Nursing educators wrestle with preparing the future nursing workforce to meet the needs of underserved, vulnerable populations in marginalized communities who suffer significant health disparities and social injustices. This article illustrates the integration of engaged civic learning (ECL) within a social justice framework that prepares…

Pathways to higher education can appear opaque and unattainable to rural adults, despite the affordances provided by modern broadband and increasing provision of university online learning options. This paper describes an innovative partnership model that connects rural adults to university and technical and further education pathways through…

The Ascender program was created in 2012 by Catch the Next Inc., to address the challenges of increasing community college retention and transfer rates, especially among Latinx students in developmental education. This study looks at the experiences of participants in this program and how it provided validating experiences and fostered their…

This research examines the factors that shape high school students' experiences with an action civics program--"Project Soapbox"--that fosters democratic and social-emotional learning. Drawing on pre- and postsurveys with 204 students, classroom observations, teacher interviews, student work samples, and student focus group interviews,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceived effectiveness of a virtual community of practice (vCoP) designed to support knowledge and expertise sharing between K-12 teachers during COVID-19 pandemic. Besides, it aimed at exploring the potential of such vCoPs in delivering effective professional development, in general, and during…

Best-practice recommendations for young children at high likelihood of autism include active involvement of caregivers in intervention. However, the use of evidence-based parent-mediated interventions in community practice remains limited. Preliminary evidence suggests that Project ImPACT for Toddlers demonstrates positive parent and child…

Objective: Evidence suggests the increased prevalence of diabetes among South Asian (SA) adolescents is due to their genetic risk profile. The South Asian Adolescent Diabetes Awareness Program (SAADAP) is a pilot intervention for SA youth in Canada with a family history of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). We sought to investigate changes in (1)…

Establishment of online communities in distance education has been linked to improved engagement, retention, and learning outcomes. This study investigates how online community building was fostered in the text-based Discussion Board (DB) and multimodal VoiceThread (VT) in one of the postgraduate units offered by Open Universities Australia.…

As open-access institutions serving diverse student populations, community colleges are perfect settings for broadening participation in computing efforts in higher education. The very nature of open access, however, places students with a wide variety of previous experience in the same introductory computer science classroom, intimidating the…

The Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin launched the Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (DCMP) in 2011. The initial version of DCMP diversified developmental and college-level math course content, separating it into distinct pathways that better aligned with students' career interests. It also streamlined the developmental…

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) contracted with three child welfare providers that operate transitional living (TLP) or independent living (ILO) programs (or both) to implement LifeSet, an intensive case management program developed by Youth Villages, for youth in care who are 17.5 to 21 years old. LifeSet helps…

First-generation college students may experience a mismatch between their cultural backgrounds, which tend to emphasize interdependent cultural norms (i.e., group achievements, connection with others, and taking actions that foster fitting in) and universities, which tend to emphasize independent cultural norms (i.e. individual achievements,…

This dissertation examined the relationship between participation in an academic coaching program and retention for community college students enrolled in developmental education courses. With low retention and completion rates for students beginning in developmental courses, support programs to improve student success are needed. This…

This dissertation presents two essays on econometric methods for program evaluation and policy choice. In Chapter 1, I develop a statistically optimal way of using data to make policy decisions when the performance of counterfactual policies is only partially identified. Specifically, I consider a class of statistical decision problems in which…

Background: Community colleges have the potential to be powerful vehicles for social mobility in the United States. As institutions with tuition rates that are a fraction of the cost of four-year public and private colleges, they are a critical resource for students looking for a relatively less expensive and more flexible option to attain a…