Niceness is a socialized disposition, particularly amongst white women, that prioritizes comfort and neutrality while preventing resistance against oppressive systems. Given the demographics of teachers and teacher educators, niceness and whiteness are deeply embedded in programs and institutions. As eight white, female teacher educators, we drew…

This paper highlights how inter-institutional faculty relationships can strengthen student transfer between two-year and four-year programs. This article stresses the value of such efforts and some of the opportunities, benefits, and challenges of getting started. This type of relationship is important to ensure that courses will transfer…

This conceptual essay explores three "moments" related to our collective efforts as white teacher educators to respond to proposed anti-critical race theory legislation in Michigan. These moments made visible institutional tensions and limits related to taking a stand against racist policies. We explore how we might obstruct flows of…

Effective communication about science is a core skill undergraduates should learn, but little research has explored how students communicate about culturally controversial science topics. In this study, we explored how Black undergraduate science students took on the role of science communicators in their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.…

Physicists, physics students, and community members come together and engage with physics content through various forms of informal education programming. Our prior work has shown that the landscape of informal physics programs in the United States has a variety of formats, audience demographics, and content. Informal physics programs have many…

This paper will discuss a Virtual Exchange (VE) between the University of Michigan (USA) and the High Institute of Technological Studies of Béja (Tunisia) that took place between October and December 2019. Students from Tunisia and USA were enrolled in two entrepreneurship courses in their respective universities and joined together to work in…

This paper reflects our experience working with a 2016 Environmental Justice class in an early college in Flint, Michigan. We explore the complexity of engaging with students about issues of racism and racial stereotyping in response to their experiences living through the "water crisis" in Flint. In this paper, we question our role as…

In this article, the authors describe how five institutions have employed the dynamic relationship between university-wide leadership efforts (the macro level); interactions and initiatives within the school, college, or department (the meso level); and efforts by individual instructors and activists (the micro level) to create change at their…

This study examines the association between high school teachers' collegial networks and their own familiarity with, and practices related to, supporting students' admission to college. Using survey data collected at two time points from 163 teachers in four mid-Michigan high schools in 2011-2012, this study (a) employs cluster analysis to map…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the roles of doctoral program specialists in Big Ten universities. Face-to-face interviews with 20 doctoral program specialists employed in institutions in the Big Ten were conducted. Participants were asked to describe their roles within their work place. The doctoral program specialists reported their…

Across the United States, a growing number of colleges are redesigning their programs and student support services according to the "guided pathways" model. Central to this approach are efforts to clarify pathways to program completion, career advancement, and further education. Equally essential are efforts to help students explore…

This summary is a digest of key findings from "Implementing Guided Pathways: Early Insights From the AACC Pathways Colleges," a report based on Community College Research Center's (CCRC's) research on the 30 colleges involved in the American Association of Community Colleges' (AACC) Pathways Project. The research presented in this report…

Higher education is ripe for innovation. While emerging technological developments such as digital courseware and mobiles apps have made it easier than ever for people to engage with learning resources, significant issues of access and equity persist among students from low-income, minority, single-parent families, and other disadvantaged groups.…

The goal of this study is to investigate early childhood teachers' perspective of teaching foster and adopted children. The main purpose is to seek suggestions how teachers can nurture the development of foster and adopted children. A 6 question survey was sent to 44 teachers pursuing graduate studies in early childhood education. Of this 50%…

This article investigates one small aspect of the work of secondary social studies teacher preparation at Michigan State University (and, of course, the surrounding public schools where so much of this preparation actually takes place). The authors have come to see that there cannot be a successful program without having close, warm, collegial…