How college leaders can bridge the growing ‘trust gap’ with their faculty and staff members
July 24, 2020 | By Goldie Blumenstyk, The Chronicle of Higher Education
Harmony on campus is hard to come by even when the stakes are lower. The brutally tough decisions colleges have been or soon will be making — how to teach in the fall, where to cut as budgets tighten — are among the most challenging that institutions have faced, at least since 2008. And for the foreseeable future, it’s not going to get any easier.
Inside the decision-making turmoil: For parents and school administrators, there’s no easy answers
July 23, 2020 | By Naomi Kowles, WSAW TV
The juggling of jobs, family safety, and virtual learning presents the perfect storm of complications as families decide whether to opt into virtual learning or send children back to school--if that option is available. And where families depend on single incomes or inflexible jobs that can’t be done remotely, virtual options can become less realistic even when safety remains a concern, or if in-person learning isn’t implemented.
WCER’s Good and Cheng Win AERA’s 2020 Palmer Award for Excellence in Education Research
July 22, 2020 | By Tony Pals and Tong Wu, American Association of Education Researchers
The American Educational Research Association (AERA) has announced WCER's Annalee Good and Huiping (Emily) Cheng of the Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative among the winners of its 2020 awards for excellence in education research. They are honored with the Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award with colleagues from Drexel University for writing “A Look Inside Online Educational Settings in High School: Promise and Pitfalls for Improving Educational Opportunities and Outcomes,” published in the American Educational Research Journal, Volume 56, Issue 6, December 2019.
Public Health Madison & Dane County explains why there’s no mandatory mask policy
July 8, 2020 | By Jamie Perez, FOX 47 Madison News
Madeline Hafner is an expert on racial disparities at the University of Wisconsin — Madison. Hafner said racial discrimination would be an adverse consequence of a mandatory mask requirement and is a legitimate concern among communities of color, especially for black men. “We live in a racialized society that doesn’t afford people of color the same protection in their masks,” Hafner said. “They could be wanting to do all the right things to protect other and protect themselves but they will bear the unfair burden of the repercussions of wearing a mask.”
Report: Wisconsin has student-to-teacher racial, ethnic gap
July 2, 2020 | By Associated Press
"It is important for white children to see people of color as being knowledgeable and authoritative," says Gloria Ladson-Billings in a recent Associated Press story carried by Fox 11 News. "The stuff we are seeing happening in our streets today is, I think, a direct result of young white people saying, 'I was never really taught to value these people's lives."'
Life at home with kids during quarantine
June 30, 2020 | By Joel Patenaude, Madison Magazine
WIDA experts Lorena Mancilla and Tricia Blanco contribute insights to a recent Madison Magazine story about families working and learning together at home due to COVID-19 quarantine.
A new brief from the Association of Public & Land-grant Universities and the University of Wisconsin
June 17, 2020 | By Bianca Quilantan, Politico
A new brief from the Association of Public & Land-grant Universities and the University of Wisconsin-Madison-led Aspire Alliance, “Leveraging Promising Practices: Improving the Recruitment, Hiring, and Retention of Diverse and Inclusive Faculty,” lays out a guide for institutions to create an institutional culture that promotes diversity and inclusion in STEM faculty.
U of I Joins Elite Network to Train Tomorrow’s STEM Educators
June 16, 2020 | By University of Idaho Communications
The University of Idaho joins some of the country’s biggest names in impactful research as it is welcomed into The Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) Network, a dynamic academic network of top research universities dedicated to developing and expanding proven STEM teaching practices to educate diverse populations of students.
Can Quantitative Ethnography Help Tell the COVID-19 Story?
June 16, 2020 | By Lynn Armitage, WCER Communications
The quest for answers to how COVID-19 is affecting different cultures is why the newly formed International Society for Quantitative Ethnography (QE) launched the “QE COVID Data Challenge,” a seven-day data sprint involving nearly 100 data and research experts collaborating remotely from 16 countries, including Denmark, Hungary, Australia, South Africa and Sri Lanka.
New Resources for Families Help Multilingual Learners with Disabilities Thrive in Virtual Classrooms
June 15, 2020 | By Karen Rivedal, WCER Communications
Designed to cushion the shift to distance learning, new resources from WIDA include tools and tips around social stories, adaptive devices and understanding Individualized Education Programs to ensure multilingual students with disabilities still receive all the language and other services they're due under federal law.
UArizona Joins Network Dedicated to Improving STEM Graduate Education
June 9, 2020 | By University Communications
The University of Arizona this fall will join a network of institutions in the United States and Canada dedicated to improving how graduate student and postdoctoral scholars are prepared for future faculty positions in STEM fields.The university's membership in the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning was announced last week. The center is based at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin – Madison's School of Education.
Corporate America is taking the internship online this summer. Some experiences can’t be replaced.
June 8, 2020 | By Jena McGregor, The Washington Post
College students have already been uprooted from their dorm rooms to their parents’ basements, forced to finish their semester online and faced with the dire prospect of graduating into the worst labor market since the Great Depression. Now, many can add something else to the list of experiences they’ll miss out on this year: A traditional internship.
WCER Researchers Studying Surge of Online Internships during COVID-19
May 29, 2020 | By Karen Rivedal, WCER Communications
CCWT Director Matthew Hora will work with Zi Chen on a six-month analysis focused on ‘micro-internships,’ with a second angle examining whether companies in STEM fields are shifting their internships online, to help measure student academic and career impacts of web-based internships amid a COVID19-driven surge in their use.
Six Universities Join Renowned Network to Improve Research & Teaching Skills of Future STEM Faculty
May 28, 2020 | By Lynn Armitage, WCER Communications
A new cohort of universities in the U.S. and Canada will be welcomed this fall into the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL), an international network of 35 research universities dedicated to delivering more effective undergraduate STEM learning by ensuring that today’s STEM graduate students the science, technology, engineering and math faculty of the future―are skilled in both teaching and research.
Another Casualty of the Coronavirus: Summer Internships
May 22, 2020 | By David Yaffe-Bellany, The New York Times
WCER resarcher and CCWT Director Matthew Hora tells the New York Times how the loss of traditional internships impacts students: “You pick up a lot of subtle clues about how to behave in that profession, how to communicate like an engineer, how to work in teams like a nurse. Students are going to be missing that.”
