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Category: Grant Related

Welch, NU team awarded childcare evaluation grant

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Greg Welch, CYFS research associate professor, far right, is leading a recently funded project to evaluate childcare quality. The research team includes, from left, Iheoma Iruka, director of research and evaluation at the Buffett Early Childhood Institute, and Helen Raikes and Julia Torquati, UNL professors of child, youth and family studies.

While childcare shapes the trajectory of future generations, evaluating its impact is far from child’s play.

Led by Greg Welch, CYFS research associate professor, a multi-campus University of Nebraska team has received funding to evaluate and inform childcare quality. The CYFS-housed project, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families, will pinpoint the minimum thresholds of childcare quality needed to promote positive development and prevent negative outcomes for children birth to age five. Full Article

Niehaus earns grants to study student engagement

Elizabeth Niehaus
Elizabeth Niehaus

Elizabeth Niehaus, assistant professor in educational administration, has been awarded two grants to study Caribbean student engagement in higher education. The American College Personnel Association Foundation awarded a $2,500 grant and the NASPA (Student Affairs Administrators In Higher Education) Foundation awarded $4,650—both projects are housed in CYFS. Full Article

Jones using mobile technology to engage students

CYFS faculty affiliate Georgia Jones, associate professor of nutrition and health sciences, is starting a technology innovation project with a grant from CEHS. She is working with CYFS to produce videos for students, which will be filmed and edited using only mobile devices.
Georgia Jones, associate professor of nutrition and health sciences, is working with CYFS to produce supplemental course videos, which will be filmed and edited solely with mobile devices. Her technology innovation project is funded by CEHS and will include a tutorial to help other professors replicate the process.

CYFS faculty affiliate Georgia Jones, associate professor of nutrition and health sciences, is using mobile technology to connect students with supplemental course content—and she’s doing it all from a UNL food laboratory.

Jones is partnering with the Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools to create a food science video series using a GoPro camera and an iPad. Full Article

CYFS’ MAP Academy awarded national 4-H grant

CYFS researchers working to refine the 4-H Common Measures include, from left, Leslie Hawley, research assistant professor; Andrew White, graduate student in school psychology; Ann Arthur, graduate student in educational psychology; Michelle Howell Smith, research assistant professor; and Natalie Koziol, postdoctoral research associate.
CYFS researchers recently received a grant to refine the 4-H Common Measures. The research team includes, from left, Leslie Hawley, research assistant professor; Andrew White, graduate student in school psychology; Ann Arthur, graduate student in educational psychology; Michelle Howell Smith, research assistant professor; and Natalie Koziol, postdoctoral research associate.

Researchers from the Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools (CYFS) are embarking on a collaborative project to enhance program evaluations for 4-H, the nation’s largest youth development organization.

CYFS’ Nebraska Academy for Methodology, Analytics and Psychometrics recently received a $225,000 grant from the National 4-H Council to review and revise the 4-H Common Measures, a set of surveys used to identify and measure youth outcomes. Full Article

Bovaird, engineering faculty receive EPA ‘healthy schools’ grant

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Jim Bovaird (far right), founding director of the MAP Academy and associate professor of educational psychology, joins UNL architectural engineering faculty (from left) Josephine Lau, Clarence Waters and Lily Wang in an EPA-funded study to examine schools’ indoor environmental effects on students from kindergarten through 12th grade. (Photo credit: Greg Nathan / University Communications.)

Advanced methodology sets the foundation for a UNL team studying the effects of school environment on student performance.

CYFS faculty affiliate Jim Bovaird, founding director of the MAP Academy and associate professor of educational psychology, joins faculty from the Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction for a four-year study of schools’ indoor environmental effects on the academic achievement of students from kindergarten through 12th grade. Full Article

Molfese to lead $1.4 million study of toddler sleep habits

CYFS Faculty Affiliates Victoria Molfese (right) and Kathy Rudasill work with a toddler wearing an actigraph that monitors sleep patterns.
CYFS Faculty Affiliates Victoria Molfese (right) and Kathy Rudasill work with a toddler wearing an actigraph that monitors sleep patterns.

ZZZs don’t always come easy for children still learning their ABCs.

Accordingly, three CYFS faculty affiliates are studying the developmental implications of toddlers’ sleep habits – and the factors that might determine whether they sleep like a baby. Full Article

CYFS earns $3.2 million grant to assess Getting Ready intervention

A CYFS research team has earned a $3.2 million U.S. Department of Education grant to explore whether an intervention approach that bridges living rooms and classrooms can also span the persistent achievement gap facing disadvantaged children.

Dubbed Getting Ready, the CYFS-designed intervention aims to strengthen parent-child relationships and foster family-school partnerships that improve the educational prospects of children at risk for developmental delays. Two of Getting Ready’s creators, CYFS Director Susan Sheridan and CYFS Research Associate Professor Lisa Knoche, are now leading a study of its ability to help these struggling children close gaps in cognition, language skills and social-emotional maturity as they enter preschool. Full Article

Eccarius receives $1.2M grant to train educators of deaf

Malinda Eccarius
CYFS faculty affiliate Malinda Eccarius is working toward improving deaf education throughout Midwestern schools.

CYFS faculty affiliate Malinda Eccarius recently received a four-year, $1.2 million U.S. Department of Education grant aimed at helping 25 K-12 instructors earn teaching endorsements in deaf education.

Eccarius’ “Mountain Prairie Upgrade Partnership-Itinerant” (MPUP-I) project will prepare instructors in regular and special education to become itinerant teachers – those qualified to assist students who are deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH) but take classes with their hearing peers. Full Article