Ciara Ousley, assistant professor of special education and communication disorders, has been named the 2026 recipient of the Early Career Research Award from the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities (DADD).
The Nebraska Academy for Methodology, Analytics and Psychometrics (MAP Academy) is awarding $10,000 through a competitive funding opportunity created to enhance the rigor of field-based human subjects research at the University of Nebraska.
These awards were made possible by a grant from the Nebraska Research Initiative.
Name: Candy Muñoz
Title: Operations and Finance Manager
Hometown: Omaha, Nebraska
Where did you work prior to joining CYFS? What was your role there, and what did it entail?
“My professional career has given me experience in both high-level financial strategies and direct student support. Immediately prior to joining CYFS, I served as the Director of Student Financial Services at Creighton University, where I led a specialized team responsible for integrating financial aid, student accounts and billing processes. This team provided streamlined support to students, parents and academic staff.
The Nebraska Academy for Early Childhood Research has selected six faculty members to serve as Policy Fellows for the 2025-26 academic year.
The NAECR Policy Fellows Program is designed to educate early childhood researchers on policy processes, impacts and relationships to research; to provide policymakers with insight into the latest early childhood research at the University of Nebraska; and to generate collaboration among researchers and policymakers to develop effective research agendas that enrich early childhood experiences.
New funding is available to help Nebraska researchers strengthen their data and analyses.
The Nebraska Academy for Methodology, Analytics and Psychometrics (MAP Academy) is seeking proposals for a competitive funding opportunity created to enhance the rigor of field-based human subjects research at the University of Nebraska.
Because bullying often begins and ends at school, teachers are the front line of defense against such behavior.
However, teachers in one country may respond differently than their international counterparts.
Jared Noetzel, doctoral candidate in the school psychology program, is leading a dissertation study on culturally responsive teacher training to prevent bullying in schools.
For new mothers, returning to work often means deciding whether to continue breastfeeding. But systemic barriers often make it difficult to do so.
To explore the relationship between breastfeeding and returning to work, Kailey Snyder, assistant professor in the School of Health & Kinesiology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, partnered with the Nebraska Academy for Methodology, Analytics and Psychometrics (MAP Academy) to examine a decade’s worth of national lactation data.
For the past 20 years, the Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools has remained committed to making positive difference in people’s lives through research in the social, behavioral and educational sciences.
As CYFS looks ahead to the next 20 years, the center is offering a new funding opportunity: The CYFS Signature Research Impact Program.
