At Virginia's public institutions of higher education, the process of determining eligibility for accommodations occurs in two main steps: (1) establish that a student has a disability; and (2) determine the appropriate accommodations for the individual student. Given students' varied experiences at different Virginia public institutions of higher…

Teacher leadership recently has gained prominence as an important method for school improvement and reform, yet the ranks of teacher leaders do not match the racial and ethnic diversity of the students they serve. Jori S. Beck, KaaVonia Hinton, and Brandon M. Butler conducted a study of teacher leadership that garnered almost 800 survey responses…

Purpose: We examine the content, context, and management of literacy learning opportunities in a large, diverse sample in the US and whether these opportunities were differentiated by children's oral language and decoding skill levels. Method: A total of 1,404 children in 153 preschool-through-third-grade classrooms were observed for several…

This article primarily uses document-based historical methods to reconstruct Stephen Lenton's LGBTQ advocacy while a student affairs professional at Virginia Commonwealth University from 1970 to 1980. Lenton enjoyed significant career success in his first several years at VCU, establishing popular and successful programs and a strong rapport with…

Background/Context: Postsecondary education plays a central role in income and wealth mobility (Chetty et al., 2017) and in buffering individuals from the negative effects of economic downturns (see recent evidence from BLS, 2019; BLS, 2020). Much of the policy and programmatic focus around college completion has centered on increasing the share…

Many dimensions of teacher working conditions influence both teacher and student outcomes; yet, analyses of schools' overall working conditions are challenged by high correlations among the dimensions. Our study overcame this challenge by applying latent profile analysis of Virginia teachers' perceptions of school leadership, instructional agency,…

This study explored a place-based summer enrichment offering for gifted rural students through the lens of a critical pedagogy of place (Greenwood, 2003). To ameliorate well-documented opportunity gaps for rural students, we established a residential camp on our university's campus where middle school students engaged in STEM and humanities…

The Rural and Diverse Student Scholars Program at George Mason University is a strategic initiative to recruit and retain rural and diverse Virginia students in STEM majors. A grant facilitated a partnership between an academic college and the Office of Admissions, enabling new recruiting methods to be tested. In this article we describe these…

This article features a case study from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), a large, public, urban, research university, in which challenges in administering financial aid for study abroad early in the COVID-19 pandemic led the Education Abroad and Student Financial Services teams to revisit practices and protocols. This article describes…

The purpose of this study was to compare the concert band assessments of male-directed ensembles and female-directed ensembles in the state of Virginia. Data included overall ratings of male-directed and female-directed bands (N = 3,229) that performed at District Concert Assessments held across the state in the past 6 years (2013-2018), which…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to provide a comprehensive analysis of the aspects within speech-language pathology programs that students deem to be important or relevant as they apply to and subsequently select a graduate program. Method: Data were collected through an online survey of 627 individuals who had applied to a master's degree…

The Agricultural Act of 2014 authorized $200 million for the development, implementation, and evaluation of pilot projects to test innovative strategies to reduce dependency on and increase employment among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants. California, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Mississippi,…

Background: Research indicates that transition-age youth with disabilities face several obstacles with regard to finding employment. However, research on the extent to which barriers and facilitators differ across disability types and contexts is lacking. Objective: The primary purpose of this qualitative study was to understand employment-related…

This inquiry focuses on the experiences of black women in U.S. higher education in the less studied realm of gendered and racialized disfunction compared with K-12 education in which violence and surveillance all too often mirror the criminal legal system. The author explores the traumatic impact of carceral logics--surveillance, control, and…

Although there is substantial research documenting the impact of department heads in higher education, there is a significant gap in the literature examining the role of program coordinators. This self-study explores how two teacher educators navigated the opportunities and costs of coordinating their respective programs, literacy education and…