The pandemic left an indelible mark on higher education. This study is the second of three, focused on how a college navigated enrollment challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. The initial study examined the perspectives of college administrators on why the institution did not suffer from enrollment decreases. This follow-up study incorporated…

Theoretical rationales for employer-provided pensions often focus on their ability to increase employee effort and selectively retain quality workers. We test these hypotheses using rich administrative data on public school teachers around the pension-eligibility threshold. When teachers cross the threshold, their effective compensation drops by…

High teacher turnover rates and shortages of quality teachers plague many large, urban U.S. school districts disadvantaging their students who often already come from traditionally underserved populations and communities. Restorative Practices is a quickly growing whole school approach to community building and discipline, but little is known…

This study is part of a larger research that explores the creation of an instrument to capture the social and cultural factors that affect Black students' persistence in STEM. Most research on self-efficacy in the science education literature were either done at predominantly White institutions, during summer programs for students of color, or on…

College writing center practices differ greatly from the types of conventional writing instruction students and faculty are used to in classrooms. While conventional college lectures typically lead to a summative assessment in the form of grades based on students' performance on high-stakes assignments, writing centers are seen as tutoring centers…

Past studies of grit's educational benefits, such as science engagement, showed mixed results across cultures. So, we elaborated the prior model of grit (perseverance of effort, consistency of interest) with "adaptability to situations" (forming a "triarchic model of grit" TMG), and tested TMG's relation to subsequent science…

We investigated the effects of a major revision of the differential and integral calculus curriculum, the primary goal of which was to improve STEM retention. The revamped curriculum has greater emphasis on the power of computing to help visualize patterns and gain insights to better prepare students for STEM majors, and less emphasis on…

Background: In the United States, the current 6-year completion rate in engineering is a mere 54% among full-time students who enter a 4-year course. Researchers have identified many reasons why students leave engineering, including academic difficulties and poor teaching. However, the problems experienced by the departing students are also…

This study was conducted to determine if embedding effective study strategies in a course would result in an increased use of these strategies and, therefore, increase success and retention in introductory-level science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses. An interdisciplinary team of STEM faculty members created study strategies…

This paper documents the hopes, desires and structural betrayals experienced by young people attending transfer schools in New York City. Transfer schools enroll more than 15,000 students each year who are disproportionately young people of color, poor and working-class youth, from immigrant families, and youth with disabilities. Most have fallen…

In the U.S. public educational system, the superintendent role is crucial for shaping student outcomes, yet it is predominantly occupied by White males (73%), with African American females making up less than 1% of these positions. Historical research on superintendents often overlooked gender and racial diversity, contributing to the…

Underrepresentation of females in college science, technology, engineering, and math impacts college graduation rates, pay disparity of females, and the local and global workforce. Research offers one concept, sense of belonging, as vital to motivation of and persistence in major. To address a sense of belonging for this population, some…

This dissertation examines the relationship between teacher retention and student perceptions of school climate in an urban school district, both in individual school years and across multiple school years. This secondary analysis uses a school-level measure of teacher retention from New York City (NYC) public schools and measures of school…

Purpose: The present study was designed to investigate persistence in preschool children with developmental language disorder (DLD) compared to similar-age peers with typical language (TL) on tasks designed to be moderately challenging, yet equivalent in difficulty for both groups. Method: Sixteen preschool-age children with DLD were matched to 16…

Teacher work engagement is critical for work performance and child development, yet there is a limited understanding of how it is shaped from the perspective of teachers' emotion. Based on the job demand-resource model, this study tested the relationship between emotional labor strategies, teacher efficacy, grit, and work engagement. Research…