Publications
Mindset interventions, which shift students' beliefs about classroom experiences, have shown promise for promoting diversity in science, technology, engineering, and mathe-matics (STEM). Psychologists have emphasized the importance of customizing these inter-ventions to specific courses, but there is not yet a protocol for doing so. We developed a protocol for creating customized peer-modeled mindset interventions that elicit advice from former students in videotaped interviews. In intervention activities, clips from these interviews, in which the former students' stories model the changes in thinking about chal-lenge and struggle that helped them succeed in a specific course, are provided to incom-ing life sciences students. Using this protocol, we developed a customized intervention for three sections of Introductory Biology I at a large university and tested it in a randomized controlled trial (N = 917). The intervention shifted students' attributions for struggle in the class away from a lack of potential to succeed and toward the need to develop a better ap-proach to studying. The intervention also improved students' approaches to studying and sense of belonging and had promising effects on performance and persistence in biology. Effects were pronounced among first-generation college students and underrepresented racial/ethnic minority students, who have been historically underrepresented in the STEM fields.
Supported by considerable public investment through post-9/11 higher education benefits, student military service members/veterans (SSM/ Vs) have been one of the fastest-growing groups of nontraditional students in American universities in recent years. Despite their increased numbers and potential to diversify science, technology, engi-neering, mathematics, and medical (STEMM) fields, little research has explored SSM/V academic development and success across university STEMM contexts. This mixed methods study used social capital theory to explore links between STEMM SSM/V social support and a sense of campus belonging—shown to be important to achieve-ment among traditionally marginalized college students—within 4-year campus communities. Social network analyses of surveys indicated that larger SSM/V support networks, including on-and off-campus social ties as well as student and university educator ties, positively correlated with campus belonging. Social support networks with military ties, traditionally seen to benefit SSM/V college integration, did not correlate. Interview responses suggested that while belonging can be discouraged among SSM/Vs by military-associated STEMM imposter feelings, it is fostered through student friendship, faculty care, and veteran- focused campus support. Results underscored the importance of authentic interaction as well as purposeful efforts to bring SSM/Vs together with fellow students, educators, and staff. © 2022, Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved.
Graduate students' mental health and well-being is a prominent concern across various disciplines. However, early predictors of mental health and well-being in graduate education, specifically doctoral education, have rarely been studied. The present study evaluated both the underlying latent classification of individuals' mental well-being and predictors of those classifications. Results estimated two latent classes of students' mental health and well-being: one class with generally high levels of mental well-being and one with lower levels of mental well-being. Regression analyses showed that mentoring in the second year of doctoral study, certainty of choice in the third year, and both academic development and sense of belonging in the fourth year were positive predictors of membership in the higher mental well-being class. In contrast to some prior studies, demographic variables were not related to the identified well-being classifications. Regression analyses further showed that mental well-being was negatively related to participants' number of publications and research self-efficacy, indicating a problematic relationship between scholarly productivity and confidence and well-being. These findings may be used to identify and provide targeted support for students who are at-risk for having or developing lower levels of mental well-being in their graduate programs.
Early research on the impact of COVID-19 on academic scientists suggests that disruptions to research, teaching, and daily work life are not experienced equally. However, this work has overwhelmingly focused on experiences of women and parents, with limited attention to the disproportionate impact on academic work by race, disability status, sexual identity, first-generation status, and academic career stage. Using a stratified random survey sample of early-career academics in four science disciplines (N = 3,277), we investigated socio-demographic and career stage differences in the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic along seven work outcomes: changes in four work areas (research progress, workload, concern about career advancement, support from mentors) and work disruptions due to three COVID-19 related life challenges (physical health, mental health, and caretaking). Our analyses examined patterns across career stages as well as separately for doctoral students and for postdocs/assistant professors. Overall, our results indicate that scientists from marginalized (i.e., devalued) and minoritized (i.e., underrepresented) groups across early career stages reported more negative work outcomes as a result of COVID-19. However, there were notable patterns of differences depending on the socio-demographic identities examined. Those with a physical or mental disability were negatively impacted on all seven work outcomes. Women, primary caregivers, underrepresented racial minorities, sexual minorities, and first-generation scholars reported more negative experiences across several outcomes such as increased disruptions due to physical health symptoms and additional caretaking compared to more privileged counterparts. Doctoral students reported more work disruptions from life challenges than other early-career scholars, especially those related to health problems, while assistant professors reported more negative changes in areas such as decreased research progress and increased workload. These findings suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately harmed work outcomes for minoritized and marginalized early-career scholars. Institutional interventions are required to address these inequalities in an effort to retain diverse cohorts in academic science.
The importance of online learning in higher education settings is growing, not only in wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, metrics to evaluate and increase the quality of online instruction are crucial for improving student learning. Whereas instructional quality is traditionally evaluated with course observations or student evaluations, course syllabi offer a novel approach to predict course quality even prior to the first day of classes. This study develops an online course design characteristics rubric for science course syllabi. Utilizing content analysis, inductive coding, and deductive coding, we established four broad high-quality course design categories: course organization, course objectives and alignment, interpersonal interactions, and technology. Additionally, this study exploratively applied the rubric on 11 online course syllabi (N = 635 students) and found that these design categories explained variation in student performance.
This quantitative study was designed to investigate teacher preparation as an interactive system and examine whether individual approaches to preparation are associated with differential retention benefits across different teacher subgroups. Drawing on longitudinal data on mathematics teachers who entered teaching through the New York City Teaching Fellows (NYCTF) program, the study focused specifically on the first-school retention of two policy-relevant teacher subgroups, namely, (1) the graduates of very selective colleges and (2) Black and Latinx community-insiders. Whereas the latter all attended city high schools, the former generally did not. In part because the field lacks a well-substantiated theory of the relationship between teacher initial preparation and their retention, we drew on intersectionality theory and incorporated two-way interaction effects in quantitative models of the teachers' first-school retention. We found significant relationships between NYCTF's initial training and the teachers' retention and, further, that single approaches to initial training appeared to bestow different retention benefits to different teacher subgroups. We also found that the Black and Latinx community-insiders exhibited significantly higher rates of firstschool retention than the elite college graduates and, for that matter, other NYCTF mathematics teachers. This result has clear implications for teacher recruitment and training and, in particular, the promise of developing community-based mathematics teachers who resemble the students they teach.
This research is aimed at developing novel theory to advance innovative methods for examining how collaborative groups progress toward productively engaging during classroom activity that integrates disciplinary practices. This work draws on a situative perspective, along with prior framings of individual engagement, to conceptualize engagement as a shared and multidimensional phenomenon. A multidimensional conceptualization affords the study of distinct engagement dimensions, as well as the interrelationships of engagement dimensions that together are productive. Development and exploration of an observational rubric evaluating collaborative group disciplinary engagement (GDE) is presented, leveraging the benefits of observational methods with a rubric specifying quality ratings, enabling the potential for analyses of larger samples more efficiently than prior approaches, but with similar ability to richly characterize the shared and multidimensional nature of group engagement. Mixed-methods analyses, including case illustrations and profile analysis, showcase the synergistic interrelations among engagement dimensions constituting GDE. The rubric effectively captured engagement features that could be identified via intensive video analysis, while affording the evaluation of broader claims about group engagement patterns. Application of the rubric across curricular contexts, and within and between lessons across a curricular unit, will enable comparative studies that can inform theory about collaborative engagement, as well as instructional design and practice. © 2022, European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction. All rights reserved.
Microaggressions are subtle, offensive comments that are directed at minority group members and are characteristically ambiguous in meaning. In two studies, we explored how observers interpreted such ambiguous statements by comparing microaggressions to faux pas, offenses caused by the speaker having an incidental false belief. In Experiment 1, we compared third-party observers' blame and intentionality judgments of microaggressions with those for social faux pas. Despite judging neither microaggressions nor social faux pas to be definitively intentional, participants judged microaggressions as more blameworthy. In Experiment 2, microaggressions without explicit mental state information elicited a similar profile of judgments to those accompanied by explicit prejudiced or ignorant beliefs. Although they were, like faux pas, judged not to cause harm intentionally, microaggressive comments appeared to be judged more blameworthy on account of enduring prejudice thought to be lurking behind a speaker's false beliefs. Our current research demonstrates a distinctive profile of moral judgment for microaggressions.
To examine housing price dynamics for Las Cruces, New Mexico, a theoretical model is developed that takes into account the supply and demand sides. The employed ARDL estimation methodology allows for more realistic modeling of market dynamics than prior studies of this residential real estate market, the second largest in New Mexico. A slightly larger sample size is also utilized. The results obtained corroborate evidence reported in several previous housing studies. Some unexpected outcomes also indicate that consistently reliable interlinkages between housing prices and explanatory variables may be elusive. Among the latter, an inverse relationship between apartment rents and single-family housing prices is most surprising but may be a consequence of the large university and college student population in Las Cruces. As post-secondary enrollments increase, so too do faculty numbers, allowing both housing prices and apartment rents to increase simultaneously. That implies that apartments and single-unit houses may be complements rather than substitutes in college towns like Las Cruces. Additional research using data for other small- and medium-sized urban economies would be helpful. © 2022 AESS Publications. All Rights Reserved.


