IES Blog

This blog post featuring advice from IES-funded Hispanic Serving Institutions on developing research training programs, is part of an ongoing series featuring IES training programs as well as our blog series on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) within IES grant programs

In 2015, IES launched the Pathways to the Education Sciences Research Training Program to encourage undergraduate, postbaccalaureate, and master’s students from diverse backgrounds to pursue careers in education research. The Pathways program grants were made to minority-serving institutions (MSIs) and their partners to provide one year of mentored research training. We asked the leadership teams from our six initial Pathways Programs to share their lessons learned on establishing research training programs. In part one of this blog, we share the lessons learned from the Pathways programs based at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). In part two, we share lessons learned from the Pathways programs based at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and their partner institutions.

Pathways: Successful Transitions to and Through Higher Education

California State University, Sacramento (HSI, AANAPISI)

Leadership: Jana Noel, Timothy Fong, Jacqueline Brooks, Erica Zamora

We have five areas for universities to consider that wish to develop undergraduate training programs:

Create an interdisciplinary training team. Draw on the strengths of the wide range of researchers on your campus and beyond. An interdisciplinary team provides an expanded range of perspectives on both the research methods and the questions that are important to pursue within education. All are important and valuable to the expansion of research that will make a difference to the lives of underrepresented students.

Develop partnerships. Develop partnerships across departments and colleges as well as in the community. Our apprenticeship sites span the university and into the community and include university research centers and institutes, K-12 offices of education, and non-profit public policy centers. Apprenticeship partnerships provide fellows with the opportunity to be part of a team that actively conducts research into pressing educational issues and contributes to the research needed to make practice and policy decisions within your region and state.

Intentionally match mentors to fellows. As much as possible, match the fellows’ diversity when selecting research mentors. Mentors provide support on learning new research methodology, asking new questions, working as a team, preparing to present research at conferences, and preparing for graduate school.

Choose a broad research theme. Choose a broad research theme that will appeal to a wide range of students. In our case, we study the barriers and supports for underrepresented students in K-12, community college, and higher education. This allows underrepresented students at MSIs to know that they are welcome in the program and that their experiences and voices will be valued.

Provide continuity across cohorts. Fellows in our program speak at recruiting events for future cohorts, participate in panel discussions for future cohorts, and truly serve as our best source of encouragement for future fellows. The continuity persists during and beyond the program as fellows engage in their academic journeys together.

AWARDSS Training Program

University of Arizona (HSI)/College of Applied Science and Technology at the University of Arizona

Leadership: Michelle Perfect, Brandy Perkl, Sara Chavarria, Andrew Huerta

Our number one piece of advice for establishing undergraduate research training programs is to add in bridges over the biggest barriers to URM participation.

Our Pathways program (AWARDSS) was built on the idea that (1) support from campus programs and (2) intentional mentoring are vital aspects of promoting participation in research from traditionally underrepresented students. For that reason, we have learned that undergraduate research training programs within MSIs need to build on what is already present. Add in the elements you know your students need most, such as financial support, increased access to resources, and focus on improvement of specific skills.

To achieve this in our practice, we built a complementary, hybrid, add-on program to the University of Arizona’s well-established and award-winning Undergraduate Research Opportunities Consortium (UROC) experiences. UROC provides the primary coursework and faculty, while we deliver the add-ons that allow for underrepresented minority (URM) student participation. We focused initially on providing additional funding for our students’ experiences. Then, we added a required inclusion-oriented mentor training to bolster the intentionality of those relationships and the quality of this potentially transformative relationship. This often allows us to support underrepresented mentors, as well. Mentoring does not occur in a vacuum though, and the latest research shows that those with a developmental network outperform those without one. Thus, we staffed the program specifically to serve as a supportive developmental network for our students. Finally, we assessed and trained students in academic areas of need (for example, statistics) at both the cohort and individual levels. 

We also suggest that leaders of undergraduate research training programs continuously examine their practices and adjust their models accordingly. We plan to further train our staff in more inclusive and anti-racist practices ensuring that the entire AWARDSS network is informed, intentional, and engaged in supportive practices from day one. 

Pathways Program 

University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA; HSI)

Leadership: Guadalupe Carmona, Ann Marie Ryan, Francesca Bronder

Our goals for the program are to 1) broaden participation of undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds in doctoral study, and 2) develop a pipeline of talented interdisciplinary researchers who bring fresh ideas, approaches, and perspectives to addressing the challenges of inequalities that exist in P-20 educational experiences, transitions, and outcomes. 

Through a structured program design, undergraduates can be exposed to research at an early academic stage and discover that through academic and scientific research, they can achieve their passion to systematically improve education and transform their local communities. By learning how research is conducted, closely working with faculty mentors, finding their own research focus, and developing their work, our UTSA Pathways Fellows have gained in academic and personal development, self-confidence, a sense of accomplishment and peer support, independence of work and thought, and have become more academically resilient. For many of them, UTSA Pathways has opened doors and facilitated access to several graduate schools. For others, it has helped them apply their newly acquired research skills to a variety of professional fields and become more marketable in their chosen careers.

We identified three central concepts for UTSA Pathways that we think would be helpful for others who are developing undergraduate research training programs: Empowerment, Transformation, and Inspiration.

• Empowerment. Once unheard student voices are now becoming part of our education research community as fellows actively participate in academic and research activities. Your program should empower students to form their own identities as fellows and help to extend this empowerment to their personal lives.
• Transformation. Our Pathways program has generated change in multiple communities, built new collaborations, recruited new faculty, and obtained supporters devoted to Pathways and its goals of broadening participation of historically underrepresented voices. We suggest that your program identify the critical partners and potential levers of change specific to your program’s model and goals.
• Inspiration. We have found that our fellows’ resilience and commitment has been channeled through their active engagement and dissemination of their research that, for most, begins with UTSA Pathways. And our mentors’ passion and generosity has guided and supported a new generation of scholars in educational research. We encourage you to create an environment of hospitality and engagement that will embrace a passionate group of young scholars to participate in their communities of research and practice.

Produced by Katina Stapleton (Katina.Stapleton@ed.gov), co-Chair of the IES Diversity and Inclusion Council. She is also the program officer for the Pathways to the Education Sciences Research Training Program and the new Early Career Mentoring Program for Faculty at Minority Serving Institutions, the two IES training programs for minority serving institutions.  

Accessibility to job opportunities has long been a challenge for individuals with disabilities. In 2020, people with disabilities had a much higher unemployment rate (12.6%) than those without a disability (7.9%). To raise awareness about disability employment issues and celebrate the contributions of workers with disabilities, National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) is held every October. The 2021 theme for NDEAM is “America’s Recovery: Powered by Inclusion,” which underscores the importance of ensuring that people with disabilities have access to employment as the nation recovers from the pandemic.

NCSER supports research related to career readiness and employment for students with disabilities through the Transition to Postsecondary Education, Career, and/or Independent Living (Transition) research program. Since its inception in 2006, NCSER has invested over $58 million in the Transition program and the portfolio has grown to 38 research grants. To encourage additional research in the important but under-studied area, NCSER also competed the Career and Technical Education for Students with Disabilities (CTE) special topic in FY 2019 and FY 2020, awarding three research grants totaling around $3 million.

Below are examples of recently funded Transition and CTE studies that are exploring, developing, or evaluating programs, policies, and practices aimed to help improve career readiness and employment outcomes for students with disabilities.

• Exploring relationships between college and career readiness, self-determination, and transition planning among adolescents with and without disabilities (PI: Allison Lombardi, University of Connecticut) This project aims to establish measurable constructs of college and career readiness by exploring extant data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2012.
• Supported College and Career Readiness (SCCR) for Secondary Students with Emotional and Behavioral Problems (PI: Lee Kern, Lehigh University) Through this project, the research team is developing and pilot testing a multi-component program that augments typical school-based college and career readiness activities.
• CTE Teachers and Long-Term Outcomes for Students with Disabilities (PI: Dan Goldhaber, University of Washington) This project aims to examine the relationship between effectiveness in career and technical education for students with disabilities and student outcomes, such as postsecondary enrollment and employment.
• Understanding the Antecedents of STEM Career and Technical Education Coursetaking for High School Students with Learning Disabilities (PI: Michael Gottfried, University of Pennsylvania) Through this project, the research team is investigating whether participation in applied STEM career and technical education courses in high school is related to students with learning disabilities pursuing and persisting in STEM majors and/or careers.
• Moving Transition Forward: Exploration of College-Based and Conventional Transition Practices for Students with Intellectual Disability and Autism (PI: Meg Grigal, University of Massachusetts, Boston) This study aims to examine and compare critical aspects of two transition approaches—a college-based transition experience and a conventional high school or community-based transition experience—and examine the associations between involvement in those programs and student employment outcomes for students with intellectual disability and/or autism spectrum disorder.\
• College and Career Readiness for Transition (CCR4T): Development and Validation of a Student Measure (PI: Allison Lombardi, University of Connecticut) The research team in this project is developing and validating the College and Career Readiness for Transition (CCR4T), a measure of the perceptions of high school students with disabilities of their own college and career readiness.

NCSER also plans to support additional research for students with disabilities with a new grant competition, Research to Accelerate Pandemic Recovery in Special Education, funded through the American Rescue Plan. This grant competition will fund research that addresses pandemic recovery, including recovery relevant to career readiness.

For more information about NDEAM as well as ideas for celebrating this month, please see https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/initiatives/ndeam.

Written by Akilah Swinton Nelson, Program Officer at National Center for Special Education Research. For more information about the Transition to Postsecondary Education, Career, and/or Independent Living and Career and Technical Education for Students with Disabilities topic areas, contact Akilah at akilah.nelson@ed.gov.

Formally, I am known as Dr. Lorena Aceves, but you can just call me Lorena. I am a first generation (first in my family to graduate high school and college) Latina scholar. I recently completed my PhD in human development and family studies (HDFS) at the Pennsylvania State University. Currently, I am working as a Society for Research Child Development Federal Postdoctoral Policy Fellow at the Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Head Start. In my current role, I work on all things related to Head Start from issues facing the Head Start workforce to considering the impact that COVID-19 has had on the daily lives of Head Start children. Given that September 15 to October 15 is National Hispanic Heritage Month, I wanted to share my camino (path) with the hopes of inspiring other Latinx students and to demonstrate the beauty of Hispanic excellence in education!

How It Started

My journey into higher education began before I could even remember. My amazing parents are two immigrants from Michoacán, Mexico. Their journey of migration was fueled by the desire to open more doors of opportunity for themselves and their future family. They settled in southern California, where they would start building the foundation of values and motivation that would lead me to my PhD.

In California, my parents had their first interaction with opportunity and education for their daughter with Head Start. As a four-year-old, Head Start gave me a step up in my educational career and connected my parents to resources and services that could increase our familial wellbeing. The journey here was just getting started when my parents decided that it was time to leave southern California for Arizona. In Arizona, my parents were able to earn better wages and purchase a home in a good school district. This opportunity was not as accessible to them in California. This move, as my mom always says, “(as difficult as it was) was the best thing we could have done educationally for you and your younger brother.”

I started my elementary education in the Gilbert Public Schools school district. It was when I got to high school that a major educational opportunity opened for me—the founding of Gilbert Classical Academy (GCA), a public college prep school. GCA was a saving grace for this little Latina who had every aspiration to go to college but had no clue where to even begin! It gave me all the tools and preparation I needed to make it to college, and I did. I was admitted to 80% of the colleges I applied to and continued my higher education at the University of Arizona (UA). 

Moving Away and Embracing My Latina Identity

After high school graduation, I moved two hours south of home to attend the UA. This move was a BIG deal for this eldest Mexican daughter. My parents were not happy about me living in a dorm, but they knew it was necessary to achieve that “American Dream” that we always talked about where I would never have to scrub toilets as my mother had done most of her life.

Life at UA was amazing. I got to embrace my Latina identity because, for once in my life, I was finally surrounded by people who looked like me and had the same familial experiences. I also got to explore all my potential career options. I started college wanting to be a pediatrician but ended up finding my passion in the HDFS major. I loved the idea of studying human beings, especially in the context of their families. I finally was going to be able to understand my family and culture from a scholarly lens.

In my third year of college, I was unsure about what I wanted to do post-graduation. I knew I wanted to pursue graduate education; I just didn’t know for what. And that’s when I stumbled upon research, which ultimately led me to my PhD. Before this moment, I had no idea what a PhD was, but I was sold on pursuing one because being able to use research to support Latinx youth and families seemed like a dream come true.

In my last year of college, I was a McNair scholar, which set me up for success in graduate school. With the program’s help, I was able to gain social capital and academic skills I did not have as a first-generation student, which are critical for successfully pursuing a graduate degree. With the help of the program’s staff and training, I was admitted to 8 out of the 10 doctoral programs that I applied to! I ultimately decided to pursue my PhD at Penn State. This little Arizona girl had no idea what she had signed up for by leaving sunny warm weather for cold, gloomy central Pennsylvania. At Penn State, my research focused on examining the cultural, familial, and individual level factors that contribute to Latinx youth’s academic outcomes.

I started graduate school with the goal of becoming a professor to continue this kind of research and helping other Latinx students like me attain their PhDs. That dream quickly evolved after a few internships at the U.S. Department of Education, including with IES, as well as the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics (formerly known as the White House Hispanic Prosperity Initiative). It was thanks to IES that I was even able to pursue these internships. As a graduate student, I was an IES predoctoral fellow, which afforded me opportunities to do the research I was interested in, as well as pursue these non-traditional graduate experiences. Through these internships, I quickly learned that I could do more. I learned that there is great need for Latinx scholars like myself in federal spaces, where decisions about funding and policies are happening. I became passionate about federal service, which led me to my current postdoctoral position.

Moving Forward

My main goal with my newly blossoming career as a doctora is to be able to work for a federal agency where I can use my skills and training to serve diverse communities, particularly communities of color. Federal leadership is still not reflective of the communities that make up the United States. I hope to serve in a federal leadership position in the future to represent the communities of color and make our leadership more reflective of its citizens. I plan to give voice to Latinx children, youth, and families of this country that need to be heard. Juntos podemos (Together, we can)!

This year, Inside IES Research is publishing a series of interviews (see here and here) showcasing a diverse group of IES-funded education researchers and fellows that are making significant contributions to education research, policy, and practice. As part of our Hispanic Heritage Month blog series, we are focusing on Hispanic researchers and fellows, as well as researchers that focus on the education of Hispanic students.

Lorena Aceves (Lorena.Aceves@acf.hhs.gov) is a Society for Research Child Development Federal Postdoctoral Policy Fellow at the Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Head Start.

This guest blog was produced by Caroline Ebanks (Caroline.Ebanks@ed.gov), Program Officer, National Center for Education Research.

Image: Dr. Hannah Dostal (left), University of Connecticut, and Dr. Kimberly Wolbers (right), University of Tennessee

September is National Literacy Month and Deaf Awareness Month. To celebrate both occasions, we spoke with two IES-funded principal investigators about their intervention aimed at increasing the writing and language skills of students who are deaf or hard of hearing through teacher professional development targeting writing instruction and use of multilingual strategies. Together with their team, Dr. Kimberly Wolbers (University of Tennessee) and Dr. Hannah Dostal (University of Connecticut) developed Strategic and Interactive Writing Instruction (SIWI) and tested SIWI for efficacy. The team is now analyzing effects of SIWI on both student and teacher outcomes in the D/HH space.

What are some challenges facing deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH) students in the area of literacy? How does your project address these student-related challenges?

Children who are D/HH are highly diverse with respect to language modality (spoken, sign) and proficiency. Understanding this diversity is the foundation to their literacy learning and academic engagement. Working between languages and across modalities when engaged in literacy tasks is a unique challenge for D/HH writers. For example, a student may use American Sign Language (ASL), which does not have a written form, while learning and using English text as they read and write. Strategies used during writing instruction that scaffold bilingual and multilingual development have the potential to leverage student knowledge of languages to support literacy development. During SIWI, teachers engage students in explicitly comparing and contrasting ASL and English with the intention of increasing metalinguistic knowledge and translation abilities.

Another unique challenge is that a number of D/HH students lack consistent exposure to accessible language at home and school. They may not hear sufficient amounts of spoken language to acquire its complexities and may not have sufficient exposure to sign language early in their lives to acquire visual language. Such language deprivation directly impacts literacy development. Based on what we are seeing and learning from our school partners, online learning due to COVID-19 exacerbated delays in academic progress when D/HH students experienced greater language isolation during this time.

Teachers implementing SIWI tackle expressive language delays head on. They use a designated space in the classroom, called the Language Zone, to develop, translate, and revise ideas generated in ASL and English.

What are some challenges facing teachers of D/HH in the area of literacy? How does your project address these teacher-related challenges?

It is becoming increasingly more challenging to find qualified teachers of the deaf. Not only are there shortages in the field, but many current teachers also point to limited preparation and a lack of assessment materials, curriculum, and instructional resources specifically designed for D/HH students with distinct languages histories.

The SIWI professional development (PD) program is designed to address these challenges facing teachers. It is a multi-component PD program that is intensive and sustained over a 3-year period and consists of a summer institute, site visits, and individual biweekly online coaching. Teachers not only learn about effective approaches but also how to flexibly enact the approaches with students who have diverse language histories and literacy skills.

What have you found so far?

SIWI has been implemented across settings with D/HH students and studies so far suggest SIWI results in significant language and literacy growth. Results from IES-funded studies using a variety of methods demonstrate SIWI’s positive impact on student outcomes. For example, we found a relationship between SIWI and positive student gains in the effective use of genre-related writing traits and grammar and conventions, including an increase in the length of writing as well as written language clarity and complexity. Recent analyses, currently in press, demonstrate that in one academic year, students participating in SIWI gained an average of 1.2 grade levels as measured by the Woodcock Johnson IV.

The SIWI PD program has also resulted in notable outcomes for SIWI teachers. The randomized control trial demonstrated significant increases in teachers’ knowledge of writing instruction, efficacy in teaching writing, and use of evidence-based practices compared to teachers in the business-as-usual control group (a manuscript is currently in progress). 

What are the next steps for your research?

Analyses of student outcomes in the efficacy trial are currently underway. In addition to analyzing the impact of SIWI on writing and language outcomes, we are also examining the impact on reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, handwriting, and motivation to write.

Additionally, we are investigating whether implementation fidelity of SIWI is positively associated with student outcomes. We intend to examine whether teachers with higher implementation fidelity in their second or third year of teaching SIWI demonstrate a significantly greater impact on their students’ writing and language growth.

Dr. Kimberly Wolbers is a Deaf Education Professor and Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Theory & Practice in Teacher Education at the University of Tennessee and Dr. Hannah Dostal is an Associate Professor of Reading Education and an advisory board member of the Aetna Chair of Writing at the University of Connecticut. This interview was produced and edited by Julianne Kasper, Virtual Student Federal Service Intern at IES and graduate student in Education Policy & Leadership at American University.

NCES recently released a report on the experiences of undergraduate students early in the COVID-19 pandemic. The report uses early release data from the 2019–20 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:20) to describe how the pandemic disrupted students’ enrollment, housing, and finances in the spring of 2020. It also discusses how institutions helped students with these issues.

NPSAS:20 student surveys started in March 2020, and items about the COVID-19 pandemic were added in April 2020 to collect information about the effects of the pandemic on students’ educational experiences between January 1 and June 30, 2020. These early release data do not include students who answered before the pandemic questions were added. The data show that 87 percent of students had their enrollment disrupted or changed during this time. Students who experienced disruptions may have withdrawn or taken a leave of absence, had an extended school break, had changes made to their study-abroad program, or had classes cancelled or moved online.

Twenty-eight percent of students had a housing disruption or change, and 40 percent had a financial disruption or change. Students who had a housing disruption had to move or had difficulty finding safe and stable housing. Students who had a financial disruption may have lost a job or income or may have had difficulty getting food; they may have also received financial help from their postsecondary institutions.

The report also provides information about the experiences of students with different characteristics. For example, students with Pell Grants had a similar rate of enrollment disruption (87 percent) as those without them (88 percent). Those with Pell Grants had a lower rate of housing disruption (23 percent) than those without them (31 percent). However, they had a higher rate of financial disruption (48 percent) than their peers without Pell Grants (34 percent).

Figure 1. Percentage of undergraduates who experienced enrollment, housing, or financial disruptions or changes at their institution due to the COVID-19 pandemic, by Pell Grant recipient status: Spring 2020

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2019–20 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:20, preliminary data).

The final NPSAS:20 raw data will be available in late 2022. Sign up for the IES Newsflash to receive announcements about NCES data products.

By Tracy Hunt-White