Civic and Community Engagement Commons^™

Implementing Sexual Violence Primary Prevention Programs: A Case Study Of Implementer Perspectives, Rachel Jackson-Gordon, Jacinda K. Dariotis, Bonnie S. Fisher, Victoria Dickman-Burnett

Journal of Youth Development

Sexual violence prevention programs are important for addressing sexual violence and are often implemented in local community and university settings. However, program implementer perspectives are often missing from academic research literature, limiting access to practical knowledge that can provide insights to improving programs and prevention. This study illustrates the landscape of sexual violence primary prevention work in a Midwestern metropolitan area. Seven interviews with community and university implementers took place in 2020, providing information about local prevention programs and expert insights to community prevention culture. Geographic data about implementation locations was also collected to visually assess coverage of preventive services …

Can We Efficiently Help Adults Strengthen Their Relational Practice?, Tom Akiva, Annie M. White, Sharon Colvin, Junlei Li, Peter Wardrip

Journal of Youth Development

Human interactions across settings shape young people’s learning and development, and building adult expertise in facilitating productive interactions takes deliberate practice and reflective experience. However, relational practices are not consistently part of adult learning for those who work with youth. We describe a 2-year design study to develop the Simple Interactions Leadership Program, a professional learning workshop focused on relational practices. We refined the program across 3 iterations with library and after-school staff (with a total of 41 participants). Iterative changes included adding participant-driven “try-it-out” projects, adding external accountability features, and combining staff from the library and after-school sectors. Using …

After-School Connectedness, Racial–Ethnic Identity, Affirmation, And Problem Behaviors, Danielle A. Augustine, Emilie Smith, Dawn P. Witherspoon

Journal of Youth Development

After-school programs are potential contexts that may promote positive youth development (PYD) and reduce problem behaviors among African American children. One way after-school programs may be associated with reduced problem behaviors is by fostering an affirming sense of identity. Prior research on racial–ethnic identity among African American children and adolescents has shown that a positive and affirming sense of identity is related to less maladaptive coping, yet little is known about how after-school programs may foster an affirming sense of identity and lead to reduced problem behaviors. The current study adds to this discourse by investigating how children’s connection to …

Youth Social And Emotional Learning In Quality Enhanced, Out-Of-School Time Programs, Annick Eudes Jean-Baptiste, Stephanie Giannella, Celine Provini

Journal of Youth Development

Researchers examined social and emotional learning (SEL) ratings for two samples of 559 and 406 predominantly elementary-age youth of color, who were enrolled in out-of-school time (OST) programs serving communities mostly of high socioeconomic need in Palm Beach County, Florida. Covering the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the study predicted that programs’ participation in an SEL quality enhancement project would positively impact youth SEL. This quality enhancement was expected to emerge alongside the positive effects of foundational program quality achieved through participation in the Palm Beach County Quality Improvement System, which includes an …

The Key To Engaging Every Student: Building Greater Linkages Between National, State, And Local System Leaders, Hillary Hardt Oravec, Brenda Mclaughlin

Journal of Youth Development

The COVID-19 pandemic illuminated how essential summer and after-school programs are for youth and their families. Policymakers took note of the needs and the evidence base, and prioritized stimulus funding to expand access and accelerate learning. American Rescue Plan (ARP) and Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds were quickly released to schools through different mechanisms, initially prioritizing speed over infrastructure design. The funds were intended to fuel robust school–community partnerships to provide students who suffered from pandemic-related learning and developmental setbacks with comprehensive, high-quality programming; yet the timeline for planning and implementation often hindered progress toward that vision. …

Family Diabetes Camp Amidst Covid-19: A Community Of Practice Model, Eddie Hill, Rowan Halle Bernard Williams, Justin A. Haegele, Ron Ramsing, Bethany Arrington, Laura Hill

Journal of Youth Development

Studies have found that youth are experiencing higher anxiety levels than prior to COVID-19, and youth with type 1 diabetes are at higher risk. Medical specialty camps are a type of camp that provide opportunities for youth with chronic illnesses to share common goals, increase socialization, improve camper well-being, and increase knowledge of diabetes management. The program evaluation sought to determine the impact of a campers’ outcomes of independence and perceived competence and familial impact during COVID-19. Over half the participants were at their first diabetes camp and 71% of the campers felt their perceived competence “increased a little bit” …

Supporting Teens’ Professional Identities And Engagement In Mindfulness Practices Through Teens-As-Teachers Programming, Anne Marie Iaccopucci

Journal of Youth Development

This study was situated in the context of the University of California 4-H Positive Youth Development Program. A convenience sample of teen teachers (N = 11) represents variation in age (11–17), gender, ethnicity, and geographic location. All teens delivered the 4-H Mindful Me curriculum from the University of California 4-H Program. Qualitative analysis provides evidence of positive developmental outcomes that support teen teachers’ personal professional identity and engagement in mindfulness. Teens described how involvement in the teens-as-teachers program provided the context in which they could explore their personal professional identity, build on self-efficacy as an instructor, and develop an improved …

Genetic Diversity Fuels Gene Discovery For Tobacco And Alcohol Use, Gretchen R B Saunders, Xingyan Wang, Fang Chen, Seon-Kyeong Jang, Mengzhen Liu, Chen Wang, Shuang Gao, Yu Jiang, Chachrit Khunsriraksakul, Jacqueline M Otto, Clifton Addison, Masato Akiyama, Christine M Albert, Fazil Aliev, Alvaro Alonso, Donna K Arnett, Allison E Ashley-Koch, Aneel A Ashrani, Kathleen C Barnes, R Graham Barr, Traci M Bartz, Diane M Becker, Lawrence F Bielak, Emelia J Benjamin, Joshua C Bis, Gyda Bjornsdottir, John Blangero, Eugene R Bleecker, Jason D Boardman, Eric Boerwinkle, Dorret I Boomsma, Meher Preethi Boorgula, Donald W Bowden, Jennifer A Brody, Brian E Cade, Daniel I Chasman, Sameer Chavan, Yii-Der Ida Chen, Zhengming Chen, Iona Cheng, Michael H Cho, Hélène Choquet, John W Cole, Marilyn C Cornelis, Francesco Cucca, Joanne E Curran, Mariza De Andrade, Danielle M Dick, Anna R Docherty, Ravindranath Duggirala, Charles B Eaton, Marissa A Ehringer, Tõnu Esko, Jessica D Faul, Lilian Fernandes Silva, Edoardo Fiorillo, Myriam Fornage, Barry I Freedman, Maiken E Gabrielsen, Melanie E Garrett, Sina A Gharib, Christian Gieger, Nathan Gillespie, David C Glahn, Scott D Gordon, Charles C Gu, Dongfeng Gu, Daniel F Gudbjartsson, Xiuqing Guo, Jeffrey Haessler, Michael E Hall, Toomas Haller, Kathleen Mullan Harris, Jiang He, Pamela Herd, John K Hewitt, Ian Hickie, Bertha Hidalgo, John E Hokanson, Christian Hopfer, Joukejan Hottenga, Lifang Hou, Hongyan Huang, Yi-Jen Hung, David J Hunter, Kristian Hveem, Shih-Jen Hwang, Chii-Min Hwu, William Iacono, Marguerite R Irvin, Yon Ho Jee, Eric O Johnson, Yoonjung Y Joo, Eric Jorgenson, Anne E Justice, Yoichiro Kamatani, Robert C Kaplan, Jaakko Kaprio, Sharon L R Kardia, Matthew C Keller, Tanika N Kelly, Charles Kooperberg, Tellervo Korhonen, Peter Kraft, Kenneth Krauter, Johanna Kuusisto, Markku Laakso, Jessica Lasky-Su, Wen-Jane Lee, James J Lee, Daniel Levy, Liming Li, Kevin Li, Yuqing Li, Kuang Lin, Penelope A Lind, Chunyu Liu, Donald M Lloyd-Jones, Sharon M Lutz, Jiantao Ma, Reedik Mägi, Ani Manichaikul, Nicholas G Martin, Ravi Mathur, Nana Matoba, Patrick F Mcardle, Matt Mcgue, Matthew B Mcqueen, Sarah E Medland, Andres Metspalu, Deborah A Meyers, Iona Y Millwood, Braxton D Mitchell, Karen L Mohlke, Matthew Moll, May E Montasser, Alanna C Morrison, Antonella Mulas, Jonas B Nielsen, Kari E North, Elizabeth C Oelsner, Yukinori Okada, Valeria Orrù, Nicholette D Palmer, Teemu Palviainen, Anita Pandit, S Lani Park, Ulrike Peters, Annette Peters, Patricia A Peyser, Tinca J C Polderman, Nicholas Rafaels, Susan Redline, Robert M Reed, Alex P Reiner, John P Rice, Stephen S Rich, Nicole E Richmond, Carol Roan, Jerome I Rotter, Michael N Rueschman, Valgerdur Runarsdottir, Nancy L Saccone, David A Schwartz, Aladdin H Shadyab, Jingchunzi Shi, Suyash S Shringarpure, Kamil Sicinski, Anne Heidi Skogholt, Jennifer A Smith, Nicholas L Smith, Nona Sotoodehnia, Michael C Stallings, Hreinn Stefansson, Kari Stefansson, Jerry A Stitzel, Xiao Sun, Moin Syed, Ruth Tal-Singer, Amy E Taylor, Kent D Taylor, Marilyn J Telen, Khanh K Thai, Hemant Tiwari, Constance Turman, Thorarinn Tyrfingsson, Tamara L Wall, Robin G Walters, David R Weir, Scott T Weiss, Wendy B White, John B Whitfield, Kerri L Wiggins, Gonneke Willemsen, Cristen J Willer, Bendik S Winsvold, Huichun Xu, Lisa R Yanek, Jie Yin, Kristin L Young, Kendra A Young, Bing Yu, Wei Zhao, Wei Zhou, Sebastian Zöllner, Luisa Zuccolo, 23andme Research Team, Biobank Japan Project, Chiara Batini, Andrew W Bergen, Laura J Bierut, Sean P David, Sarah A Gagliano Taliun, Dana B Hancock, Bibo Jiang, Marcus R Munafò, Thorgeir E Thorgeirsson, Dajiang J Liu, Scott Vrieze

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Tobacco and alcohol use are heritable behaviours associated with 15% and 5.3% of worldwide deaths, respectively, due largely to broad increased risk for disease and injury1-4. These substances are used across the globe, yet genome-wide association studies have focused largely on individuals of European ancestries5. Here we leveraged global genetic diversity across 3.4 million individuals from four major clines of global ancestry (approximately 21% non-European) to power the discovery and fine-mapping of genomic loci associated with tobacco and alcohol use, to inform function of these loci via ancestry-aware transcriptome-wide association studies, and to evaluate the genetic architecture and predictive power …

Evaluating Post-Training Engagement, Alyssa B. Trinity, Caitlyn D. Gonzalez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Impact Launch (IL) is a collective of social impact professionals dedicated to creating sustainable and equitable change. IL provides strategic planning, project design, collaborative capacity building, coaching, and leadership intensives. Similar to those who’ve undergone other training programs, alumni of IL’s leadership training are prone to becoming disengaged with the tools and stagnant in their learning. The purpose of this project was to begin efforts to increase alumni engagement with the tools and each other through conducting a series of interviews. Six alumni were interviewed to collect feedback on how IL can better support engagement. The major expected outcome for …

Evaluating Post-Training Engagement, Caitlyn Dawn Gonzalez, Alyssa Trinity

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Impact Launch (IL) is a collective of social impact professionals dedicated to creating sustainable and equitable change. IL provides strategic planning, project design, collaborative capacity building, individual and team coaching, and leadership intensives for leaders, businesses, and organizations. Similar to those who have undergone other training programs, alumni of IL’s leadership training are prone to becoming disengaged with the tools they have learned and stagnant in their learning. The purpose of this project was to begin efforts to increase alumni engagement with the tools and each other through conducting a series of interviews; 6 alumni were interviewed to collect feedback …

Forging Community In The Ouachita Foothills Of Southwest Arkansas: Duckett Township, Homesteading, Distilling And Race, Lisa C. Childs

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Community was key to successful subsistence agriculture in Arkansas, especially in the Ouachita foothills in southwest Arkansas (including Polk, Howard, Montgomery, Pike, Garland Counties) and Oklahoma (McCurtain, Pittsburgh, LeFlore Counties) until the 1940s. Nearly a quarter of Arkansas’s land remained in the federal government’s name twenty years after statehood, and even more of the land in the western Ouachita foothills. Much remains unknown about how farming communities were formed in this area from the end of the Civil War until approximately World War II. As seen in the Duckett community in northern Howard County, while family connections were important to …

The Rattler (Volume 111, Issue 4), St. Mary's University

The Rattler (Previous issues)

Founded in 1919, The Rattler is the student voice of St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas. The newspaper documents campus life, academic and social issues, student opinion, and local and national events as they relate to the University community. Content typically includes news articles, editorial commentary, arts and culture coverage, sports reporting, and advertisements.

Children As Design Visionaries, Learners, And Socio-Political Wayfinders: Mapping The Layers, Hierarchies, And Rhythms Of A School Community, Natalie R. Davis, Roni Barsoum

Occasional Paper Series

Despite the seemingly intractable problems of public schooling, we (as researchers and dreamers) remain encouraged by the persistent efforts to reconfigure and reimagine the sociopolitical landscape of schools. We begin this essay by recognizing the work of individuals bravely and imperfectly expanding notions of what schools could and should be. We stand in solidarity with the innovators sowing, designing, and reaching toward more just social futures, dreaming of schools for children that are not so distant from the paradise Butler (2001) describes (Figure 1). This liberatory dreamwork coincides with long histories of communal ingenuity (Vossoughi et al., 2016), resistance against …

Predictors Of College Student Support Toward Colin Kaepernick’S National Anthem Protests, Brooke Coursen, Nicole Peiffer, Sakira Coleman, Philip Lucius

VA Engage Journal

Racial discrimination and inequality have perpetuated within the U.S. since its inception. In 2016, Colin Kaepernick initiated the national anthem protests to oppose the oppression of people of color in America. This study was developed in 2018 to identify social determinants of health underlying discriminatory beliefs and behaviors. The objective was to investigate the impacts of college students’ race, gender, political ideology, socio-economic status [SES], NFL interest, patriotism, and general protest support on support for the national anthem protests. We administered paper-and-pencil surveys across locations on the James Madison University campus using a convenience sample. There were 408 participants included, …

Effect Of Covid-19 Pandemic On Volunteerism And Fundraising Management Strategies In Nonprofits And Rebuilding Tactics Of Ronald Mcdonald House Charities Of Chicagoland And Northwest Indiana (Rmhc-Cni), Humza Wolf

Nonprofit and NGO Studies Student Projects

The financial sustainability of nonprofits depends highly on volunteerism and funding strategies which got impacted during Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic. This capstone study explores to what extent nonprofits got affected and evaluates the efforts of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Chicagoland & Northwest Indiana (RMHC-CNI) to improve the provision of support for underprivileged families of critically ill children. The continual efforts to overcome financial hurdles escalated in pandemic. Mixed method research design was used to collect, analyze, and triangulate both quantitative and qualitative research methods in this single study to understand the research problem. Interpretive approach encompassed the complexities of …

Mentoring: The Factors That Contribute To Persistence To Graduation For African American Males In Predominantly White Institutions In Missouri, Paula Miller

Dissertations

Due to several decisions by the United States Supreme Court in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, African Americans were granted access to PWI’s of higher education. However, African Americans still face challenges in obtaining post-secondary education. For example, in 2019 – 2020, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics (2021), 13.1% of African Americans graduated with master’s degrees. Additionally, in 2020, 19% of African Americans attained a post-secondary degree in Missouri (Towncharts.com, 2021).

Despite access, the number of African Americans obtaining degrees remains low. And, when the lens is focused on African American males, the numbers are …

Social Isolation, Third Places, And Precarious Employment Circumstances: A Scoping Review, Debbie Laliberte Rudman, Rebecca M. Aldrich

Occupational Therapy Publications

No abstract provided.

Staying Engaged While Staying Home?: Service-Learning, Writing, And Covid-19, Christopher Iverson

The SUNY Journal of the Scholarship of Engagement: JoSE

As an approach to writing instruction that has traditionally required students to engage in in-person community projects, service-learning has also traditionally involved risks. For example, students engaging in service-learning without proper support often do not approach community partners with the appropriate respect, and when university stakeholders fail to make clear what their side can offer in a partnership, they can leave community partners in the lurch when the semester ends and students finish their community-engaged coursework. These risks can be mitigated through education and reflection for instructors and students alike. The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing social distancing orders, however, left …

Exploring The Impact Of The Habitat For Humanity Home-Building Process On Partner Families' Holistic Well-Being, Hawkley Pusey, Nikhil Mathur, Kathryn Figliomeni, Nanditha Srinivasan, Keely R. Dehn, Jason A. Ware

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

The purpose of this study was to evaluate how participating in the Habitat for Humanity house-building process influenced participants’ purpose well-being, social well-being, community well-being, physical and mental well-being, and financial well-being, and how effective Habitat for Humanity is in aiding neighborhood revitalization within the Greater Lafayette area. The research project resulted in a presentation of quantitative data and a testimonial video that highlighted the stories of families that had worked with Habitat for Humanity. Quantitative data was gathered through a survey that addressed respondents’ levels of satisfaction within the various categories of well-being mentioned above. Testimonial information was gathered …

Uniting For Important Paws: The Independent Cat Society And S.H.I.N.E., Kayla Vasilko

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Homeless pets outnumber homeless people 5 to 1; only 1 in 10 animals in animal shelters are spayed or neutered; thus, organizations like the Independent Cat Society (ICS), a non-profit, cage-less, no kill cat shelter are vital community resources (Gaille, 2017). At the ICS, every cat admitted is spayed or neutered and updated on any needed medical treatment; feline overpopulation is addressed through trap, neuter, release (TNR), and additional programs to educate the public on responsible animal care practices (“About the ICS,” 2019). Through volunteerism and two Purdue Service-Learning grants, the Purdue University Northwest student organization S.H.I.N.E (students helping ignite …