The Mississippi IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (Grant P20GM103476) launched the new Mississippi INBRE Outreach Scholars (MIOS) summer research program in 2019. The program was designed to offer students community outreach and research experiences related to…

Historically, high levels of self-reported stress, anxiety, and depression are quite common among STEM students. Unfortunately, after multiple semesters of disrupted education due to COVID-19, these mental struggles among students, especially first-year (freshmen) undergraduate engineering students, have only been exacerbated. To mitigate these…

Chemistry simulations using interactive graphic user interfaces (GUIs) represent uniquely effective and safe tools to support multidimensional learning. Computer literacy and coding skills have become increasingly important in the chemical sciences. In response to both of these facts, a series of Jupyter notebooks hosted on Google Colaboratory…

Background: Universities are at risk for COVID-19 and Fall semester begins in August 2020 for most campuses in the United States. The Southern States, including Mississippi, are experiencing a high incidence of COVID-19. Aims: The objective of this study is to model the impact of face masks and hybrid learning on the COVID-19 epidemic on…

This study explored how faculty and students differed in their coping strategies to handle the severe stress brought on by COVID-19 and how this stress impacted student academic achievement. For this study,103 students and faculty at a rural southern university participated in the study where they reported on their coping mechanisms during the…

Decades of research suggests that institutional communication can dictate student success, but the COVID-19 pandemic exposed challenges to new demands. Institutions may not have been prepared to adjust communications during the COVID-19 pandemic, and given the ongoing nature of the pandemic, literature has yet to examine how higher education…

Language educators were unprepared for emergency remote language teaching (ERLT) due to lack of training in online pedagogy and negative perceptions of online instruction, and the rural community of language educators have been challenged in unique ways. Using the intersections of content (language teaching), space (rurality), and context…

Since 2017, Jackson State University's (JSU) Minority Advancement through Recruitment and Retention in Science via Outreach Program (MARRS-OP) developed a series of professional development (PD) programs designed for 6th-12th science teachers in under-resourced Mississippi school districts. Due to COVID-19, MARRS-OP's original program design was…

Objective: The study aimed to understand the perceptions, knowledge, information sources, and coping skills pertaining to COVID-19 among two groups of African American young adults. Participants: African American ages 18-29 years enrolled in Historically Black Colleges and Universities and non-college enrolled young adults in Mississippi were the…

In 2017, the National Association of School Psychologists described tele-assessment as the least researched area of telehealth. This became problematic in 2020 when COVID-19 curtailed the administration of face-to-face assessments. Publishers began to offer computer-adapted tele-assessment methods for tests that had only previously been…

SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) has proliferated across the United States, and in the process, it has disrupted all sense of normalcy. Because adolescents are in a critical period for growth and development, youth are particularly susceptible to negative impacts of disruption from COVID-19. Therefore, sustaining youth development programs is essential to…

Reflections on the efficacy of pedagogical changes and practices and their effect on student performance are often hindered by incomplete data, small sample sizes, and the confounding variables of multiple instructors and teaching sites. Observations from such retrospective analyses, however, are highly sought after by instructors and…

In 2020, COVID-19 disrupted schooling disproportionately affecting economically disadvantaged learners, students of color, and those living in rural spaces. Nearly three years following its initial onset, the world has entered a "post-pandemic" era. Consequently, all teachers need continued professional support and training related to…