Details