Family Social Science graduate student Jennifer Doty has been chosen as a recipient for a 2012 National Graduate Fellowship from the American Association of Family and Consumer Science. She will be honored at the association's 103rd annual conference June 24-27 in Indianapolis, IN.

Alan Sroufe, professor emeritus at the Institute of Child Development, has been selected as this year's recipient of the Division 7 Developmental Psychology Mentor Award by the American Psychological Association. The award honors individuals who have contributed to developmental psychology through the education and training of the next generation of research leaders in developmental psychology. The award recognizes individuals who have had substantial impact on the field of developmental psychology by their mentoring of young scholars. APA also notes in the award letter, "This award has special meaning compared to some of the other awards because it not only indicates the impact on the field of one's individual research career but also the continued impact through the next generation of developmentalists, as well as one's outstanding mentoring." The award will be presented at the APA 2013 convention in Hawaii.

Curriculum and Instruction Ph.D. student Jenna Sethi was awarded a $10,000 Kappa Omicron Nu Marjorie M. Brown Fellowship to help fund her research. Sethi is examining how urban youth, who are often marginalized and oppressed by violence in their communities, address this violence by producing their own media. Her study will include interviews with filmmakers and with mural and spoken word artists.

Sethi is a student in the family, youth, and community doctoral program. She received her M.Ed. in the Youth Development Leadership program. With the encouragement of her mentor and adviser, Associate Professor Yvonne Gentzler, Ph.D., she has been able to pursue interdisciplinary interests around critical media literacy and youth studies leading to her dissertation topic. She also teaches courses in the Youth Studies department in the School of Social Work.

In addition, Sethi received a $2,000 2012-2013 CEHD Seashore Graduate Fellowship, which is awarded to a doctoral student whose research focuses on issues of broad social inquiry problems, social and cultural change, or social justice.

Another academic year has come to a close, and Family Social Science bids farewell to all of our undergraduate and graduate students who have graduated. Commencement exercises were held on Thursday, May 10, in Mariucci Arena. We wish you all the best in future endeavors, and hope you remember your time at the University and in the department fondly.

Ph.D. and M.A. graduates
Bibiana D. Koh (Ph.D.)
Georgi Kroupin (Ph.D.)
Dung Minh Mao (M.A.)
Laurelle Lea Myhra (Ph.D.)
Diana R. Samek (Ph.D.)

Bachelor of Science (B.S.) graduates

Zamzam Abdiwali Ahmed
Jordan Elizabeth Anderson
Jeena Devi Arnachellum
Ellary Henslin Asche
Jasmin C Avalos
Amber M Backus
Kelsey Karin Bank
Alyssa Marie Bielawski
Raeanne Marie Block
Ali Janalle Bodin
Christopher A Brendemuhl
Nicole Wehling Brooks
Sarah Nichole Brueggen
Asmaa Hassen Burhan
Bailey Lynn Cahill
Melinda Mishael Degroot
Melisa L Devlin
Onoma Rebecca Ejiya
Ashley Ellingson
Shauna Rae Fenske
Sarah Emily Friedman
Kristen Carol Fuller
Greer L Gentry Jr
Emily Anne Haffley
Shannon Mary Haley
Brittany Ann Hanson
Alexandra J Hawes
Quala Her
Dawn Marie Holmen
Kellie Marie Holt
Emily Ngoc Huynh
Seanna S Irvin-Anderson
Leah M Jackson
Veronica Lee Jasperson
Annie Kathryn Johansson
Alea Joy Johnson
Alexandra Marie Katopodis
Colleen L Kelly
Katie Marie Kelly
Lisa Anne Kenward
Emily Ruth Ketcham
Valerie Keye Klingberg
La Kong
Megan Ann Labarbera
Debbie Sokheun Lay
Pa Nhia Lee
Valerie Mikel Lewis
Nicole Lucie Limper
Hannah Christina Ludens
Kiara M Malone
Chelsea Mcfarren
Samrawit K Mekonnen
Rahma Mahmoud Mohamed
Laurel Elaine Molin
Ena Moua
Michelle Anne Murdock
Paris Milan Nolan
Crystal Marie OConnor
Akudo Gail Omeoga
Tetyana Pashko
Talia Vanessa Picotte
Taheliz Rivera
Marcella Ann Romie
Callie Christine Rose
Johanna Jean Schell
Leah Claire Choi Smiley
Tanvi Kamlesh Sura
Selamawit Teffera
Heather Thao
Delgermend Tserendamba
Lee Vang
Nancy Vang
Rachel Wiens
Sonnie Tonia Williams
Chanel Monet Wright
Mor Xiong
Naking Xiong
Kao Song Yang
Xee Yang
Aurora Ray Zosel

The School of Kinesiology takes center stage in the Spring/Summer issue of Connect, CEHD's alumni/faculty/staff magazine. Kinesiology director Li Li Ji is featured on the cover, and his key involvement in establishing the U.S.-China American Cultural Center for Sport, a partnership with the U of M China Center, the School of Kinesiology, and the Tianjin University of Sport in Tianjin, China. The grand opening and inauguration ceremony was held March 20 at Tianjin University of Sport and included dignitaries from China and the U.S. as well as the University of Minnesota, School of Kinesiology, and the Tucker Center. Read the full story at this link: http://www.cehd.umn.edu/Connect/2012Spring/Diplomacy.html

Also featured in Connect was Dr. Don Dengel, associate professor in exercise physiology, and his Study Abroad trip to London with 25 students last December to explore the impact of the Olympics on the city of London, the first city to host the games for the third time. Students visited venues from the previous games (1908 and 1948) as well as 2012 venues under construction. Go to http://www.cehd.umn.edu/Connect/2012Spring/Olympics.html to read the full story.

Matt Vollum, teaching specialist and coordinator of Kinesiology's physical education and health licensure programs, and Kinesiology doctoral student in sport sociology, has been appointed boys basketball head coach for Eagan High School.

Vollum was head coach at Bloomington Kennedy High School from 2002-2009, where he coached the boys basketball team to the 2008 state Class 4A tournament. The team made it to the quarterfinals where it lost to Minnetonka, the eventual state champion.

Congratulations, Matt!

The University's Office of the Vice President for Research has awarded Li Li Ji, Ph.D., professor and director of the School of Kinesiology, a University Grant-in-Aid of Research, Artistry, and Scholarship effective July 1, 2012, through January 15, 2014, for his work titled "Efficacy of in vivo PGC-1α Transfection in Protecting Against Muscle Disuse Atrophy."

This grant will suport an investigation using mice as a model on how local injection of a DNA binding protein called PGC-1α would improve recovery of hindlimb muscle from immobilization due to banding. Preliminary work indicates this nuclear cofactor enhances energy production, antioxidant defense and suppresses inflammatory response, and thus facilitates recovery.

Dr. Jo Ann Buysse, sport management undergraduate coordinator and lecturer in Kinesiology, will be in France beginning May 20 with U of M Learning Abroad staff to observe 12 U of M students attending a Learning Abroad course on Sport and Culture in France at the University of Montpellier. Nearly all the students attending are Kinesiology or Recreation, Park, and Leisure Studies undergraduates. The students will travel to see the European X Games and meet with Team Handball players. Dr. Buysse will also visit the AMOS School of Sport Business in Paris to discuss possible collaborations between the U of M and AMOS.

Dr. Stephen Ross, director of undergraduate studies and associate professor of sport management in the School of Kinesiology, was interviewed this week by Tom Lyden of Fox 9 News on naming rights of the newly proposed Vikings stadium.

In the interview, Ross discusses the importance of team success on the field, the future value of the Vikings naming rights, and the role of the economy in the costs of naming rights.

To read more, go to this link:

http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/18435687/future-vikings-stadium-name-comes-with-high-expectations

Dr. Don Dengel, associate professor in Kinesiology, has two recent publications:

1. Polgreen LE, Petryk A, Dietz AC, Sinaiko AR, Leisenring W, Goodman P, Steffen L, Perkins JL, Dengel DR, Baker KS, & Steinberger J: Modifiable risk factors associated with bone deficits in childhood cancer survivors. BMC Pediatrics, 12:40, 2012.

2. Lou X, Templeton DL, John R, & Dengel DR: Effects of continuous flow left ventricular assist device support on microvascular endothelial function. Journal of Cardiovascular Translational, 5(3):345-350, 2012.

Ms. Lou, the first author, is a former UROP student who worked with Dr. Dengel on her research project. Dr. Danielle Templeton is a 2010 PhD graduate of Kinesiology and advisee of Dr. Dengel.

Family Social Science faculty and graduate students came together with representatives from Mano a Mano International Partners for a two-day workshop on April 27-28 to collaborate on developing an evaluation plan for Mano a Mano's economic development programs in rural Bolivia.

Mano a Mano works on infrastructure building in Bolivia, helping rural and often hard to access towns construct and maintain water reservoirs, health centers, and schools to improve the residents' economic well-being.

During the collaboration workshop, a logic model was developed to aid in measuring human elements of the work being done, and gain a concrete understanding of how social capital is being developed. The results will be important not only for Mano a Mano and the communities in which it works, but also for government and community leaders.

Dr. Cathy Solheim and Dr. Tai Mendenhall have been working with Mano a Mano to develop a partnership over the last year. In the next year, the project will be incorporated into Dr. Solheim's course, taught with Dr. Liz Weiling, on refugee and immigrant families.

"We hope to do field work next summer in Bolivia," said Dr. Solheim. "Working with Mano a Mano on-site will help us further understand the work being done, and integrate it into our collaboration."

The collaboration also reached beyond Family Social Science, with three graduate students from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs' Master of Development Practice (MDP) program attending the collaboration workshop.

Hoarding practices have been sensationalized by the media and television shows, but two Family Social Science graduate students see deeper issues involving trauma, grief, and loss, and have launched an international study to discover more and help people who hoard and their families.

In 2009, Jennifer Sampson conducted interviews about hoarding behavior. She noticed a lot of people spoke about experiences in terms of grief and loss, and contacted Janet Yeats. Yeats has experience in dealing with trauma and ambiguous loss. Together, they created The Hoarding Project to better understand and have a discussion about the connection between hoarding behavior and trauma.

They organized a six week psychoeducational support group for family members of people who hoard. The eight group members were given time to talk to each other in a support group format about their experiences surrounding compulsive hoarding behavior.

"Ambiguous loss theory turned out to be a good way to describe the relationship between people who hoard and their family members," said Yeats.

Ambiguous loss theory was developed by Family Social Science professor emeritus Pauline Boss, and can occur in two main types: when there is physical absence and psychological presence--as when there is no body to bury--or when there is physical presence and psychological absence--as in cases of dementia, addictions, or other chronic illness.

"The current treatment for people who hoard is based on the individual," said Sampson, "while we feel that focusing on the whole family, with correct information about hoarding that is based in research, will be much more effective."

Sampson and Yeats are recruiting adults to take part in an online survey to gather information for further research. Both people who hoard and their family members are encouraged to participate. Issues such as mental illness, attachment relationships, and unresolved trauma and loss will be examined to better understand how they affect hoarding behavior.

The project has provided aftercare to some individuals featured on TV shows that show hoarding, but Sampson and Yeats said that those cases are often extreme and sensationalized.

"Hoarding involves four factors - excessive acquisition, difficulty discarding items, clutter, and distress - but hoarding itself is a spectrum," said Sampson. "Not everyone who hoards lives in a junk house."

"Hoarding shows often feature emergency situations, where an individual is facing eviction or property loss, and have time constraints," said Yeats. "Because things move so fast, the experience can be even more traumatizing."

The Hoarding Project plans on focusing on the entire family, and will offer education and training to professionals, media affiliates, and members of the public. Learn more at thehoardingproject.org

Dr. Shonda Craft, assistant professor of Family Social Science, was appointed by Governor Mark Dayton to the Minnesota Board of Marriage and Family Therapy. Dr. Craft will serve as the Higher Education Representative to the board, and her term is through January 2016.

Family Social Science graduate student Veronica Deenanath has been selected to receive a $500 award from the Women's Philanthropic Leadership Circle. Deenanath's academic achievements, community involvement, leadership, and passion for her professional career all factored into the Circle's decision.

Lavinia Nosé, from the Department of Applied Psychology: Work, Education and Economy at the University of Vienna, will be spending the summer in Family Social Science as a visiting scholar. Lavinia will be working with Dr. Sharon Danes through August on family business conflict.

This is Lavinia's first time in the USA, and she's looking forward to working with Dr. Danes to write an article. She also plans on doing some travel to see more of the state, including a trip up north to Duluth.

Derek Nord, PhD, Research Associate at the Institute on Community Integration, has been elected to the Executive Board of APSE, a national organization focusing on integrated employment and career advancement opportunities for individuals with disabilities. APSE works at both the national and state levels to ensure everyone is afforded the right to work; earn commensurate wages, benefits and opportunities to advance their careers; contribute to society; and move out of poverty. He begins his 3-year term in June.

Dr. Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport and professor of sport sociology in the School of Kinesiology, is quoted in GolfWeek.com's article, "Title IX: An empowering transformation." In the article on pro golfer Suzy Whaley and other female athletes, Kane says, "What Title IX has done is create a critical mass of women playing at all levels of competitive sports."

Ken Bartlett (Ph.D., associate professor) and Louis Quast (Ph.D., associate chair) in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, Development (OLPD) presented at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) annual conference, April 26-28 in San Diego, California.

Relationship of Managerial Development Practices, Work Engagement, and Job Performance
Kenneth Bartlett (OLPD faculty), Louis Quast (OLPD faculty), Joseph M. Wohkitel (OLPD Ph.D. student-WHRE), Bruce Center (ESPY), Chu-Ting Chung (EPSY)

Louis Quast, Ph.D., associate chair in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD), was quoted in the editor's note section titled The High and Mighty: Dictators need to learn from Directors by Ken Shelton in Leadership Excellence magazine.

Self-promoting leaders tend to derail, notes Lou Quast, VP/executive consultant at PDI Ninth House. Self-promoters are 627 percent more likely to derail than people who are in touch with their abilities and work performance. On the flip side, self-deprecators are much less likely to derail, but they are also much less likely to advance.

Leaders identified as most likely to derail exhibit behaviors that cause them to be perceived as lacking in both self-awareness and tact, resulting in damaged relationships. "Often their quest for recognition leads to a lack of willingness to recognize and learn from their own weaknesses, and a competitive culture that damages the very relationships that can help them reach their career goals. Leadership requires being smart and proficient on the job, as well as relating well with people around you," Quast said. "Positive changes can only occur when leaders seek and receive feedback and act on it." Visit www.pdininthhouse.com.

CEHD graduate students Paul and Akiko Maeker are finalists in the Minnesota Idea Open Challenge for their proposal to bring fifth- and sixth-graders together with Minnesota leaders in intercultural dialogue. Sponsored by the Minnesota Community Foundation, the challenge competition called for ideas on working together across cultures and faiths. Online voting for the public begins May 15. Of the five finalists, three will be crowned champions and receive $15,000 awards.

The Maekers, doctoral students of intercultural and international education in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development, created a kid-friendly format for generating ideas among youth and adults in a productive discussion about the future of Minnesota.

"The idea is to invite young people to brainstorm and generate questions to present to current Minnesota leaders -- political leaders, educational leaders, business leaders, religious leaders, and other cultural community leaders," said Paul. "Kids often say the most insightful things.

"I have children who are around this age and attending a diverse public school. I am a witness to them beginning to see themselves as part of a world that is larger and more complex," he said. "They are very adept at noticing differences among people and are in the developmental process of trying to figure out what these differences mean and how they should be evaluating them."

In the Maekers' proposal, selected fifth- and sixth-graders would have a day with participating leaders to directly ask questions. Then the leaders would respond to educate and inspire these future leaders. The collection of questions and answers would then be made into a book or video.

"Our University of Minnesota education played a large role in creating this idea," Paul said. "It inspired us to see the value in facilitating a dialogue to support both children and adults in thinking about the future and the effects that their decisions produce."

On your mobile phone, text FUTURE to 83224 to vote for the Maekers' idea.

See more on the Minnesota Idea Open Challenge here. And watch the Maekers' video below:

CEHD honored more than 500 undergraduates and 370 graduate students who participated in separate graduation ceremonies May 10. Gary Tinsley, Gopher football standout who died in his sleep on April 6, was also awarded his degree posthumously at the undergraduate ceremony in a special presentation including his family.

Both ceremonies featured Naomi Tutu, internationally known social activist, as speaker.

Local media covered the undergraduate ceremony extensively. See stories by the Pioneer Press, Fox 9, KSTP, WCCO, and KARE 11.

Tianyi Zhao, a senior majoring in Economics, had a hole-in-one during match play in PE 1055 Golf class last week. For very few people, this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience! Mr. Zhao shows off his magic golf ball in the photo.

The course is taught by Angela Ause.

Ph.D. student, Kaishan Kong (Curriculum and Instruction) has been awarded a Buckman Fellowship for Leadership in Philanthropy. The Buckman Fellowship is a unique opportunity for faculty, staff, graduate students, and alumni of the University of Minnesota to learn about the world of philanthropy. Each fellow attends monthly seminars and puts forth a project for community improvement. As a Buckman Fellow, Kong hopes to design a summer camp for students in an undeveloped region of China.

The fellowship is made possible by the Mertie W. Buckman Endowed Fund for Leadership in Philanthropy, established in 2002. Mrs. Buckman, a dedicated philanthropist and faculty member in the former College of Human Ecology, focused her life and work on philanthropy and education, echoing the core values outlined above. Her generous gift provides opportunities for fellows to become experts and leaders in philanthropy.

Curriculum and Instruction Ph.D. student, Andie Wang, who serves as a graduate assistant for the "Asian Learner Language: Tools for Teachers" project at CARLA, was awarded the 2012 NCOLCTL (National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages) Conference First Time Presenter Award. She co-presented the paper "Referential Communications In Chinese As A Second Language" at the conference on Sunday April 29, 2012. The award is for students presenting original content as a paper/poster for the first time at a NCOLCTL Conference.

Kinesiology graduate Cody Mikl has been selected to serve as the graduate student representative on the Board of Regents. Mikl is pursuing his Ph.D. in OLPD. He received his B.S. and M.A. degrees in Kinesiology with a sport management emphasis. Cody is also a physical activity program instructor and facility manager in the Department of Recreational Sports.

Nicki Crick, Irving B. Harris Professor of Child Psychology in the Institute of Child Development, appeared on Minnesota Public Radio to talk about relational aggression, a form of bullying that may have been a factor in the suicide death of 7th grader Rachel Ehmke of Mantorville, Minnesota. The story can be found on the MPR website here:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/05/09/relational-aggression/

The Center for Early Education and Development (CEED), in conjunction with a variety of collaborating organizations, is involved in multiple events taking place in May and June, including:

May 22
McEvoy Lecture: Are We "Immune to Change"? Coordinating Minnesota Systems of Care to Promote Healthy Development in Young Children

This year's McEvoy lecture will explore the critical question of how we can best translate what works in research from among the fields of early childhood education, developmental psychology, public health, and child welfare into what's working. Audience members will contribute to solutions through participating in mini Citizen Conferences. Keynote Speaker: Julia Johnsen, Director of Community Outreach for the Center for Leadership Education in Maternal and Child Public Health, University of Minnesota. Panelists include Erin Sullivan Sutton, Assistant Commissioner, Children and Family Services, Minnesota Department of Human Services; Jim Koppel, Deputy Commissioner, Minnesota Department of Health; and Barb Fabre, Director of White Earth Child Care Programs. There is no fee to attend but registration is required.

Read more and register.

May 30-31
2012 Strong Foundations: Minnesota's Birth to Three Institute for Healthy Development

The Strong Foundations Institute will strengthen knowledge, skills, strategies, and alliances of those who work with expectant families, infants, toddlers, parents and communities to build a strong foundation for healthy development. Participants will attend one session for two full days, as well as listen to two keynote addresses. Opening the Institute is the Northside Achievement Zone's (NAZ) President and Chief Executive Officer, Sondra Samuels. Sondra's keynote, "Cradle to College," will focus on the importance of community leadership, family engagement, and starting early, the cornerstones of work at NAZ. Day Two's keynote speech is "A Powerful Framework for Thriving: Reducing Adverse Childhood Experiences," presented by Sasha Silveanu, Policy Analyst and Story Tracker, of the Washington State Family Policy Council.

Read more and register.

June 7
Play Power: How Play Motivates Children's Academic and Social Development

In this fourth and last dynamic lecture from the Wonder Years Forum partnership series, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek reexamines the importance of free play and playful learning as a catalyst for success, and a means for bringing innovation, flexible thinking, and creative innovation in to the global world. Members from the Minnesota Children's Theater Company will transform theory into playful practice by leading the audience in exercises used within their Early Bridges preschool education program. Prior to the evening's lecture, the University of Minnesota Extension Children, Youth and Family Consortium is hosting a reception, celebrating its 20th anniversary of integrating research and practice for kids and families. There is no fee to attend but registration for the reception and lecture is required by June 1. Space is limited!

Read more and register.

June 14-15
2012 Minnesota Early Intervention Summer Institute
Evidence-based Practice for Early Childhood Special Educators and Collaborative Partners

The Summer Institute is a unique professional development opportunity provided to the early childhood field to gain new insights and develop new skills for working with children and families. Attendees choose from eight intensive two-day sessions. Each day starts with a keynote, the first of which is "Too Big to Fail: Addressing Community Barriers to Infant Mental Health," by Andre Dukes, Public Engagement and Family Education Leader of Northside Achievement Zone. Day 2's keynote speaker is Maya Nishikawa, a parent of a child with special needs, as well as a special education early childhood teacher and former news reporter, whose keynote is "From Special Needs Parent to Provider: What Families Can Teach Us About Special Education."

Read more and register.

Read about The Race to the Top, Promise Neighborhoods, and Investing in Innovation federal grants that focus on children at risk and aim to benefit children statewide by building an infrastructure for early education. Connect Magazine, College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota, Spring 2012 issue.

Dr. Faith Hensrud earned an Ed.D. in educational policy and administration in 2001 through the Leadership Academy program. The Leadership Academy was a doctoral studies cohort program that prepared leaders to develop advanced skills and knowledge needed to provide educational leadership in an increasingly complex environment. The now defunct program was administered through the Departments of Educational Policy and Administration (EDPA) and Work and Human Resource Education (WHRE). In 2009 these two departments merged to form the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD).

Dr. Faith Hensrud, a long-time faculty member and academic leader at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, has been named the university's Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.

"Dr. Hensrud has a record of great accomplishment, not only at UW-Superior but also in business and in the military. She has been an outstanding leader, working with great professionalism to deal with a number of issues, performing admirably in her two years of service in the role of interim provost," said Chancellor Renée Wachter. "We are looking forward to her continuing contributions to the advancement of our university. It is clear that she has already earned a high level of respect from campus and external constituencies."

As Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Hensrud serves as the university's chief academic officer. She will manage an academic affairs budget of $13 million and provide oversight for 12 academic departments, 130 faculty members, and three research centers. She has held the position on an interim basis since 2010.

Read the full article from the UW-Superior News.

The Comparative and International Development Education (CIDE) program in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD) was well represented at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) conference in Puerto Rico (April 22-27, 2012). More than 30 students and faculty in the program presented papers, served as discussants, and participated in the New Scholars' Workshop for advanced doctoral students. Students and faculty in the CIDE program also helped to organize and animate the exhibition table about international initiatives in CEHD and in conjunction with the Minnesota International Education Development Consortium (MIDEC).

Faculty members, students, and alumni from the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD) attended and presented at the 2012 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (April 13-17, 2012).

School of Social Work Assistant Professor Hee Yun Lee; Dr. Doug Yee, Director of the Masonic Cancer Center, and Dr. Rahel Ghebre, Assistant Professor at the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women's Health were awarded the Investigator-Initiated Research Grant from the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Lee is the principal investigator, and Yee and Ghebre are co-investigators. The research team will receive $675,000 over three years for their project, which aims to develop and assess an intervention to promote breast cancer screening in an underserved minority community using mobile phone technology.

Associate Professor Diane Tedick (Curriculum and Instruction) has been awarded a Fulbright Specialist grant in the area of Bilingual/Multilingual Education. She will spend three weeks at the University of Vaasa (Finland) in June. There she will work together with Professor Siv Björklund on upcoming issues of a new international research journal that they are co-editing, Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education. She will also provide professional development for Swedish immersion teachers; offer feedback and guidance to Ph.D. and post-doc candidates on immersion-related research projects; discuss future collaborative research projects and joint teacher professional development initiatives with colleagues at the University of Vaasa's Centre for Immersion and Multilingualism and LingVaCity, a consortium of professionals involved with language planning and language pedagogy; and exchange ideas for developing online professional development programs for immersion teachers and for revitalizing endangered indigenous languages through immersion education.

The CEHD Alumni Society honored its 2012 award recipients April 5 at an evening ceremony in the McNamara Alumni Center. The Alumni Society, established in 1956, works to create lifelong connections with alumni, students, and friends of the college, enhance the student experience, and advocate for the college and the University.

This year's honorees include Laura Zabel, William E. Gardner Pre K-12 Outstanding Educator; Matthew Hoffman, Gordon M.A. Mork Outstanding Educator; Mary Melbo, Larry Wilson award-winner; Susie Miller, Emerging Leader award-winner; Nicola Alexander, Robert H. Beck Faculty Teaching award-winner; Sally Alturki, UCEA Excellence in Educational Leadership award-winner; and Michelle de Haan, Distinguished International Alumni award-winner.

Zabel earned her M.Ed. in mathematics from CEHD and has taught mathematics at Hastings High School for nearly two decades. Hoffman, B.S. in elementary education and M.Ed. in teacher leadership, has been with the Mahtomedi school district for over 30 years and has taught first grade at Wildwood Elementary since 1992. Melbo, Ph.D. in counseling psychology, is an expert consulting psychologist who has worked effectively with human resources and business leaders across a wide range of industries.

Miller, M.Ed. in recreation, park, and leisure studies, is general manager for the City of Edina's Breamer Ice Arena and has established athletic programs to accommodate participants of all abilities and backgrounds. Alexander, professor in CEHD's department of organizational leadership, policy and development, is an outstanding classroom teacher and expert on how preK-12 policy can promote or prevent opportunity for students. Alturki, Ed.D. in educational policy and administration, lives in Saudi Arabia and has founded several schools impacting thousands of children. de Haan, Ph.D. in child psychology, is a Canadian citizen living in England researching developmental cognitive neuroscience.

See past Alumni Society award winners here.

Nicole M. LaVoi, Ph.D., faculty in the School of Kinesiology and associate director of the Tucker Center, is quoted in a Yahoo.com Shine newsletter article "Are Competitive Sports Safe for Girls?" LaVoi says, "Parents need to be familiar with the risks and benefits of the sports their child is going to participate in. The benefits aren't automatic."

The Department of Curriculum and Instruction would like to congratulate two of its Assistant Professors, J.B. Mayo, Jr. and Vichet Chhuon, on receiving 2012 IDEA Multicultural Research Awards.

The 2012 Multicultural Research Award, given by the Institute for Equity, Diversity and Advocacy, is presented to faculty members whose scholarly research will focus on issues related to diversity, equity, and advocacy. The Institute seeks to build community and a network among equity and diversity scholars and researchers on campus. In order to connect faculty with others who share their interests, IDEA invites proposals for research that addresses issues related to its mission "to transform the University by enhancing the visibility and advancing the productivity of an interdisciplinary group of faculty and community scholars whose expertise in equity, diversity, and underrepresented populations will lead to innovative scholarship that addresses urgent social issues." This initiative works to retain and advance a diverse faculty.

With this award, Vichet Chhuon will study Somali youth in US high schools, and J.B. Mayo will focus on seeking and developing critical multicultural educators within the social studies discipline.

Assistant Professor, J.B. Mayo, Jr. (Curriculum and Instruction) was recently honored with The Matthew Stark Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Award presented by the College of Education and Human Development. The Matthew Stark Award honors a faculty member who has demonstrated leadership, writing, teaching or civic engagement in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties. This award is a public recognition of the recipient's unique contributions to the areas to which the sponsor, Matthew Stark, has dedicated himself professionally and personally as a former director of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union.

Kelsey Savoie, Executive Administrative Specialist in the School of Kinesiology, has been named the next vice president of the CEHD Alumni Society Board beginning July 1. In addition, she will assume the role of President in July of 2013. Savoie received her M.Ed. in Sport Management in 2011 from Kinesiology and has served the Alumni Society Board as an active member this past year. The Alumni Society works to keep alumni connected and informed and provides opportunities to participate in alumni-oriented activities throughout the year.

Of the 87, some never imagined they could run a marathon, but wanted to try. Others had nearly no running experience, but were looking for a physical and mental challenge. One of them is a U of M physics and astronomy professor. But this Sunday, all the students in PE 1262 Marathon Training will try for their personal best as they compete in the Eau Claire Marathon in Wisconsin.

In their last preparatory event, the group will convene for a carbo-load Saturday evening, with 118 race participants and colleagues expected at the dinner. The evening will also include a pre-race pep talk by Dr. Stacy Ingraham, Kinesiology lecturer and co-instructor and coach for the course. She will give a slide presentation tracing the history of PE 1262.

PE 1262 is taught by Chris Lundstrom, Kinesiology doctoral student and advisee of Dr. Ingraham, and a nationally ranked marathoner. The course was first offered in Spring 2008 and enrolled 48 runners. This semester, enrollment has almost doubled from the first class, and the course has grown into one of the most popular PE offerings.

As part of an NIH-sponsored research R44 award, the Human Sensorimotor Control Lab, directed by Prof. Juergen Konczak, received a subcontract to perform the biomechanical testing of a new device that should make it easier for parents to safely secure a child car seat. The project, "Easy-to-use Electric Low Anchor Tether Winch for Child Safety Seats," is an industry cooperation with Minnesota HealthSolutions, a local company that is a provider of engineering and human study design services. A large national manufacturer of car seats is already interested in producing these new car seats.

Prof. Konczak is the PI for the U of M portion of the project. As part of the testing, researchers will try to determine if the new device provides a tighter fastening of the child seat to the car seat while resulting in less muscular strain and reducing awkward compromising postures of the caregiver who puts the child into the seat ("If you are the parent of a young child, you likely have been there.").

Dr. Juergen Konczak, professor of biomechanics, spoke to approximately 300 researchers from across the world at the annual meeting of the Society for the Neural Control of Movement in Venice, Italy, about recent findings on what factors determine how well children and adults recover from a cerebellar tumor or a stroke affecting the cerebellum. The underlying research studies have been part of an international collaboration with neurologists and neurosurgeons at the University Medical Center in Essen, Germany.

Results indicate that if the injury or the surgery affects several small nuclei in the deeper layers of the cerebellum, the prognosis for recovery at every age is very poor. If the nuclei are spared, a full recovery is possible given the right treatment.

Join Tucker Center associate director Nicole M. LaVoi and others at a showing of "Strong!," a film about Olympic power lifter Cheryl Haworth and her struggles to defend her champion status. This MELSA and TPT Community Cinema screening and discussion is on Monday, May 7, at 7:00pm. The program is hosted by the Rice Street Library, 1011 Rice Street, St. Paul.

The University's science teacher education program has been selected as a "pilot of promising practices" by the Science & Mathematics Teacher Imperative (SMTI) of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. One of five programs selected from nominees across the country, the U of M's Science Teacher Induction Network (TIN) has been in practice through the Department of Curriculum and Instruction for seven years, according to Gillian Roehrig, associate professor and co-director of the STEM Education Center.

TIN is an online mentoring program for teaching licensure candidates from the University in secondary school science and mathematics. TIN incorporates reflective journals, topical discussion threads, and professional development inquiries that provide a space for first- and second-year teachers to continue to develop their pedagogical content knowledge and conversation with mentors and peers to promote reform-based classroom practices.

Developers of online mentoring programs have used lesson plans, discussion posts, and journal entries as a proxy for direct observations of classroom practice. Recent developments in video annotation methods and tools make the use of video for examining and improving reflective practices increasingly viable within online environments.

Through the strategic development and use of video annotation tools within TIN, beginning teachers' reflections on their classroom teaching are linked directly to evidence through video as documentation. The integration of VideoAnt into TIN represents a promising practice that promotes the development of reflective practitioners and provides a free and user-friendly online platform for sharing and providing feedback on classroom teaching.

Roehrig says that Joel Donna (learning technologies), Barbara Billington (STEM Ed Center), and Mary Hoelscher (STEM Ed graduate student) have all been critical co-developers at various stages and iterations of TIN.

SMTI is a national effort to assist public universities to increase the number and improve the quality and diversity of science and mathematics teachers they prepare. SMTI's 131 institutions and 13 systems in 44 states prepare more than 8,200 students each year as middle and high school science and mathematics teachers.

Kinesiology undergraduates Kolbi Becker and Danielle Wills have been chosen as recipients for Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) awards to conduct research with Dr. Lesley Scibora during Fall 2012. Both undergraduates will be working on projects examining diet, physical activity, and aspects of bone health in adolescent dancers and gymnasts. Ms. Becker is in the clinical movement science emphasis and Ms. Wills is in the exercise science emphasis.

Congratulations to Kolbi and Danni on this prestigious award!

Curriculum and Instruction Professor Cynthia Lewis has been elected by the Literacy Research Association's membership to the LRA Board of Directors. The Literacy Research Association (LRA) is a community of scholars dedicated to promoting research that enriches the knowledge, understanding, and development of lifespan literacies in a multicultural and multilingual world. Central to its mission, LRA mentors and supports future generations of literacy scholars. Lewis will begin her three-year term on the Board starting at the end of the San Diego conference in December 2012.

Ann Masten, professor in the Institute of Child Development, has been named a recipient of the President's Award for Outstanding Service. In the award announcement, President Kaler says: "The award recognizes recipients who have gone well beyond their regular duties and have demonstrated an unusual commitment to the University and those of us who study, teach, and work here." The office of the president presents the award every spring to recognize active or retired faculty or staff members who have performed exceptional service to the University, its schools, colleges, departments, and service units. Congratulations, Ann!

On Tuesday, May 1, Ann Masten, professor, ICD, sat down with Kerry Miller on MPR's The Daily Circuit and Steven Southwick, professor of psychiatry at Yale, to talk about The Science Behind Fostering Resilience. You can listen to the program on the MPR website at: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/05/01/daily-circuit-resilience

The Women's Philanthropic Leadership Circle announced that Curriculum and Instruction's Cassie Scharber has been selected as this year's recipient of the Rising Star Faculty Award, given to a pre-tenure female member in recognition of her leadership, scholarship, and teaching. She and the recipients of graduate student awards will be recognized at the Circle's annual awards celebration on June 19, 9-11 a.m., Town and Country Club. Event details and RSVP information will be shared soon.

Two Kinesiology B.S. students were awarded honors by Sigma Xi at this year's Undergraduate Symposium held April 18 at Coffman Union. Ashley Hansen, in the clinical movement science emphasis and advised by Alyssa Maples, presented a poster on "Basal and Reactive Cortisol in Offspring of Mothers with Depression." Rebekah Schmidt, also in clinical movement science and advised by Liz Plunkett, presented on "Cortical Activation in the Primary Somatosensory Cortex: Healthy and Diagnosed Focal Hand Dystonia."

Students worked with faculty/research mentors on their research projects and presented posters that described their research, its impact, and value. Over 250 U of M undergraduates participated in this year's symposium.

The University of Minnesota Sigma Xi chapter, established in 1896, is made up of over 300 members who range from undergraduate students beginning their scientific careers to professional scientists living throughout the state. The main objective of the organization is to encourage and reward scientific research in our community.

Austin Stair Calhoun, Kinesiology Ph.D. candidate in sport sociology, will give a guest lecture on May 3 and an invited talk on May 4 at her alma mater Washington and Lee University. Her talk will be on her dissertation research and is entitled, "Gatekeeping in Online Coaching Biographies: Interrogating the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Narrative." Calhoun's visit is sponsored by the Department of Gender and Women's Studies at Washington and Lee. Calhoun is an Information Technology Specialist/Content Strategist/Web Guru with the School of Kinesiology and a sport media scholar, technology enthusiast and advocate for gender and GLBT issues in sport.

The University of Minnesota recently launched startup company Early Learning Labs, which will commercialize a suite of tools for monitoring ongoing growth and development of preschool children. The suite, coined myIGDIs, is a combination of a test kit and assessment system as well as a web-based management and reporting framework designed for schools, teachers, and early childhood specialists.

Early Learning Labs is the first U of M startup to result from research at the College of Education and Human Development.

The research behind myIGDIs was funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The assessment was invented by educational psychology professors Scott McConnell, Mary McEvoy, and Michael Rodriguez, and Center for Early Education and Development (CEED) research associates Tracy Bradfield and Alisha Wackerle-Hollman.

The myIGDIs assessment measures (Individual Growth and Development Indicators) are based on 15 years of research on the measurement of essential skills in preschool children. The measures provide both periodic "snapshots" and a measure of growth over time in a child's early literacy development. The assessment tools require little technical knowledge or training to administer, and teachers can track results over time. Researchers hope the assessment will ensure children in need of individual attention in school will get it.

"It's easier to teach children when you have clear and frequent information about whether the interventions you're providing to them are working or not," says McConnell. "We do lots of different things for young children at home and in preschool programs; it's good to be able to sort out what's actually helping kids learn."

To date, myIGDIs has been used in more than 11,000 school settings and measured 180,000-plus preschool children.

"The University of Minnesota has a long tradition of innovative research in child development. The myIGDIs test measures are a prime example of this; and we're extremely excited about the potential impact these tools can have on improving early childhood education," according to Steve Johnson, president of Early Learning Labs.

Early Learning Labs is the second "internal business unit" to be launched by the University; CaSTT (Commerce and Search for Technology Transfer), an e-commerce and marketing framework for technology transfer offices, was launched in 2011. Internal business units (IBUs) are an innovative approach to moving University innovations from the lab to the marketplace. IBUs are relevant for a small number of technologies that are nearly market-ready but need some limited investment and product validation in order to be more attractive as licensable opportunities.

"IBUs are an effective way to incubate certain technologies before putting them in an external business setting," said Rick Huebsch, associate director of the University's Office for Technology Commercialization. "They are another tool in our technology transfer toolbox and provide additional opportunities to launch startup companies based on university research."

Specific criteria must be met in order for a technology to be considered for an internal business unit, including that the technology must be in an advanced stage of product development and only a few months from being ready for initial product sales. IBUs are not a mechanism for bridging a broad "valley of death," or for incubating inventions that will require a long period of development or significant seed funding. In the case of Early Learning Labs, the University provided some limited investment in the early-stage development before choosing to spin out a company. After the period of University incubation, a group of Minnesota technology investors came forward to fund the company's launch, and to play an active role in its initial operation and development as a startup company.

The myIGDIs technology was licensed exclusively to Early Learning Labs by the University's Office for Technology Commercialization.

Kinesiology lecturer Dr. Jennifer Bhalla presented at the Research Meets Practice Symposium focusing on "Youth Development through Sport and Recreation" at Temple University in Philadelphia last week. The symposium was specifically geared toward understanding and implementing youth development programs in the physical domain.

The 2012 Naomi Chase lecture will be delivered by acclaimed authors/illustrator Sy Montgomery and Nic Bishop on Thursday, May 3 at 4:30 p.m., in the Elmer Andersen Library, University of Minnesota, West Bank. They will discuss their collaboration around several books in the Scientists in the Field series in their talk, Adventures with Scientists in the Field: Tarantulas to Tree Kangaroos. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Sy Montgomery is an adventurer, trekking all over the world to research interesting biological phenomena. An avid conservationist, she writes for both adults and children in an attempt to help them understand the creatures we share the earth with. All of his life, Nic Bishop has lived in fascinating places all over the world. Trained as a biologist, and an avid photographer, he also writes for both adults and children. Sy Montgomery and Nic Bishop worked with Houghton Mifflin publishers to found the acclaimed Scientists in the Field series, contributing five title to that series including The Snake Scientist, which won the International Reading Association Book Award in 2000 and was a 2000 Orbis Pictus Honor Book. Another book in that series by Montgomery and Bishop, Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World's Strangest Parrot, won the 2011 Sibert Medal for most distinguished informational book as well as the 2011 National Science Teachers Association Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students. Montgomery and Bishop have each published over 15 books for young readers, both collaboratively and individually. The lecture will be followed by a reception and autographing.

This annual event is co-sponsored by the College of Education and Human Development, Department of Curriculum & Instruction and the Children's Literature Research Collections/Kerlan Collection, University of Minnesota. Book sales courtesy of The Red Balloon Bookshop.

The Elmer L. Andersen Library is located at 222 - 21st Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455. For additional information contact Cathy Zemke or Dr. Lee Galda.

John Moravec, Ph.D., senior lecturer in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD), gave the opening keynote at the European Council of National Associations of Independent Schools (ECNAIS) general meeting (April 19-21, 2012) in Bratislava, Slovakia. A national news channel, TA3, covered the event, and he provides the opening and closing soundbites in their story.

Lou Quast, Ph.D., associate chair in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD), was quoted in the article "Self-Delusion Goeth Before a Fall, Study Indicates" by Cathleen O'Connor Schoultz.

The biggest surprise for researchers was "the size and consistency of the relationship between the self-promoter pattern and risk of career derailment," according to Quast, vice president and executive consultant at PDI Ninth House and associate chair of UMN's Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the College of Education and Human Development.

Quast told BNA his take-home from the studies for the HR department would be: "If you deploy some form of multisource (360) feedback and see patterns like this, intervene with individual coaching and feedback. With help, these people can turn it around. Without changes, they depress the productivity of those that report to them, and they are likely to derail, a lose-lose outcome."

To read the full article, you must be a subscriber to Blomberg BNA.

Jonathan Sweet, program associate for both the School of Kinesiology and the Tucker Center, was presented with the Jeanne T. Lupton Civil Service/Bargaining Unit Outstanding Service Award at the CEHD Spring Assembly April 24.

Jonathan was chosen for the award which recognizes those who possess professional attitude and demeanor toward students, faculty, and other constituencies that represent the University at its best, in addition to exemplary service.

Sweet has been an asset to the School of Kinesiology and the Tucker Center for 23 years.

Congratulations!

School of Kinesiology PhD students Maya Hamilton, Emily Houghton, and Ana Bellard Freire Ribeiro were recently awarded academic fellowship awards offered through the College of Education & Human Development.

Maya Hamilton, sport and exercise psychology, has been chosen as a runner-up for the Hauge Fellowship, which is reserved for graduate students enrolled in the College of Education & Human Development. She is advised by Dr. Nicole LaVoi and Dr. Diane Wiese-Bjornstal.

Emily Houghton is the runner-up for the Seashore Graduate Fellowship, which honors student research interests based on social inquiry problems, social change, and social justice. She is in the sport sociology emphasis and is advised by Dr. Mary Jo Kane.

Ana Bellard Freire Ribeiro, advised by Dr. Juergen Konczak, has received the Beck Graduate Fellowship. The award is based on merit as well as the applicant's involvement in the intersections of teaching and research, interdisciplinary studies, and the philosophy of education that reflect Dr. Beck's research interests.

Congratulations, all!

Rashné Jehangir, assistant professor in the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning, was recently interviewed by Bill Hageman, reporter for the Chicago Tribune, regarding her work with first-generation, low-income college students and her recent book Higher Education and First Generation Students: Cultivating Community, Voice, and Place for the New Majority. The article, "When it's tough to be first," was published on April 18 and considers the challenges that first-generation students face in college.

M.S.W. students who are doing field placements during the 2012-13 school year need to submit a Student Choice of Placement form by May 7. Agencies will need to express their preferences about students by filling out the Agency Selection of Student form. Students and agencies will be notified of field placment matches via email May 17, 18 and 19. Students and agencies who did not match will also be notified.

Arthur Harkins, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD), has been chosen as Highly Commended Award Winner at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2012 for his article entitled "Systemic Approaches to Knowledge Development and Application" published in On the Horizon.

Michael Goh, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development (OLPD), was presented the Outstanding Mentor Award from the President's Distinguished Faculty Mentor Program (PDFMP), Office of Equity and Diversity. Goh was cited "for enriching the mentoring relationship through exceptional guidance and supervision." PDFMP is a program designed to pair faculty with high achieving freshmen that are first generation and underrepresented students at the University of Minnesota.

Lou Quast, Ph.D., associate chair in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD), was quoted in the Wall Street Journal article, "What's in Your Blind Spot? Managers who fail to recognize their flaws jeopardize their chances for advancement." Quast is also the Hellervik/PDI Endowed Chair in Leadership and Adult Career Development. PDI Ninth House is a global leadership solutions company with distinctive expertise in accelerating leadership effectiveness to maximize organizational results.

ICD associate professor Stephanie Carlson has been awarded a $1.2 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, 2012-15, for Fostering Self-Control in Children: Strategies that Facilitate Working, Waiting, and Emotion Regulation. Co-PIs are Angela Lee Duckworth, University of Pennsylvania, and Ethan Kross, University of Michigan.

ICD associate professor Stephanie Carlsonhas been awarded a $1.2 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, 2012-15, for Fostering Self-Control in Children: Strategies that Facilitate Working, Waiting, and Emotion Regulation. Co-PIs are Angela Lee Duckworth, University of Pennsylvania, and Ethan Kross, University of Michigan.

Melissa Anderson, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD), gave an invited address at the Curie Institute in Paris on The Course of Research Integrity in the United States on April 10, 2012. The Institute is a biomedical research center founded by Marie Curie, which focuses on cancer research.

SOLVING FOR EFFICIENCY

Doctoral Student Frank Blalark Closes the Gap between his Work and Research in Higher Education

Frank Blalark focuses on efficiency. At his job as director of the University's Office of the Registrar, that means the efficiency of graduation rates and degree production.

Blalark is also a graduate student and a dad. With five chapters of his dissertation written, he has never stopped working fulltime.

It's probably not surprising that his dissertation is about efficiency--specifically in public research universities. What surprises even Blalark, a first-generation college student, is that he's in a Ph.D. program at all.

See the complete article on the CEHD web site.

Professor Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, professor of sport sociology in the School of Kinesiology and co-chair of the U's Athletic Director search, is quoted extensively on search finalist Norwood Teague in several sources including Washington Post, Associated Press, Fox Sports North, and TwinCities.com. In one quote, Kane states that Teaque, of Virginia Commonwealth University, "has a superlative track record of fundraising and attracting and retaining high quality coaches. He's committed to maintaining an academic standard of excellence that is a tradition of Gopher athletics. And he has the expertise, values and work ethic to ensure that athletics at the U of M will reach an even greater level of success."

In an effort to reduce higher education costs for students, the University announced today that CEHD has created a tool to help faculty find more affordable textbook options. The Open Academics textbook catalog is a searchable online catalog of "open textbooks" that will be reviewed by U of M faculty.

Open textbooks are published under a license that enables students to get free or low-cost versions of their textbooks online, electronically, or in print. The Open Academics catalog is the first of its kind hosted at a major research institution. It is available to faculty worldwide.

"The catalog will benefit not only the University of Minnesota but has the potential to help improve access and affordability beyond our institution," says CEHD dean Jean Quam. "That's part of our role as a national leader in educational innovation."

Reducing student costs

College students will spend an average of $1,168 on course materials for 2011-12. Concerns over textbook costs have fueled a growing movement toward open textbooks and other open educational resources. The Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) found that using open textbooks saves students 80 percent on average over traditional textbooks. The Open Academics textbook catalog empowers faculty to bring those savings to U of M students.

"High textbook costs are one of the many factors that are contributing to the increasing financial burden that students are facing," said Lizzy Shay, U of M undergraduate student body president. "Affordable open textbooks would go a long way in relieving that burden."

Faculty review

The catalog currently lists 84 open textbooks that are currently in use in classrooms across the country.

Over the next year, CEHD will work with U of M faculty to review the texts in this collection, making it easier for users to judge textbook quality. CEHD will support faculty who choose to review and adopt open textbooks with $500-$1,000 stipends.

"Faculty share student concerns about high textbook costs and are willing to consider high-quality, affordable alternatives like open textbooks," says CEHD associate professor Irene Duranczyk. "The Open Academics textbook catalog makes it easier by collecting the best peer-reviewed open textbooks in one place."

Nine CEHD faculty members are already exploring open textbooks through the catalog. Replacing their current course materials with open textbooks will potentially save over $100,000 in textbook costs next year.

Leadership in technology and innovation

"The University of Minnesota should be a leader in enabling faculty and students to benefit from open content and electronic textbook options," said Provost Karen Hanson. "This CEHD initiative is one of a number of our initiatives in e-learning that will help students obtain a high-quality education that is also affordable."

The catalog is the latest of several noteworthy educational technology programs at the University of Minnesota. All incoming freshmen in CEHD receive iPads, which will enable students to use the less expensive and free digital formats of open textbooks. The U of M is also participating in a multi-university e-textbook pilot program, which offers e-books at a significantly lower cost in selected courses.

More information

Learn more about the Open Academics textbook catalog on the website or by contacting Dave Ernst, project leader and CEHD director of academic and information technology, 612-624-2760.

Ernst was featured in "U of M opens up to open source textbooks," by Stephen Smith, on Minnesota Public Radio's Morning Edition show April 23 and in The Minnesota Daily on April 30. A supportive editorial appeared in The Minnesota Daily on May 2. And see this Inside Higher Ed story.

The release is posted on the U news site.

Dr. Donald Dengel, associate professor of exercise physiology in the School of Kinesiology and Director of Human Performance Core and Densitometry Services in the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, has been named to the Scientific Advisory Board for WellBalance, a leading health organization that runs summer weight loss camps & community outreach programs for adolescents. John Taylor, Vice President of Programs for WellBalance, states, "Dr. Dengel's knowledge regarding lifestyle modification, and physiological improvements people can achieve through exercise is information that can help our clients meet their health goals and improve their long-term quality of life."

The Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare presents the 2012 edition of CW360 on Secondary Trauma and the Child Welfare Workforce, in recognition of a major challenge faced by many child welfare professionals. CW360 takes a look at the topic from various perspectives with an overview of the topic, implications for practice, and a review of perspectives and collaborations. Check out this new edition and all previous editions of CW360 on our web site.

This year, at the Minnesota Book Awards, Curriculum and Instruction graduate Kurtis Scaletta was awarded the Readers' Choice Award for his new book, The Tanglewood Terror. Sponsored by the Pioneer Press and Twincities.com, the Readers' Choice Award winner was selected by more than 2,000 voters from across Minnesota.

The Tanglewood Terror tells the story of 13-year-old Eric Parrish, who comes across glowing mushrooms in the woods behind his house. He's sure there's a scientific explanation. But when the fungus begins to overrun the entire town of Tanglewood - in a repeat of a blight that, legend has it, reduced the town to rubble 200 years ago - it falls to Eric, his brother Brian, and a runaway girl named Mandy to get to the bottom of the mystery.

The author of two other books, Mudville and Mamba Point, Scaletta lives in Minneapolis, where he is currently working on his fourth book for middle school audiences.

On Friday, April 20, Kinesiology professor Tom Stoffregen, movement science, will give the Mark W. Olson Memorial Lecture at the 10th annual Twin Ports Undergraduate Psychology Conference, University of Minnesota - Duluth, in Duluth, on the topic of "Movement and control in the etiology of motion sickness."

Dr. Connie Magnuson was an invited speaker at the Twin Cities Broadcasters Association Ascertainment Group, which is made up of the major and minor radio and television stations in the greater Twin Cities area. The topics Dr. Magnuson addressed were "Community Recreation Needs" and "Recreation Services and Accessibility for Underserved Populations."

Early-bird registration for the third annual Gopher Adventure Race (GAR) is currently in full swing, with a discounted race fee until May 19. After May 19, entrants will be charged the regular rate. Space is limited, and since President Eric Kaler and his wife Karen Kaler are racing this year, Dr. Connie Magnuson, coordinator of the Recreation, Park, and Leisure Studies B.S. program, anticipates the race will sell out quickly.

This year the overall team winners of the 2012 GAR will not only have their names engraved on the canoe-paddle trophy, which is displayed in the Cooke Hall lobby, but they will also win a four-day kayak trip to the Apostle Islands, courtesy of race partner Wilderness Inquiry. Other top-place prizes will be provided by The North Face, Nice Ride, and Midwest Mountaineering.

Students with disabilities often need extra support and advocacy to become college-ready. A new service has been launched at the Institute on Community Integration (ICI) to provide that support and advocacy for high school and college-age students with disabilities and their families in the Twin Cities area. It is called College Prep/ICI.
Read more...

Sheryl Lazarus was selected by the U.S. Department of Education as one of the peer reviewers for Round 2 of Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) waiver requests from states. In September, President Obama announced a process for states to apply for waivers to ESEA (formerly called No Child Left Behind) in exchange for adopting state-developed plans to improve educational outcomes for all students, close achievement gaps, increase equity, and improve instruction quality. In March, Lazarus was part of the team that reviewed Round 2 requests from 26 states and the District of Columbia. She is a senior research associate at the National Center on Educational Outcomes in the College's Institute on Community Integration.

Dr. Beth Lewis, Kinesiology professor of behavioral aspects of physical activity, and Eric Statt, Kinesiology doctoral student, have published a book chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Psychology. The full citation is below:

Lewis, B.A., Statt, E., Marcus, B. H. (2011). Behavioral Interventions in Public Health Settings: Physical Activity, Weight Loss, and Smoking. In D. H. Barlow (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Clinical Psychology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc.

Mr. Statt is co-advised by Dr. Lewis and Dr. Stacy Ingraham, Kinesiology lecturer in exercise physiology.

Dr. Beth Lewis, Kinesiology professor of behavioral aspects of physical activity, chaired and presented at a symposium at the Society of Behavioral Medicine conference in New Orleans earlier this month. Her presentation citation is:

Lewis, B.A., Gjerdingen, D., Avery, M., Sirard, J. Guo, H., & Marcus, B.H. The efficacy of an exercise intervention for the prevention of postpartum depression. In B. Lewis (Chair), Innovative interventions for health behavior change during pregnancy and postpartum. Symposium at the 33rd annual meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, New Orleans, LA, April, 2011.

Dr. Jürgen Konczak, Kinesiology movement science professor, and colleagues at the University Medical Center in Essen, Germany, have had an article accepted in the journal Cerebellum. In their study, 12 children between 6-17 years were followed one year after the surgical removal of a tumor in the cerebellum to understand the determinants of their motor recovery.

Küper M, Döring K, Spangenberg C, Konczak J, Gizewski ER, Schoch B, & Timmann D. Location and restoration of function after cerebellar tumor removal - a longitudinal study of children and adolescents.

The researchers found that the prognosis for a full recovery is very good as long as the deep cerebellar nuclei were spared by the tumor and/or the neurosurgery.

Kinesiology B.S. 2011 graduates Becca Brown and Ben Kraus, who have been working as research assistants on an NIH-funded exercise study directed by the School of Nursing with participation by exercise physiology professor Dr. Arthur Leon, have been accepted into health-professional graduate programs. Ms. Brown will be entering the U of M School of Nursing's M.S. program and Mr. Kraus has been accepted into the Medical School at Iowa. Dr. Leon says, "This reflects credit on our program and the payoff of students' hard work and professional performance in dealing with patients in a medical research setting."

Professor Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport and professor of sport sociology in the School of Kinesiology, gave an invited paper "Selling Sex in Media Coverage of Women's Sports: The Good, the Bad & the Counterproductive" as part of the University of North Carolina - Greensboro's Linda Arnold Carlisle Professorship Lecture Series. A news article on Kane's presentation appeared in the UNC Greensboro's Campus Weekly.

The Department of Curriculum and Instruction would like to congratulate Ph.D. student Patsy Vinogradov for receiving the 2012 Commission on Adult Basic Education Scholarship Award.

Vinogradov has been involved in ESL since 1994. She began teaching in Russia, and later worked extensively with adult immigrants and refugees in Nebraska and Minnesota. Vinogradov has taught at Hamline University since 2002, where she works with graduate students in a unique Adult ESL Certificate program. She also serves as executive assistant for MinneTESOL, the Minnesota TESOL affiliate. Her research interests include literacy development for adult students, especially those with limited first-language literacy. Vinogradov facilitates professional development for teachers of low-literacy adult ESL and maintains the online resource center www.multilingualminnesota.org.

Find more information on the award here.

In March, the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD) named Amy Hewitt as vice-president of its 2012-2013 board of directors. The board of AAIDD is elected by its membership in annual elections. She and her fellow board members assume their new duties on July 1, 2012. Hewitt is director of the Research & Training Center on Community Living at the College's Institute on Community Integration.

CEHD has more than 100 presenters representing the University of Minnesota's expertise at the American Educational Research Association's annual meeting in Vancouver, April 13 - April 17, 2012. To see the complete program of events and to search for CEHD presenters, go here.

David Chapman, Ph.D., Birkmaier Professor of Educational Leadership, and Frances Vavrus, Ph.D., associate professor, both from the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD) have been awarded a $1.2 million USAID-funded subcontract to assist the Ministry of Education and Manpower and selected universities in Zambia in the design and conduct of policy-relevant research aimed at strengthening basic education in Zambia. Heidi Eschenbacher will serve as deputy project director. The University serves as a subcontractor to Chemonics, a Washington DC-based organization. Over the course of this five year project, faculty, staff, and graduate students will have opportunities to be engaged in applied action research activities in Zambia.

Seogjoo Hwang, (Ph.D. student, work and human resource education-HRD), from the Department of Organizational, Leadership, Policy and Development (OLPD), received the Gary N. McLean Legacy Fellowship in Human Resource Development. This fellowship provides funding for HRD graduate students and is named for professor emeritus Gary McLean in recognition of his profound impact on the field of human resource development, as well as his many contributions to the HRD and Adult Education programs at the University of Minnesota over his four decade career. Hwang (pictured between Lou Quast and Gary McLean) was presented the award at the 2012 HRD Chautauqua held March 31st.

Murray Jensen, associate professor in the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning, hosted the spring 2012 Golden Femur competition. The Golden Femur Awards were held April 12th in Coffman Memorial Union as part of Jensen's College in the Schools Human Anatomy and Physiology Program. Over 400 high school students from across the state converged in the Great Hall to show-off their kiosks and discuss how dietary and life style choices impact health and disease. Competition was tough this year with bright, energetic students making excellent presentations. After the judging, this year's winners are Minnehaha Academy - the Golden Femur, Eagan High School - the Silver Scapula, and Cretin-Derham Hall - the Bronze Ulna.

CEHD Student Services adviser Mark Bellcourt has been awarded the University's 2012 Josie R. Johnson Human Rights and Social Justice Award. The award recognizes individuals who are passionately engaged in the areas of social justice, human rights, equity, and diversity. It is given yearly to one current faculty or staff member and one current undergraduate or graduate student.

Bellcourt has a distinguished career in increasing educational opportunities for individuals from underrepresented communities, especially in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Mark is currently involved in two research projects exploring effective classroom implementation of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and academic interventions to help learners become more culturally competent.

The Department of Curriculum and Instruction would like to congratulate graduate student, Kathryn Engebretson on receiving the Research Award for Excellence in Scholarship on Diversity for a paper titled "How Preservice Teachers Encounter Themes of Sexual Violence in the Formal Curriculum." The award is given to a graduate student in Curriculum and Instruction every other year. This year, it was presented at the beginning of the C&I Graduate Student Research Day.

Engebretson's dissertation is an ethnography of a cohort of preservice secondary social studies teachers. She followed them and sat in on their methods courses for a year where she recorded each class and transcribed pertinent conversations which she then analyzed for the discourses that they were creating and reifying. This paper focuses on how these preservice teachers talk about the sexual violence in the 1861 memoir Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs.

Contribute to the national dialogue on child welfare practice and policy!

Join in and add your voice to the new video wall presented by the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare. It is easy and fun to record your video answer to one of the five questions on the video wall. You can also view the videos posted by others!

Frank Symons, professor in Educational Psychology, was recently awarded the Council of Graduate Students (COGS) Outstanding Faculty Award. This award recognizes faculty members for their exceptional contributions to graduate education. This is the only faculty award that expresses the appreciation of the graduate student body; it was created by graduate students, nominations are made by graduate students, and the winners are selected by graduate students.

Nicole M. LaVoi, Ph.D., lecturer and associate director of the Tucker Center, was interviewed for a Fox 9 News piece, "Concussion Documentary Raises Awareness for Female Athletes," featuring Monday's Big Ten Network kickoff of the Tucker Center/TPT groundbreaking video, "Concussions and the Female Athlete: The Untold Story." The video features the stories and experiences of coaches, athletes, and their families, along with in-depth interviews with research scholars and medical experts, in examining the causes underlying concussion and offers practical solutions to help prevent and treat sports-related concussion injuries in female athletes.

University of Minnesota women's basketball forward Jackie Voigt was also interviewed for the article. Voigt is a sport management major in the Tucker Center's parent School of Kinesiology.

Associate Professor, Yvonne Gentzler (Curriculum and Instruction) is co-author to a recently revised textbook, "Preparing for Life and Career," published by Goodheart-Willcox. The textbook, in its seventh edition is intended for secondary learners, and guides readers through topics such as developing interpersonal relationships and communication skills, managing career choices, and pursuing personal health and wellness. Additionally, the text incorporates insights in the studies of social justice, global citizenship and environmental stewardship. Critical thinking is stimulated through questions that encourage self-reflection and analysis.

"The goal of this textbook is to integrate knowledge from the many different subject areas in which our learners are engaging and to demonstrate how these subjects apply to their day-to-day lives and decision making," says Gentzler. "Our students need to be aware that what they're learning in school can be relevant to them now. By integrating their studies in science, math, civic responsibility, and other knowledge, students can be critical about such issues as their own consumption and truly make an impact."

Gentzler researches self-exploration and discovery in the context of the broader community and the environment. Her innovative approaches to instruction have garnered national recognition. For the new edition of "Preparing for Life and Career," Gentzler hopes that "this resource helps young people to become more thoughtful about the choices they make and to recognize their roles in society."

Abdul Omari has been selected as a recipient of a 2012 President's Student Leadership and Service Award. Omari is a doctoral student in the educational policy and administration Ph.D. program - comparative and international development education track in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD). He was selected from a pool of over 110 nominees. The award honors student leadership and service experiences at the U and in the community. He will receive his award from President Kaler during a formal awards banquet on April 30.

Lindsay Kipp, doctoral student in Kinesiology, has been awarded a prestigious Graduate Student Scholar Award from the American Kinesiology Association (AKA), the national organization that promotes and enhances Kinesiology as a unified field of study and advances its many applications. Lindsay is pursuing her doctoral degree with a specialization in sport and exercise psychology under the advisement of Professor Maureen Weiss.

The AKA Graduate Scholar Award recognizes, at the national level, the academic and leadership accomplishments of graduate students in AKA member departments. This annual award honors a select number of students whose academic and leadership records are distinctive. The award is intended to recognize and promote academic excellence, to further the professional competence and dedication of academically accomplished graduate students, and to promote Kinesiology and its related fields.

Rebecca Shlafer (Institute of Child Development, Ph.D. '10) was named the SAHM/Mead Johnson Nutritionals New Investigator of 2012 at the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine's (SAHM) Annual Meeting, Impact of Trauma on Teens: Building the Safety Net on March 14-17 in New Orleans. Shlafer was invited to present her paper, The Impact of Family and Peer Protective Factors on Girls' Violence Perpetration and Victimization at the meeting.

The New Investigator Award was established to recognize professionals who, through excellence in research, have furthered the Society's goals to promote development, synthesis, and dissemination of scientific and scholarly knowledge unique to the development and health care needs of adolescents.

School of Kinesiology associate professor and Tucker Center Affiliated Scholar Diane Wiese-Bjornstal and Nicole M. LaVoi, Kinesiology lecturer and associate director of the Tucker Center, will give invited keynotes on concussions and sport parents respectively, at the first USA Hockey American Development Model Symposium for coaches of girls U10-U12, held April 12-15, 2012, in Burlington, VT. The symposium is being held in conjunction with the International Ice Hockey Federation Women's World Championships.

Family Social Science Ph.D. student Diego Garcia-Huidobro has been awarded grant funding from the University's Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment and the Life Sciences.

His proposal, "Understanding the Barriers and Facilitators to Participation in a Family-Oriented Prevention Program in the Latino Community: A Mixed Methods Study," was one of 10 chosen of 40 submitted proposals from 21 departments around the University. His grant award of over $8200 covers a stipend and research expenses for Summer 2012 and the 2012-2013 academic year.

Jessie Connell, Family Social Science Ph.D. student, has been selected to be on the Emerging Scholars Committee of the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) for the next two years. She will also serve as the Emerging Scholar representative to the Media & Communications committee, whose purpose is to get research findings into the hands of journalists and policy-makers.

The College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) at the University of Minnesota is hosting an accreditation visit by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) in October 2012. Interested parties are invited to submit third-party comments to the visiting team. Please note that comments must address substantive matters related to the quality of professional education programs offered, and should specify the party's relationship to the institution (i.e., graduate, present or former faculty member, employer of graduates).

We invite you to submit written comments by June 28, 2012 to:

Board of Examiners
NCATE
2010 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20036-1023

Or by e-mail to: callforcomments@ncate.org

The Tucker Center's groundbreaking initiative, Concussions and Female Athletes: The Untold Story, produced in collaboration with Twin Cities Public Television, will premiere on the Big Ten Network (BTN), Monday, April 16, at 3:30pm CT. The broadcast will follow the Big Ten Icons Series featuring St. Paul native and legendary baseball player Dave Winfield.

"We are thrilled this important programming related to female athletes is appearing on BTN as it will bring increased awareness and education about concussions to the public," said Tucker Center Associate Director Dr. Nicole M. LaVoi.

Concussions and their devastating consequences affect athletes in all sports and at all levels. While sport-related concussions have ignited a national conversation and public debate about this serious brain injury, the majority of attention has focused on male athletes. Critical issues surrounding the impact of concussion on female athletes have been largely ignored. Through the personal stories and experiences of coaches, athletes, and their families, as well as in-depth interviews with nationally recognized scholars and medical experts, this documentary examines the causes underlying concussion and offers practical solutions to help prevent and treat sports-related concussion injuries in female athletes.

Tucker Center Director, Professor Mary Jo Kane, noted, "We are deeply committed to educational endeavors and community outreach that provide knowledge to a broad audience. In the case of serious brain injuries such as a concussion, this documentary could quite literally save lives."

More information related to this significant health-related issue can be found online.

Nicole M. LaVoi, Ph.D., lecturer and associate director of the Tucker Center, was recently elected to serve a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Forum for the Scholarly Study of Intercollegiate Athletics in Higher Education.

Started under the sponsorship of the NCAA but editorially and philosophically independent, the purpose of the Forum is to stimulate, encourage and promote study, research and writing related to intercollegiate athletics; to demonstrate the relevance of research for reform efforts in intercollegiate athletics; to support core values of higher education in relationship to intercollegiate sport and to organize and conduct an annual scholarly colloquium, that is held just prior to the annual NCAA Convention. The Board also edits a journal, The Journal of Intercollegiate Sport, published by Human Kinetics.

Congratulations to current ICD doctoral students Rowena Ng and Amanda Wenzel for being awarded prestigious 3-year NSF Graduate Research Fellowship awards, as well as to Sandra Ahumada-Farias and Caitlin Cole who received Honorable Mentions. This annual national competition is very tough, and both Fellowship awards and Honorable Mentions are a great testament to the outstanding quality of an applicant's work and ideas.

Mike Stebleton (Assistant Professor in the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning) gave a presentation titled "Immigrant College Students: Exploring Experiences and Strategies to Promote Success," at the Association of College Personnel Association (ACPA) conference in Louisville, KY. Mike received a certificate from the ACPA Commission for Global Dimensions of Student Development in recognition of the program and outstanding service to the association. The program highlighted aspects of his research on immigrant college students, including implications and strategies for student success at four-year research institutions.

Last Friday, the Department of Curriculum and Instruction celebrated graduate student research with an afternoon devoted to posters, roundtable discussions and paper presentations. Organized by CIGSA, (Curriculum and Instruction Graduate Student Association) and sponsored by Department of Curriculum and Instruction, GAPSA, and Coca-Cola, C&I's Graduate Student Research Day featured scholarship from all program tracks.

As a departure from previous events, this year's format was changed provide more of an academic conference environment for sharing research and building a scholarly community. As department chair, Nina Asher expressed, student research day was "a resounding success! Great projects, ideas, papers, and presentations, and such a lively, engaged sense of community and participation. Research Day certainly nurtures and enriches scholarship in C&I!"

Pictures from the event are available here.

"Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being" is the theme of this spring's Ruth Stricker Mind-Body Lecture, presented by the Center for Spirituality and Healing and co-sponsored by the Henry L. Taylor Professorship in Exercise Science and Health Enhancement. Dr. Arthur Leon, MD, holds the Taylor Professorship in the School of Kinesiology.

Esther Sternberg, MD, internationally recognized for her discoveries of the science of the mind-body interaction in illness and healing, will deliver two lectures. She is the author of two books on the science of healing and the creator and host of PBS television's The Science of Healing. Dr. Sternbeg is recognized by the National Library of Medicine as one of 300 women physicians who changed the face of medicine.

The Healing Spaces lecture will be held Monday, April 30, from 4-5:30 p.m. in McNamara Alumni Center, $15 general admission, U of M students free. A second lecture, "The Science of Well-Being," will be held Tuesday, May 1, at 7 p.m. at The Marsh, 15000 Minnetonka Blvd, Minnetonka, MN. Register online for the U of M lecture at www.tickets.umn.edu. Contact The Marsh at www.themarsh.com for more information about the second lecture.

The grand re-opening of the newly remodeled Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene & Exercise Science (LPHES) and Human Sensorimotor Control Laboratory (HSCL) was lauded as a major success by all who attended, including CEHD Dean, Jean Quam. Dean Quam remarked, "We believe that these are the best labs anywhere in the country. These state of the art labs will give our faculty great space in which to do their work and attract the very best graduate students."

Dr. Henry Blackburn, former director of LPHES, had these words to say about the re-opening of the labs. "I commend the current leadership of the School of Kinesiology and of the University in advancing the laboratory's [LPHES] continued research and training in fields increasingly important to the health of industrial society."

Pictures from the event are available here.

Nicola Alexander (Ph.D.), associate professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD) has received the Robert H. Beck Faculty Teaching Award. This award recognizes a tenured CEHD faculty member for outstanding contributions to education and is given for excellence in teaching and advising, innovation in academic program development, and outstanding educational leadership. Award recipients will be honored by the CEHD Alumni Society at its 2012 Awards Celebration on April 5, 2012.

School of Social Work Ph.D. student Sheetal Rana was awarded a $9,600 research grant by the University's Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences. The grants are for research that addresses the social implications of problems in health, environment, or the life sciences.

She received the stipend for her expenses for her research titled "Frontline Youth Work with Street Children and Youth in Nepal: Edge Work, Boundary Work, Hard Work." Her study examines youth work with street children and youth in Nepal, including how the work is practiced, what determines how it is practiced, and what can be changed to enhance effective, evidence-based practice. The study is being conducted in Kathmandu, Nepal.

On Friday, May 4, from noon until 1:30 pm, the Department of Curriculum and Instruction will host a Diversity Dialogue event featuring Lei Zheng from East China Normal University, who will talk about higher education in the 1970s in China and the process of constructing a historical memory of the experiences of the Young Worker-Peasant-Soldier College Students.

Until recently, the stories of nearly one million Young Worker-Peasant-Soldier College Students have been left out of China's public discourse. However, with a new focus on contemporary education reform and the humane care of non-mainstream groups, this unique generation of college students are receiving attention as an area of study. Interestingly, the expressions of memories of the same events vary significantly from subject to subject, causing the construction of a definitive historical memory to be a challenge. Therefore, Lei Zheng's study will draw on all kinds of memory texts from lexicon, mass media, and oral materials to provide an objective and rational discourse analysis of the constructive process of historical memory about Young Worker-Peasant-Soldier College Students, respectively from three levels: the government, civil society and individuals.

Lei Zheng is a master student of the Institute of Curriculum and Instruction in East China Normal University, which is well known as the "National team" of China's New Curriculum Reform. Lei is particularly interested in the intersection between culture, history and education; her current research mainly focuses on people's perceptions of particular educational events. As a visiting scholar in University of Minnesota, she would like to share and exchange opinions and experiences with students and scholars here.

The University of North Carolina - Greensboro has invited Dr. Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport and professor of sport sociology in the School of Kinesiology, to give an invited paper as part of the Linda Arnold Carlisle Professorship Lecture Series. Dr. Kane's presentation is titled, "Selling Sex in Media Coverage of Women's Sports: The Good, the Bad & the Counterproductive."

This month the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare has three new Policy Briefs available online. CASCW's Policy Briefs aim to explore how the field of child welfare interacts with policy and research. The Briefs serve as a "user's guide" for policymakers and advocates, using research to uncover possible policy solutions.

		Child Welfare and Technology is a briefing on emerging uses of technology for Minnesota's Child Protection, Foster Care, and Adoption service systems. This briefing builds upon CASCW's publication CW360°: Child Welfare and Technology.
		Child Well-Being in Minnesota: Legislative Responses to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Child Welfare is a briefing on racial and ethnic disparities in Minnesota's Child Protection, Foster Care, and Adoption service systems.
		Child Well-Being in Minnesota: Legislative responses to defining risk across systems for children 0-5 is a briefing on how risk is defined by Minnesota's Early Intervention services and their role in the Child Welfare field. Overview of Early Head Start, Child Protection Screenings, and opportunities for Cross System Coordination. This briefing builds upon CASCW's publication CW360°: Using a Developmental Approach in Child Welfare Practice.

The After Deployment: Adaptive Parenting Tools (ADAPT) project, headed by Dr. Abigail Gewirtz, has been featured in the Star Tribune for its work with National Guard families. For the next four years, hundreds of military families in Minnesota will submit to wearing heart sensors to monitor the stresses they exert on each other and allow video cameras to record their interactions as part of an extraordinary first-in-the-nation look at the toll exacted by deployments to war zones. Read the rest of the article at the Star Tribune's website...

Dr. Bill Doherty talks with the Wall Street Journal about "when it's just another fight, and when it's over." Dr. Doherty talks about discernment counseling, which aims to help struggling couples decide whether to divorce or remain married. Discernment counseling is part of the Minnesota Couples on the Brink Project in the department of family social science.

Who says a degree in Recreation, Park, and Leisure Studies won't bring you fame and fortune? He's still working on the fortune part, but Cy Amundson, who received his B.S. in RPLS in 2008, is officially famous. Mr. Amundson will appear on Conan, the late-night talk show hosted by comedian Conan O'Brien, on Tuesday, April 3, on TBS at 10 p.m. While Amundson studied at the U of MN, he has been pursuing a career as a comedian for many years. He was a standout performer as a New Face at this year's Montreal Just For Laughs Festival and was named CMT's Next Big Comic in 2011.

Kinesiology PhD candidate Emily Houghton recently gave an invited talk at the Nokomis Library in honor of Women's History Month. Her presentation was titled, "Title IX: Past, Present, Future."

Over 50 educational leaders attended the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI) Assembly on "flipped instruction" in March. Teachers and school leaders from more than a dozen school districts as well as staff from the College of Education and Human Development, including Dean Quam, participated in a spirited discussion on the topic.

In a flipped classroom, lessons are sent home with students as podcasts and videos, and the "homework" happens back at school with the teacher. This flipped approach allows teachers to spend the majority of their class time coaching and supporting students based on their individual needs.

Assembly presenters included: Mike Dronen, Kristin Daniels, and Wayne Feller from Stillwater Area Public Schools and Jon Fila from Intermediate School District #287. Stillwater's pilot began with six fifth-grade teachers using the flipped model for math instruction in fall 2011. Based on the success of the pilot, 26 Stillwater teachers have agreed to flip their math classes this spring. Fila shared information and resources from Intermediate District #287 that related to using Moodle in a flipped setting. He presented on content creation, effective elements, and the benefits of using a web-based curriculum for students and teachers.

The CAREI Assembly is unique among all Research One universities in bringing together university researchers and school practitioners on a regular basis. The assembly serves a vital link between research and practice. Together, faculty, researchers, and school leaders share the latest findings, discuss upcoming issues, and debate the newest solutions to educational reform. CAREI has done so,more or less quarterly, for nearly 20 years. For more information on CAREI and the assembly visit this website.

The Department of Curriculum and Instruction would like to congratulate Ph.D. candidate, Madeleine Israelson on recently receiving two fellowships, the Hawn Fellowship for the study of elementary education and the Potts Fellowship for the study of literacy and reading education. Israelson's research interests include urban reading teacher preparation, digital literacies, and parental engagement in literacy learning.

Israelson received her undergraduate degree at Macalester College in St. Paul. After working for a year at a women's shelter, Israelson enrolled in the C&I post baccalaureate program for elementary education and earned her teaching license in 2005.

"I had a fantastic experience in my C&I teacher preparation! I started teaching at Sojourner Truth Academy, a charter school in north Minneapolis. I taught fourth grade there for five wonderful years," says Israelson. "I had an interest in continuing my education, possibly pursuing a doctorate. I enrolled in the five-course reading specialist licensure program and earned my reading license while I was teaching. It was a great opportunity to learn from University of Minnesota faculty at the forefront of literacy research and to be able to take that learning back to my own classroom."

Soon after, Israelson applied to the doctoral program and was accepted. Over the last two years, Israelson has particularly enjoyed teaching CI 5413 (Foundations of Reading), supervising practicum students, and serving as a research assistant to the C&I Graduate Programs and Scholarship Strategy Committee.

Kinesiology PhD candidate Emily Houghton has been offered a teaching position at Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO, beginning in August. Her responsibilities will include the supervision of Sport Administration practicum and internship experiences, teaching courses in Sociology of Sport, Sport Law, and Administration, and supervising and directing undergraduate student research.

Ms. Houghton is advised by Prof. Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center. Her dissertation title is, "Audience interpretations of black male athletes." Congratulations, Ms. Houghton!

Lindsay Kipp, doctoral candidate in Kinesiology (sport and exercise psychology), has been recognized by the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA) with the 2012 Outstanding Student Paper Award based on her work titled, "Social influences and psychological and physical well-being among female adolescent gymnasts." The purpose of the award is to recognize meritorious research by student members of NASPSPA, with evaluation criteria that the research question is original, innovative, important, and significant. Lindsay is working on her degree under the advisement of Professor Maureen Weiss.

Lindsay's research examined concurrent and longitudinal relationships among social influences, psychological need satisfaction, and well-being indices of self-esteem, positive affect, and disordered eating using self-determination theory as a framework. She found that gymnasts who rated coaches higher in autonomy-supportive behaviors and placing emphasis on a mastery climate, along with higher-quality friendships with teammates, reported more favorable perceptions of competence, autonomy, and relatedness with coaches and teammates and enhanced psychological and physical well-being (higher self-esteem, greater positive affect, and lower preoccupation with eating behaviors).

The selection committee conveyed that Lindsay's paper was unanimously chosen as the top submission among a very competitive set of applications. The reviewers praised the strong study rationale and theoretical underpinning, thoughtful and sophisticated methods, and communication of both theoretical and practical implications of the research. Lindsay will present her research at the NASPSPA annual conference in Honolulu, June 7-9, 2012.

The documentary Precious Knowledge: a Revolutionary Education will be screened on Friday, April 20 at 7 p.m., in the Bell Museum Auditorium. The free screening will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Crystal Terriquez (pictured), one of the students who is featured in the film.

Precious Knowledge interweaves the stories of students in the Mexican American Studies Program at Tucson High School. While 48 percent of Mexican American students currently drop out of high school, Tucson High's Mexican American Studies Program was a national model of educational success, with, on average, 93 percent of enrolled students graduating from high school and 85 percent going on to college. The filmmakers spent a year in the classroom documenting the ways the innovative social justice curriculum transformed students into informed and engaged community activists.

Title IX is marking its 40th anniversary in June 2012. The MN Women's Press will be sharing women's stories in the June magazine to celebrate women's experiences connected with Title IX. Do you have a Title IX story to share? MWP is collecting writings now for possible inclusion in the June magazine. MWP is looking for personal, rather than advertorial voices. Consider sending a short essay (100 to 400 words) about Title IX from your personal perspective to editor@womenspress.com. Deadline: May 10 ... or sooner, even better! MWP does not pay for this kind of essay and reserves the right to edit for length and clarity. Please feel free to pass this message along to your colleagues, friends and family.

Last week's CEHD Research Day included outstanding presentations from 50 college researchers. Two of the three professional development prizes of $250 were awarded to C&I researchers:

Aaron Doering, Cassie Scharber, and Charles Miller from the LT Media Lab were awarded the prize in Technology and Innovation for, "Engaging millions of learners: The role of design and aesthetics in online and mobile learning." And, Tamara Moore,

Jennifer Kersten, Kristina Tank, and Aran Glancy from the STEM Education Center recieved the Excellence in Research Award for "CAREER: Integrating K-12 engineering standards through STEM Integration."

Congratulations to C&I researchers. This Friday, March 30, 2012, the Department of Curriculum and Instruction is excited to showcase excellence in research by our graduate student community. Students from all program tracks will exhibit their work through posters, roundtables, and presentations. Please join us for some thoughtful and engaging conversations.

More information can be found on the C&I Graduate Student Research Day page.

Educational Psychology Professor Scott McConnell was quoted in a recent Star Tribune article by Tiffany Gee Lewis. The article, "Getting Past Labeling Kids," addressed the importance of not using a diagnosis as a child's defining characteristic.

"We never want it to be a defining characteristic of the kids, more than any other, like height, hair or skin color," said McConnell, in the article. He added that any diagnosis should be looked at as "just another tool in the box to help parents understand and help their children." It's important to remember, he said, that one child with Asperger's syndrome might behave vastly different from another.

The School of Social Work and the University of Minnesota will honor Dr. Imho Bae, Ph.D. '91, at a reception on April 11 in Peters Hall. Bae is a recipient of the University's 2011 Distinguished Leadership Award for Internationals. This University-wide award honors alumni, former students, and friends of the University who have distinguished themselves as leaders in their post-University careers.

Bae, who is dean of the College of Social Sciences at Soongsil University in South Korea, is an international scholar and a leader in the field of conflict resolution. In his acceptance speech, he will talk about the People-to-People Dialogue approach to peacemaking that he has used as he works for peace throughout the Korean peninsula.

Family Social Science senior Nicole Limper has been awarded the 2012 President's Student Leadership and Service Award for her work with Arc of Greater Twin Cities in developing a curriculum to help people with intellectual and developmental disabilities thrive and become self-advocates to influence public policy.

An honors student, Limper will graduate in May with a bachelor's degree in Family Social Science and a minor in Family Violence Prevention. At Arc, Limper has run SibShops, workshops for siblings of individuals with disabilities.

Limper created a workshop on cultivating and sustaining healthy friendships, which became the first session in a larger curriculum created for her senior project. The curriculum will cover topics such as romantic partnerships, caregivers, family, and community workers.

One of the issues surrounding the curriculum was scalability. "We ran a session for five people, and it turned out really well," said Limper, "but when we ran the same session for fifty people, it wasn't as effective."

Public policy and self-advocacy round out the curriculum, with training on how to self-advocate and relate personal stories and experiences.

"It's very effective to put a face with a story," Limper said. "We help people not only learn how to effectively tell their story, but also how to create a written version of their experiences that legislators can take with them and be able to reference later."

Limper has no plans on slowing down after receiving her undergraduate degree - she will be enrolling in law school at St. Thomas in the fall of 2012 and plans on focusing on family law and policy.

Kinesiology movement science professor Michael G. Wade has been recognized by the North American Society of the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA) with the 2012 Distinguished Scholar Award. The award is designed to "recognize outstanding long-term contributions in the research areas represented within NASPSPA," and in particular Dr. Wade's "outstanding scientific contributions to the area of motor control and learning." Dr. Wade will be presented with the $1,000 award at the association's annual conference in Honolulu, HI, June 7-9.

Azizah Jor'dan, PhD candidate, has been awarded a post-doctoral fellowship in the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Translational Research in Aging Training Program. Ms. Jor'dan will receive two years of funding as an NRSA Research Fellow and will work with research faculty at Harvard Medical School in the area of aging.

Dr. Michael Wade, professor of movement science in Kinesiology is Ms. Jor'dan's adviser. She will defend her dissertation this spring and begin her post-doc next fall. Her dissertation is titled "Assessment of Movement Skills and Perceptual Judgment in Older Adults." She is minoring in Gerontology. Congratulations, Ms. Jor'dan!

Mike Stebleton, Assistant Professor in the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning, was interviewed and cited by Associated Press reporter Holly Ramer regarding the integration of career planning into the first-year experience. The story is about Franklin Pierce University's plans to locate their career services offices in the residence halls on campus as well as infuse career planning into a freshman seminar. The story was filed under USA Today News on March 17. Mike was interviewed about PsTL's First-Year Inquiry course (PsTL 1525W) and the value of implementing career decision-making into the first-year experience.

School of Kinesiology lecturer and Tucker Center associate director Dr. Nicole M. LaVoi recently wrote a commentary on her personal blog about her experiences while in China for the Grand Opening of the American Cultural Center for Sport. Her insights on physical activity and obsesity can be found here.

Register now for CASCW's 13th annual free conference on secondary trauma! The conference will be held on May 1st from 1pm to 4:30pm. More details are available here.

Faculty members, students, and alum from the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD) attended and presented at the 2012 Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) International Research Conference in Denver, Colorado (February 29-March 4, 2012).

Development and Validation of the Ethical Business Culture Construct and Survey Instrument
Douglas Jondle (University of St. Thomas), Alexandre Ardichvili (OLPD faculty), James Mitchell (Center for Ethical Business Cultures)

Positive Psychology: An Overview and Discussion of Its Impact on Human Resource Development
Denise A. Bonebright (OLPD Ph.D. student-WHRE)

Managerial Behavior Within a Strategic Organizational Culture and the Risk of Career Derailment
Dr. Shari Peterson (OLPD faculty), Dr. Louis Quast (OLPD faculty), Bruce Center (EPSY)

Understanding the Learning Organization 30 years on: An Integrative Literature Review
Elizabeth Jayanti (OLPD Ph.D. student-WHRE)

Gender Differences in Managerial Behaviors Associated with High Advancement Potential
Joseph Wohkittel (OLPD Ph.D. student-WHRE), Chu-Ting Chung (EPSY), Dr. Louis Quast (OLPD faculty), and Bruce Center (EPSY)

Exploring the Relationship between Supervisor's Leadership Styles and Employee Loyalty
Xi Yu (OLPD Ph.D. student-WHRE)

Organizational Justice and Predictors of Career Satisfaction: A Conceptual Framework from an Integrative Literature Review
Jeong Rok Oh (OLPD Ph.D. student-WHRE) and Dr. Baek-Kyoo "Brian" Joo (OLPD Ph.D. alum-WHRE, 2007)

Developing Women Leaders at the University of Minnesota
Denise A. Bonebright (OLPD Ph.D. student-WHRE), Anitra Cottledge (OLPD M.A. alum-Higher Education, 2007), and Dr. Peg Lonnquist (OLPD Ph.D. alum-EDPA, 1994)

Tournament Theory and HRD in Academe or Why You Are Not/Will Not Be at the Top
Dr. Ross E. Azevedo (CSOM faculty), Dr. Mesut Akdere (OLPD Ph.D. alum, WCFE, 2005), and Eric C. Larson (CSOM)

Going to the Dark Side: Moving to Academic Administration
Kimberly S. McDonald (Indiana-Purdue University), Dr. Kenneth Bartlett (OLPD faculty), and Paul B. Roberts (University of Texas at Tyler)

Linking Managers' Self-Awareness to Advancement Potential: Exploring a Model of Self-Other Agreement
Dr. Louis Quast (OLPD faculty), Joseph Wohkittel (OLPD Ph.D. student-WHRE), Bruce Center (EPSY), Chu-Ting Chung (EPSY), and Bai Vue (OLPD M.Ed. student-HRD)

The Relationships Among Organizational Service Orientation, Customer Service Training, and Employee Engagement
Dr. Karen Johnson (OLPD Ph.D. alum-WHRE, 2011)

The Study Leaves System in South Korea: Looking Through the Lens of Policy Borrowing for National Human Resource Development
Jeong Rok Oh (OLPD Ph.D. student-WHRE) and Dr. Sung Jun Jo (OLPD Ph.D. alum-WHRE, 2009)

Collectivism as Moderator of Perceived Organizational Unfairness in Diverse Workplaces
Sanam Ghandehari (OLPD M.Ed. student-WHRE) and Robert Yawson (OLPD Ph.D.
student-WHRE)

Li Li Ji, Ph.D., professor and director of the School of Kinesiology, gave an invited speech at the 3rd International Conference on Nutrition and Physical Activity on Obesity, Aging and Cancer, held at Seoul National University, South Korea, on March 17. The title of his talk was "Role of Transcription Factor PGC-1 in Muscle Health and Disorders."

Dr. Geraldine "Jerri" Evans (EDPA-Education Ph.D. alumni, 1968) has been selected by the University of Minnesota Board of Regents to receive the Outstanding Achievement Award for her lifetime of work in the higher education field. This award is conferred only on graduates, or former students of the University, who have attained unusual distinction in their chosen fields or professions or in public service, and who have demonstrated outstanding achievement and leadership on a community, state, national, or international level.

Over the course of her distinguished career, Evans has served as President of Rochester Community College, was the first female chancellor of the Minnesota State Community College system (a predecessor to the MnSCU system), State Executive Director for the Illinois Community College System, and Chancellor of the San Jose Evergreen State Community College System in California.

She will be recognized at a future event to be announced. Congratulations, Dr. Evans!

[Note: The Department of Educational Policy and Administration (EDPA) and the Department of Work and Human Resource Education (WHRE) merged in 2009 to form the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD).]

Daniel Woldeab has been selected as the recipient of a 2012 President's Student Leadership and Service Award. Woldeab is a doctoral student in the work and human resource education Ph.D. program and an IT Fellow in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD). He was selected from a pool of over 110 nominees. The award honors student leadership and service experiences at the U and in the community. He will receive his award from President Kaler during a formal awards banquet on April 30.

Universities across the country are beginning to leverage studies in Native languages and cultures in order to address issues in engagement and retention. In a recent article in the Sacramento Bee, Visiting Professor, Mary (Fong) Hermes (Curriculum and Instruction) weighs in on the benefits these efforts in scholarship and cultural preservation provide.

"Native language education can help student engagement and cultural preservation while building a link between campus and community, particularly when many indigenous languages are endangered," says Hermes.

"Many languages were lost after earlier generations were forced to speak English in schools, preventing speakers from passing the language on to children. When a university values a student's language and culture, that helps the student."

Hermes' current research focuses on capturing and archiving everyday speaking in Ojibwe, an endangered Minnesota indigenous language.

Dr. Larry V. Hedges, of Northwestern University, will be visiting the University of Minnesota on Friday, March 23. While here, he will present two lectures: the MITER Lecture, "Does Winning a Prestigious Fellowship Improve an Academic Career?" at 2:00 pm in the Weisman Art Museum's Shepherd Room; and a morning brown bag lecture, entitled, "Improving the Generalizability of Evaluation Research," at 9:30 am in Room 325 of the Education Sciences Building.

Please register to attend by e-mailing your name to Peggy Ferdinand, mlif@umn.edu, or calling 612-626-8269. We hope you can join us!

To prevent school dropout among K-12 students, in 1995 the Institute on Community Integration (ICI) launched Check & Connect, a research-based intervention to increase student engagement at school and with learning. Now, Check & Connect has launched an expanded suite of training and consultation options, its staff are conducting new large-scale research studies on its efficacy, and its new Web site has been unveiled (http://checkandconnect.umn.edu). Read more.

It has been 40 years since an amendment to the Civil Rights Act declared that institutions receiving federal funding cannot discriminate on the basis of gender in providing any educational program or activity. The legislation was known simply as "Title IX."

"It has fundamentally and forever changed the landscape of women's sports," says Mary Jo Kane, director of the U's Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, a professor in the School of Kinesiology, and a leading authority on the landmark legislation. "Because of that, it should be considered one of the most successful pieces of civil rights legislation this country has ever known."

In a UMNews feature story, Kane goes on to explain Title IX's current significance: "For the first time ever, females grow up with a sense of entitlement to sports," says Kane. "And parents, just as importantly, grow up with that sense of entitlement for their daughters.

To help celebrate the legislation's anniversary, the Tucker Center will host "Title IX at 40: Changes, Challenges, and Champions," for the Spring 2012 Distinguished Lecture on April 23, 7-9 p.m., at the Humphrey Center. The event includes several Title IX experts from across the country.

Sheryl Lazarus of the Institute on Community Integration has been elected secretary-treasurer of the Inclusion and Accommodation in Educational Assessment Significant Interest Group (SIG) of the American Education Research Association (AERA).

Dr. Stephen Ross, director of Kinesiology undergraduate programs and associate professor of sport management, was quoted in a StarTribune piece, "Rand: The Power of One of Us." Ross discusses the attachment that individuals have to local sport stars, and the bandwagon nature of Minnesotans. To read more, go to: http://www.startribune.com/sports/142712285.html

The University of Minnesota Foundation has featured the School of Kinesiology's Tucker Center and it's research and vision in the short piece "Playing to Win" in the most recent UMatters emailing to U of M alumni and supporters.

On March 24, Housing & Residential Life will sponsor the Live Green Film Festival in the STSS building. The films, "Tapped," an unflinching look at the business of bottled water; "Fresh," new thinking about what we're eating; and "Mother Nature's Child," growing outdoors in the media age, will each screen at 12pm and 2pm. The Institute of Child Development and the Shirley G Moore Lab School will facilitate a discussion following the 12 pm screening of "Mother Nature's Child."

Van D. Mueller, professor emeritus in the Department of Educational Policy and Administration (EDPA), passed away on March 8, 2012. He taught in EDPA for 33 years and served as department chair from 1972 to 1981.

[The Department of Educational Policy and Administration and the Department of Work and Human Resource Education merged in 2009 to form the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD).]

See the full obituary available in the Star Tribune.

A memorial service will be held at McNamara Center on the University of Minnesota campus on March 25 with visitation at 4:00 p.m. and service at 4:40 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that contributions be made to the Edith I. Mueller scholarship fund at the School of Kinesiology, University of Minnesota, or the Eva Burrell Animal Shelter in Manistique, Michigan.

Dr. Laird McLean, (Ph.D. in WHRE, 2011) received the Best Dissertation Award at the 2012 Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) conference in Denver, CO. His adviser was Ken Bartlett.

McLean, Laird D. (2011). Understanding creativity in organizations: The relationships among cross-level variables and creativity in research and development organizations. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieve from ProQuest.

Mr. Ben Peterson, Kinesiology Ph.D. student in exercise physiology, is first author on an ebook that has recently been released: http://store.xlathlete.com/product-p/triphasictraining.htm

Triphasic training is designed to break down dynamic, athletic movements into three components (eccentric, isometric, and concentric), which improves performance and allows athletes to continuously develop strength, speed, and power. In this book, the authors demonstrate how to incorporate the Triphasic methods into existing strength and conditioning programs. Over 3,000 exercises are included with specific performance instructions. Mr. Peterson co-authored the book with Cal Dietz, head Olympic strength and conditioning coach for numerous sports at the U of M since 2000. The complete citation is below.

Peterson, B. & Dietz, C. (2012). Triphasic Training; A Systematic Approach to Elite Speed and Explosive Strength Performance. ISBN: 978-0-9851743-0-9

Mr. Peterson is advised by Dr. Stacy Ingraham and Dr. Arthur Leon.

Dr. Juergen Konczak, Kinesiology professor of biomechanics, has had a busy and productive academic year. Here are some of the highlights:

In February, Dr. Konczak participated in a national NIH Taskforce on Childhood Motor Disorders. The meeting took place at the National Institutes of Health in Rockville, MD. Nearly 50 national and international experts convened for two days to make concrete recommendations toward identifying new technologies and methods for improving the diagnosis and quantification of motor disorders in children.

Dr. Konczak has been invited to contribute to a special issue of Frontiers in Neuroscience on Autism: The Movement Perspective. Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are portrayed as cognitive and social disorders. The issue will focus on evidence indicating that profound movement and sensory differences exist in ASD that can be characterized in a way that is conducive with new behavioral treatments, an advantage over observational inventories.

In a collaboration with colleagues at the Italian Institute of Technology, Dr. Konczak published a project in Journal of Neurophysiology that investigates how haptic information from the two hands is shared across the hemispheres of the brain when exploring an single object. Results indicate that the brain does not combine the information from both hands, but rather selects either the left and right hand information in order to make judgments about the property of an object. For more information, visit: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22031771

Delia Kundin and Beverly Dretzke, research associates with the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI), will be presenting a workshop on surveys at the Minnesota Evaluation Studies Institute (MESI). MESI is an interdisciplinary training institute for evaluation studies housed at the University of Minnesota. The 2012 MESI conference will be held March 26-31 at the Continuing Education Conference Center on the St. Paul campus. The theme of the 2012 MESI conference is Evaluation in a Complex World: Changing Expectations, Changing Realities. The conference program agenda features keynote speakers and sessions on evaluation basics, methods, and special topics.

Kundin and Dretzke will be presenting a post-conference workshop that will provide participants with information on best practices related to survey construction and analyzing and summarizing survey results. Topics in their workshop include writing good survey items, creating appropriate response options (e.g., Likert-type scales), analyzing data using Microsoft® Excel, and reporting findings to multiple audiences. Additional details regarding the MESI conference agenda and registration can be obtained at the MESI conference website.

Thomas Stoffregen, Ph.D., Kinesiology professor, is featured in a recent Semester at Sea video. In January, Stoffregen led an international team of researchers conducting the first-ever studies of how novices adapt body movement to life at sea. The experiments were conducted on the Semester at Sea's M/V Explorer, cruising from the Bahamas to Brazil.

Sea Legs from Semester at Sea on Vimeo.

Recently the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded a grant to Ann Masten, professor in the Institute of Child Development (ICD), J.J. Cutuli (ICD Ph.D. '11; research director of Intelligence for Social Policy at the University of Pennsylvania) and Janette Herbers (ICD Ph.D. '11; post-doctoral fellow at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey) to study the impact of different approaches to housing assistance on the educational wellbeing of children and youth who experience homelessness in Minneapolis. The project will look at school outcomes for homeless children whose families agreed to be randomly placed into one of three assisted housing interventions.

"This is a unique opportunity made possible by partnerships with Minneapolis Public Schools and HUD, who share a commitment to helping these at-risk students succeed," says Cutuli, director of the project.

Maureen Weiss, professor of Kinesiology, and Lindsay Kipp, Kinesiology doctoral candidate, published a chapter in the prestigious Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation, edited by noted theorist Richard Ryan. The authors conducted a comprehensive review of the literature on social influence (parents, peers, coaches/teachers) and developmental outcomes of physical activity motivation and participation. The chapter is part of a large-scale project by Oxford University Press to publish a synthetic library covering topics that span the entire field of psychology. The library will comprise handbooks that summarize and synthesize a topic, define the current scholarship, and set the agenda for future research. The full reference for the publication is: Weiss, M.R., Amorose, A.J., & Kipp, L.E. (2012). Youth motivation and participation in sport and physical activity. In R.M. Ryan (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation (pp. 520-553). New York: Oxford University Press.

OLPD Ph.D. candidate Marta Shaw has been named regional editor of Comparative and International Higher Education for the Europe Region-a publication of the Higher Education Special Interest Group of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES).

On March 20 the University of Minnesota celebrated the grand opening of a unique center that will share U.S. culture with the Chinese people through the medium of sport. The American Cultural Center for Sport is funded by a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Department of State and will be a partnership between the University's China Center and School of Kinesiology, and the Tianjin University of Sport in Tianjin, China.

The main objective of the center is to demonstrate to the Chinese people how sport culture and values are integrated into the larger American society and how these cultural values influence American viewpoints, global outlook, and engagement in business, education, politics, law, arts, and communication.

"Many concepts drawn from sport, such as 'fair play' and 'pursuit of excellence' are infused in the values and beliefs of Americans, regardless of whether they participate in sports," said Joan Brzezinski, executive director of the China Center. "This center will help the Chinese develop a deeper understanding of how sport culture impacts all of our interactions, whether person-to-person or country-to-country."

The center will organize events and provide resources, such as athletic exchanges and collaborations, guest lectures by University faculty and other experts, a reading room of print and online resources, and training for teachers to integrate the culture of sport into their curricula.

The new center will take advantage of the many resources of the University of Minnesota, including its highly ranked School of Kinesiology and its NCAA Division I athletics programs. The School of Kinesiology is ranked among the top ten programs nationally, and its faculty have expertise in sport-related culture programs. The School's Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport is dedicated to exploring the impact of sport, recreation and physical activity on the lives of girls and women. Dr. Li Li Ji, the school's director, has experience bringing Chinese Olympic athletes to the U.S. to study sports management and U.S. culture.

"Sport is a tie between cultures without dispute. It served to open the doors for new relations between the U.S. and China in the '70s and continues to serve as a strong connection between the two peoples," says Ji. "The new center in Tianjin will be a window to showcase American sports and physical education to promote health, fitness, human development and social-culture integration in China."

Ji and Tucker Center associate director Nicole Lavoi (in the photo) traveled with a University delegation to Tianjin for the opening. See more on this story here.

See the press release on the center's grand opening here.

Jeannie Stumne, director of CEHD Career Services, has been awarded the prestigious University of Minnesota John Tate Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising for 2011-12. The award is named in honor of John Tate, professor of physics and first dean of University College (1930-41).

The Tate Awards serve to recognize and reward high-quality academic advising. They call attention to the contribution academic advising makes to helping students formulate and achieve intellectual, career, and personal goals. By highlighting examples of outstanding advising, the Tate Awards identify professional models and celebrate the role that academic advising plays in the University's educational mission. Stumne will be honored with this year's other Tate winners at the 2012 John Tate Academic Advising Conference & Awards Ceremony on March 8 at the University Hotel.

Dr. William Doherty, professor of Family Social Science, was featured in the New York Times in a story about couples therapy, specifically the challenges in the field and how it differs from individual therapy practice.

"For starters, there's an ever-present risk of winning one spouse's allegiance at the expense of the other spouse's," explains Doherty in his groundbreaking 2002 article on the topic of awkward couples counseling in the Psychotherapy Networker, titled "Bad Couples Therapy." "All your wonderful joining skills from individual therapy can backfire within seconds with a couple. A brilliant therapeutic observation can blow up in your face when one spouse thinks you're a genius and the other thinks you're clueless -- or worse, allied with the enemy."

Dr. Jodi Dworkin, associate professor of Family Social Science, has been named as one of two associate editors for the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA)'s journal.

SRA is a dynamic, multidisciplinary, international organization dedicated to understanding adolescence through research and dissemination.

Dworkin will work with editors of adolescent journals to identify new, exciting, and innovative research and promote it through SRA's "New In Science" online feature.

The Department of Curriculum and Instruction would like to offer sincere congratulations to one of its recent PhD students, Megan Mahowald for being listed as one of the nine finalists for the International Reading Association's 2012 Outstanding Dissertation Award. This prestigious competition recognizes the best dissertations in the discipline and is very competitive. The winner and finalists will be recognized at the Research Address and Awards session during the IRA Annual Convention in Chicago, April 30-May 2, 2012.

Megan Mahowald's research interests include assessment and treatment of oral and written language in school-age children and literacy development in unique populations (culturally and linguistically diverse students, students with disabilities and struggling readers and writers). While in C&I, professors Deborah Dillon and Lori Helman served as Mahowald's advisers. Her dissertation study was a mixed methods study exploring fourth grade Hmong students' development and achievement in reading. Mahowald hopes that this information will provide educators with a better understanding of bilingual students' literacy development. Mahowald was a speech-language pathologist in Minneapolis Public Schools for seven years. She currently serves as a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences at Indiana University.

Nicole LaVoi, Ph.D., lecturer and associate director of the Tucker Center, was mentioned in a FoxSportsNorth article on the dichotomy between Timberwolves point guard Ricky Rubio's competitive court presence and his laid-back off-the-court persona. A selection from the article, by Joan Niesen, appears below:

LaVoi said Rubio's ability to switch between a laid-back manner and the competitive intensity he displays on the court should not be considered a facet of his personality. Rather, she said, the young point guard most likely possesses keen mental and psychological skills.

"Regardless of how he is off the court, what we find from top performers is that they can switch into a performer identity, by getting into the zone, being at an optimal arousal level," LaVoi said.

Dr. Arthur Leon, Kinesiology professor of exercise physiology, announces three book chapters published with current and former graduate students.

Arthur Leon and Scott Brown published "Physiological adaptation to moderate-intensity aerobic exercise," in Barbara Ainsworth and C.A. Macera, editors, Physical Activity and Public Health Practice, CRC Press, 2012. Arthur Leon and Ulf Bronas published "Cholesterol, Dyslipidemia, and Lifestyle," and "Hypertension: Role of Lifestyle in Etiology, Prevention, and Management," in J.M. Rippe, editor, Encyclopedia of Lifestyle Medicine and Health, Volumes 1-2, Sage Publishing, 2012

Current PhD candidate Scott Brown has previously served as Dr. Leon's teaching assistant. Ulf Bronas was a PhD advisee of Dr. Leon, and graduated in 2007.

Many of the University of Minnesota's fastest-growing academic disciplines fall into industries predicted to thrive. The School of Kinesiology's popular Recreation, Park, and Leisure Studies undergraduate program, directed by Dr. Connie Magnuson, was highlighted in this category yesterday by the Minnesota Daily in the article "Top U fields have a future in the workforce."

Along with biological sciences and construction trades, recreation and fitness studies saw the highest percentage growth in graduates within the past decade. This is promising news for Recreation, Park, and Leisure Studies undergraduate students Brittany Turnis and Tyler Joing, who are featured in the story.

"This major puts you out there and gets you connected to people who can help you in the future or maybe get you a job," Turnis said.

Read the full article here.

Professor Cynthia Lewis (Department of Curriculum and Instruction) is co-winner of the AERA Division G - Social Context of Education Mentoring Award for 2012. This award recognizes those who have made distinguished contributions in the mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as junior scholars, contributing to the development of a new generation of scholars who focus on social contexts of education.

The American Educational Research Association (AERA), founded in 1916, is concerned with improving the educational process by encouraging scholarly inquiry related to education and evaluation and by promoting the dissemination and practical application of research results.

The Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD) was well represented at the recent University of Minnesota Addressing Global Challenges through International Research Inaugural International Research Conference on February 17, 2012. The following faculty, students, and staff presented at the event:

• Karen Seashore, Regents Professor, Global U Forum, "How Should Global Governance Shape the International Research Agenda? What Are the Opportunities and Where Are the Gaps in Solving Problems on a Global Scale?"
• Melissa Anderson, Professor, Presentation, "Ethics in International Research: Unique Issues and Case Studies"
• Chantal Figueroa, Ph.D. Student, Presentation, "ClaraMente: Constructing Mental Health and Stigma in Guatemala City"
• Hui Bi, Research Assistant, Poster Session, "Women's Entrepreneurship, Learning, and Empowerment: Assessing the Impact of Microfinance on Women in Rural China"
• Darwin Hendel, Associate Professor, and Takehito Kamata, Ph.D. Student, Poster Session, "The Five Domestic University Ranking Systems and National Higher Education Issues in Japan"
• Nelson M. Nkhoma, Graduate Student, and Takehito Kamata, Ph.D. Student, Poster Session, "Asia Aids Africa? An Assessment of Japan's Official Development Aid to Malawi through Mathematics and Science Education"

Eight senior administrators from higher education institutions across Russia visited Michael Goh's (associate professor, Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development) OLPD 5132 Intercultural Education and Training class. The Russian visitors shared the cultural diversity they represented across Russia from the northern Arkhangelsk Region to Moscow and Siberia and they engaged in intercultural activities and dialogue with students. They are part of the Russian International Education Administrators (RIEA) program, a Fulbright program funded by the U.S. Department of State and administered by the Institute of International Education in which international education professionals from Russia visit the University of Minnesota to learn about the development of international education in the U.S. as well as develop ideas to bring back to their institutions in Russia.

Brent Ruter, Ph.D. student in Comparative and International Development Education (CIDE) in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development (OLPD), received a $5000 travel grant from the National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST) to support his research on science education in Tanzania.

With "March Madness" in full swing, Luke Stanke, a graduate student in the Department of Educational Psychology, Quantitative Methods in Education track, suggests there may be a better way to select and seed teams for the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

Currently, a selection committee chooses teams based on a Rating Percentage Index (RPI) and other data. At the recent MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, March 2-3, in Boston, Stanke introduced a Win Index that ranks teams based on their regular season performance. Using eight years of data, he showed that the Win Index predicts outcomes of NCAA tournament games better than does the RPI Index or the selection committee's seeding of teams. Results suggest that the new Win Index may better inform selection committee decisions than does the RPI Index.

For more, read the Star Tribune story on Stanke's research or read his paper here.

Candance Doerr-Stevens, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, was featured in President Kaler's first State of the University address on March 1. Doerr-Stevens is studying collaboration and conflict during digital media composition among students in an urban English high school class as they create documentary films and radio broadcasts. She was one of 150 University Ph.D. students to receive doctoral dissertation fellowships last year, a 40 percent increase over previous years.

"These fellowships are competitively awarded to allow our best students to finish their graduate work in a timely way," said Kaler. "It allowed [Doerr-Stevens] to devote herself full-time to an innovative project analyzing how high school students use digital media to make arguments, to work together in teams and, ultimately, to assist their teachers in making the educational experience better for today's learners."

If not for her $22,000 fellowship—and tuition and health care benefits—Doerr-Stevens, a mother of two, would have needed at least another year to complete the analysis of her research and write her dissertation.

She said the fellowship allowed her to be "in the trenches" with teachers to study the students. It allowed her "to walk through an intellectual garden," unencumbered with other teaching or work responsibilities.

"Such a fellowship supports our students and our scholars, and it effectively invests in people who will mold the future," said Kaler.

Read the president's State of the University address here.

Dr. Nicole LaVoi, Kinesiology lecturer in sport sociology, and School of Kinesiology Director Li Li Ji will be traveling with a U of M delegation to Tianjin, China, this month to celebrate the US-China Center for Sports Culture Exchange at Tianjin University of Sport. Also included in the delegation is Robert Jones, senior vice president, and Joan Brzezinski, director of the China Center. Dr. LaVoi will deliver a keynote titled, "The Evolution of American College Sport & the Role of Females," at the inaugural celebration and opening ceremonies.

Kinesiology Ph.D. students Reed Steele and Hayley Russell, sport and exercise psychology, presented at the 22nd Annual Midwest Sport and Exercise Psychology Symposium at Michigan State University on February 17 and 18. Steele presented a research proposal titled " A history of life stressors and sport injury: The role of perfectionism." Steele and Russell co-presented a research proposal titled "Acute and chronic sport injury narratives among runners," a project co-authored by other Sport Medicine Psychology Laboratory members, Prof. Diane Wiese-Bjornstal, Ayanna Franklin, and Shelby Hoppis. Steele, Russell, Franklin, and Hoppis are all advisees of Prof. Wiese-Bjornstal.

Dr. Stephen Ross, School of Kinesiology director of undergraduate programs and associate professor of sport management, was quoted in a Fox9.com piece on NASCAR, "5 Minnesota Companies Invest in NASCAR Sponsorship Deals: Big brands make bold entrance on big racing stages." Ross points out how NASCAR fans are typically much more brand loyal than those fans of, for example, football.

Diane Wiese-Bjornstal, associate professor in sport and exercise psychology, co-authored a chapter in the just published Human Kinetics book, Core Concepts in Athletic Training and Therapy.

The chapter, "Psychological aspects of sport injury and rehabilitation", was created in collaboration with Laura Kenow, current School of Kinesiology doctoral student and Coordinator of the Athletic Training Education Program at Linfield College in Oregon, and Frances Flint of York University, Ontario. The chapter will be used in athletic training education programs, and covers the psychological knowledge base required for certification exams.

The Minnesota Center for Reading Research will honor 136 Minnesota K-12 schools for their achievement in reading Wednesday, February 29 at 10:00 a.m. at the annual School Recognition Lecture and Ceremony at the University of Minnesota. The event will take place in the Johnson Great Room at the McNamara Alumni Center.

Schools chosen for the honor are the Minnesota K-12 schools that made adequate yearly progress in reading during both school years 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 after failing to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in reading in the previous year.

Donald Bear, a professor in the College of Education at the University of Nevada-Reno, will present a lecture, "Their Way is Your Way: Development, Success, and Courage", at the event.

The event is free and open to the public. RSVP here.

Following the lecture, a few of the schools will share significant factors that led to their success and certificates will be awarded.

Dr. Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport and Kinesiology professor of sport sociology, was appointed by President Eric Kaler to co-lead the search for the University's new director of athletics to replace Joel Maturi, who is retiring June 30.

Kane will co-chair both the search advisory committee and a smaller search subcommittee with Tim Mulcahy, U of M vice president for research. "I'm honored and deeply humbled that President Kaler has the confidence and trust in me to help lead a critical search for the University of Minnesota," said Dr. Kane. "I am fortunate to be working with Vice President Tim Mulcahy, whose judgment related to leadership skills and characteristics is unsurpassed."

"Postural activity and motion sickness during video game play in children and adults," by Chih-Hui Chang, Wu-Wen Pan, Li-Ya Tseng, and Professor Thomas A. Stoffregen, has been published in Experimental Brain Research. Stoffregen is the director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory in the School of Kinesiology. Professor Chang received her Ph.D. in Kinesiology from the University of Minnesota, where her supervisor was Professor Michael Wade.

Maureen Weiss, professor of Kinesiology, gave a University-wide research colloquium sponsored by the Center for Human Development, Learning, and Technology and the Departments of Kinesiology and Psychology at Miami University of Ohio. The title of her research talk was, Youth Development in Physical Activity Contexts: Promoting social, psychological, and physical assets. The annual colloquium is designed to bring in outside scholars in areas that cut across faculty and student research interests in Kinesiology, Psychology, and Child Development to enhance knowledge of cutting-edge research and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and dialogue.

Joan DeJeaghere (Ph.D., assistant professor), Nancy Pellowski-Wiger (OLPD research fellow), and Laura Willemsen (OLPD) spent Februrary 6-10 in Tanzania training Tanzanian personnel who will be serving as data collectors.

Carol Carrier (OLPD faculty), Aryn Baxter, (OLPD Ph.D. student-CIDE) and Brooke Krause (Applied Economics) spent Februrary 6-10 in Uganda training Ugandan personnel who will be serving as data collectors.

This is part of a six year, $3.4 million contract from MasterCard Foundation to assess the effectiveness of entrepreneurial training in improving the lives of participants.

David Chapman (Ph.D.), a professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD), has been invited by the National Academy of Sciences to review proposals for a new grant competition sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The grant competition will award funds to international researchers who seek to extend U.S.-based research funded by the National Science Foundation to problems within their own countries.

David Chapman (Ph.D., professor), Elizabeth Wilson (Ph.D. student-CIDE), and Amy Pekol (Ph.D. student-CIDE) from the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development (OLPD) attended the quarterly meeting of the Monitoring and Evaluation team of the RESPOND project in Bangkok, Thailand the week of February 13-17. The RESPOND project, through the College of Veterinary Medicine, is a USAID-funded project to help combat emerging pandemic threats. Chapman, Wilson, and Pekol serve as the monitoring and evaluation team for the University of Minnesota contract.

Joel Maturi, retiring Gopher athletics director, will join Kinesiology as a faculty member in Sport Management beginning in fall 2012. Maturi, who has led Gopher athletics for the past 10 years, has been a regular guest lecturer in Sport Management courses each semester during his tenure as athletics director, which ends on June 30. "I'm thrilled at the opportunity to be teaching in the School of Kinesiology," says Maturi. "I've always been an educator at heart, and being a guest lecturer in Kinesiology all these years has made me realize that being in the classroom, working with students, and helping design courses will be one of my great rewards in retirement."

As athletic director at the U of M, Maturi oversaw the difficult merger of the men's and women's athletic departments, the fund raising and construction of TCF Bank Stadium, and men's and women's hockey and wrestling national championship titles. During Maturi's tenure, the Gopher athletics budget was balanced for 10 consecutive years after facing a projected $31 million deficit at the time he was hired. Under his leadership, Golden Gopher athletes have won more than 40 Big Ten or WCHA championships.

The School's director, Dr. Li Li Ji, feels that Maturi's 40 years of experience in sports and his national stature and reputation will give students a unique classroom experience. "Joel brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to our school," he says. "He's an educator and role model of the highest caliber, and we're fortunate to have him on our faculty."

Michael Goh, Ph.D. associate professor in Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD), has been appointed to serve on the selection panel for the Distinguished Fulbright Awards in Teaching Program. Sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State, the Distinguished Fulbright Awards in Teaching program recognizes and encourages excellence in teaching in the U.S. and abroad. It is part of the overall Fulbright Program, named in honor of Senator William Fulbright, which promotes mutual understanding among people of the United States and other countries. The program sends highly accomplished primary and secondary teachers from the U.S. abroad and brings international teachers to the United States.

Nicole M. LaVoi, Ph.D., lecturer in the School of Kinesiology and and associate director of the Tucker Center, and Tucker Center Affiliated Scholar Cheryl Cooky have published a feature article, "Playing But Losing: Women's Sports After Title IX," in the American Sociological Association's (ASA) Contexts quarterly journal. Cooky and LaVoi explore how major inequities remain, especially in terms of media attention, distribution of institutional resources and opportunities to coach and lead in the world of sport.

Earthducation Expedition 3, the third in a series of seven-continent explorations investigating the intersection between education and sustainability, begins Feb. 27 in Australia. Led by curriculum and instruction professors Aaron Doering and Charles Miller, the team will discover how education and sustainability intersect on the driest inhabited continent on Earth. In their two-week journey they will collect a diversity of ecological stories from inhabitants across the densely populated regions of Australia as well as the barren Northern Territory and the Great Barrier Reef communities.

Australia is home to plants and animals found nowhere else on the planet as well as the world's largest coral reef system. It is one of the most biologically diverse countries on Earth. Unfortunately, the continent also has one of the highest extinction rates, and is typically cited as being one of the countries most at risk from climate change.

Doering, who has explored the entire circumpolar Arctic over the past 10 years addressing the issue of climate change, said, "The environment is continually changing, and we are documenting how people on every continent are adapting to this change to secure a sustainable future. Our goal is to create a global tapestry of voices throughout the world around this important issue."

Read more here.

Dr. Mary Jo Kane, Director of the Tucker Center and professor of sport sociology, was recently invited to present at Florida International University's Honors College Excellence Lecture.

Kane's lecture is titled, "Media Representations of Female Athletes: The Good, the Bad & the Sexy," a discussion of why sportswomen are routinely portrayed in the media by their femininity and sexuality rather than their on-court talents and the negative consequences from this representation.

The lecture will be given on Thursday, March 1, at the Modesto A. Maidique Campus in the School of International and Public Affairs building (SIPA).

Kurt Rutzen, Institute on Community Integration staffer, was one of 150 leaders from The Arc organization who met with a variety of senior White House officials at a Community Leaders Briefing on February 10 in Washington, D.C. Kurt, as an Arc of the United States board member, was among those invited to ask questions and discuss issues facing people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the session. Held exclusively for The Arc, a national organization that advocates for and serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families, the meeting included an unannounced visit from President Obama, during which he spoke of his commitment to people with disabilities.

On January 25, Tim Moore, Research Associate at the Institute on Community Integration and a LEND post-doctoral Fellow, was selected to serve on the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) advisory committee charged with re-writing Rule 40, which governs the use of aversive and deprivation procedures in licensed facilities in Minnesota that serve persons with developmental disabilities.

Dr. Jo Ann Buysse, Kinesiology lecturer in sport and exercise psychology, has won a Professional Development Award from the College of Education and Human Development. She has been accepted to attend the International Olympic Committee (IOC) 5th World Conference on Women and Sport in LA February 16-18, and will be using the award for this purpose.

Dr. Mary Jo Kane, Kinesiology professor of sport sociology and director of the Tucker Center, has been invited to give a presentation at the Minnesota Chapter of the Federal Bar Association Luncheon Series.

Kane will present "Title IX at 40: Changing the Landscape in Women's Sports" at the Minneapolis Club on Wednesday, February 22.

Research by professor David Chapman (Ph.D.) and research assistant Marta Shaw (Ph.D. student-CIDE), in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD) along with Nataliya L. Rumyantseva (University of Southampton) has been published in The Journal of Higher Education Management and Policy. Their study, "The Impact of the Bologna Process on Academic Staff in Ukraine," examines how environmental pressures precipitated by an economic crisis and implementation of the Bologna Process are reshaping the way academic staff engage in their day-to-day work, their careers, and their role in the university.

Michael Michlin, research associate and associate director of the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, is the external evaluator of an intriguing project to develop iNeuron™, an interactive game-like approach to teaching neuroscience and mental health at the classroom level and beyond.

For more than a decade, the University has been promoting neuroscience education in K-12 schools through its Brain Awareness and BrainU programs. Dr. Janet Dubinsky (Department of Neuroscience), BrainU director, is an internationally recognized neuroscientist and leader in neuroscience education. BrainU (brainu.org) provides professional development resources and materials for K-12 science teachers interested in understanding the brain and its relevance to education.

Dubinsky is co-lead of the iNeuron project and head of the University team, including Dubinsky, Michlin, and Dr. Selcen Guzey (Educational Technology Integration), Department of Curriculum and Instruction. The other half of the partnership is Adventium Enterprises, a Minneapolis-based software research and development company (adventiumlabs.com). Dr. Martin Michalowski, Senior Research Scientist, is the iNeuron program director for Adventium.

iNeuron will be a mobile framework that combines development of flexible, multimodal software hosted on multiple, interactive hand-held devices with centralized management and coordination that integrates classroom level and distributed learning environments. It will use an immersive story-based set of neuroscience challenges teaching key concepts as students connect model neurons (one or more of which will be represented on handheld electronic devices such as the iPod Touch, iPad, and iPhone) into functional circuits. Thus iNeuron will integrate nervous system function with engineering, technology and mathematics concepts while providing an engaging, hands-on, problem-solving learning environment using the mobile computing devices.

Nicole LaVoi, Ph.D., lecturer and associate director of the Tucker Center, was mentioned in a Star Tribune article on the impact of exercise on relationships.

"Exercising together is a way to be engaged in a real way and step away and be unplugged," said LaVoi. "Research shows it can improve sexual health, as well."

Ms. Azizah Jor'dan, doctoral candidate in Kinesiology, has accepted an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship at Indiana University.

Ms. Jor'dan is obtaining her PhD in Movement Science and is a member of the School's Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory (APAL). Her advisor is Prof. Michael Wade. Her post-doc mentor will be Prof. Geoffrey Bingham in the Indiana Psychological and Brain Sciences department. Ms. Jor'dan will continue her research program in studying the relationship of postural control changes of individuals while engaged in both perceptual and cognitive tasks.

Kinesiology Ph.D students Scott Brown and Chris Lundstrom recently had two publications accepted for print in the journal of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. The following are citations for each:

Brown, S.R., Ingraham, S.J., Yank, J.R. & Langen, J.M. (2012). Body composition and weight changes based on gender during a 15-week marathon training program. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 44:5 Supplement. In Press.

Lundstrom, C.J., Ingraham, S. J., & Rhodes, G.S. (2012). Field testing vs. physiological testing in novice marathoners. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 44:5 Supplement. In Press.

Also contriubting to the publications were Dr. Stacy Ingraham, adviser to both Brown and Lundstrom; Greg Rhodes, Ph.D. student of Dr. Stacy Ingraham; Jordan Langen, Kinesiology student and McNair Scholar under the direction of Dr. Stacy Ingraham; and Dr. Jane Yank, adjunct instructor for Kinesiology.

Faculty members and students from the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD) attended and presented at the 10th International Conference of the Academy of HRD (Asia Chapter) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (December 3-6, 2011).

Stephanie Carlson, associate professor at the Institute of Child Development, met with the creative writers at Sesame Workshop in New York City on January 19 to inform them about executive function (EF), skills of self-control and focus, and to discuss ways to use the Sesame Street program and its interactive digital media to help promote EF in young children.

Carlson discussed, for example, that Grover might discover some ways to help build his working memory when he's sent to the store to buy a few things, but can't remember all of the items when he arrives—he just can't seem to keep more than a couple of things in his mind at once. Finally, after several unsuccessful trips, Big Bird might suggest that Grover write the items down on a piece of paper to help him remember.

"Sesame Street has always been a leader in designing media that are sensitive to developmental stages," Carlson said, "and it is wonderful to see they are now focusing on the EF skills needed for learning."

Early literacy education is receiving the highest priority in Minnesota in an effort to narrow the achievement gap between white and nonwhite students, according to a recent Star Tribune story, "Early literacy gets new focus, funds." Broad support for this initiative, including a $45 million Race to the Top grant from the U.S. Department of Education, is based on significant research and service contributions by CEHD researchers and students, including many associated with the Minnesota Center for Reading Research (MCRR). The MCRR's PRESS partnership with Minneapolis Public Schools, the Minnesota Reading Corps, and Target Corporation is one example featured in the article.

Across the college a commitment to early learning and early literacy is evident by contributions to now well established research on the importance of early brain development and its connection to the critical pre-third-grade years of reading skill development. From ongoing work in the top-rated Institute of Child Development and Center for Early Education and Development to curriculum development and school partnerships created by faculty and staff in the Departments of Educational Psychology and Curriculum and Instruction, CEHD is at the forefront of statewide efforts to improve early education.

One contributor, literacy education professor Deborah Dillon, was recently honored with the 2012 Minnesota Academy of Reading Award for leadership. Dillon notes in the article that literacy education "must go beyond words and definitions to teach students complex ideas" and that it is "absolutely critical we don't let up after third grade."

See more on CEHD contributions to early learning and early literacy.

The Wonder Years exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota, created in collaboration with the University of Minnesota, has been awarded the Distinguished Service Award by the Minnesota Association for the Education of Young Children (MnAEYC). Wonder Years is an 1,800 square foot exhibit that opened a year ago and contains the latest advances in early brain development research, including work by the Center for Early Education and Development (CEED), the Institute of Child Development (ICD), and Extension Children, Youth and Family Consortium (CYFC).

Thousands of museum visitors, researchers, policymakers, and caregivers of young children have benefited from the exhibit's displays, which provide an understanding of the importance of early childhood development.

"The goal of Wonder Years is to ensure that children ultimately benefit from the growing body of knowledge about the importance of early brain development," said Dr. Eric J. Jolly, president of the science museum. "We are honored to be the recipient of a Distinguished Service Award from the early childhood professional community. And we thank them for their important work, which focuses on the most critical time in a child's life."

The exhibit is funded by the National Science Foundation and is a collaboration among the museum, CEED, ICD, CYFC, and Public Agenda, a non-partisan civic engagement group.

The award was presented at MnAEYC's annual conference on Feb. 10. MnAEYC is a private, non-profit organization that serves on behalf of early care and education professionals in Minnesota by enhancing the quality of professional development opportunities, supporting program improvement and accreditation, and advocating for public policy change in early childhood education.

Dr. Lesley Scibora, postdoctoral associate in the School of Kinesiology exercise science area, recently published in the journal, Obesity Surgery, with collaborators from the University of Minnesota Fairview Weight Loss Surgery Center. The full citation for the article is:

Scibora L., Ikramuddin S., Buchwald H., Petit M.A. Examining the link between bariatric surgery, bone loss and osteoporosis: a review of bone density studies. Obesity Surgery. 10.1007/s11695-012-0596-1

Read the article at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/54607788707j1117/

Al Yonas, professor at the Institute of Child Development, and students from his Infant Perception lab recently showed WCCO-TV producer Gregg Litman the research they do with infant depth perception and depth perception order. "They decided to do a piece on the 'amazing infant' and cool things they do to stay alive and ensure their own survival. So, they came out to the lab to get some footage of work we are doing," said Sherryse Corrow, doctoral student at the institute.

Litman and a cameraperson spent three hours in the lab last week gathering information for a piece that aired during the Thursday, February 9, 10 p.m. news broadcast. See the story:
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/video/6728215-the-hidden-abilities-of-babies/

The College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) has launched a new blog—CEHDVision2020.umn.edu—that presents research-driven solutions to complex problems in a simple, accessible format for families, educators, and communities. The blog will share knowledge gained from across the college on a diverse group of education and child development topics, including science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education; literacy and reading comprehension; child welfare; parenting; and teaching.

The new blog draws on the strengths of CEHD—its extensive research across the lifespan—with content centered on the theme of ideas, research, and impact. Blog authors will include research center directors, professors, research fellows, curriculum developers, and teaching specialists.

See the full story.

Mary Jo Kane, professor of sport sociology in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Tucker Center, is quoted in the Cornell Daily Sun's article "Sex Can't Sell Sports." Kane says, "[The] sexual allure of female athletes may make them desirable to men, but it doesn't make men more interested in the sports they play."

On January 10,Alan Sroufe, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Child Development, gave a four-hour presentation about attachment at the Ministry of Health in Santiago, Chile, sponsored by UNICEF as part of a country-wide program to identify and support mothers and infants who are at risk for developmental problems. Sroufe's talk was given to the leaders of this effort in Santiago, along with some of the hands-on interveners there. The presentation was simulcast to the parent-infant interveners in 50 communities throughout the country, who were also able to participate in the final two hours of discussion. As Sroufe described it: "Chile is 3000 miles long, and those in the remote areas often miss programs put on in Santiago. Therefore, they were pleased to be able to simulcast this throughout the country, from Patagonia to the far north."

Professor Mark Umbreit, director of the School of Social Work's Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking, has been invited to give the keynote address at an International Conference on Restorative Justice in Istanbul, Turkey in March 2012. The Turkish Parliament is working on legislation to implement victim offender mediation and civil court mediation throughout the country. Umbreit is helping to organize an international panel of experts to travel to Turkey, with colleagues from Brazil, Spain, Italy, Austria, Finland, Norway, Belgium, Scotland, and the U.S. He is also helping to organize a study tour for Turkish legislative leaders and policy makers to meet with national leaders in the mediation field in Washington, DC, New York, and Milwaukee.

Umbreit will also be providing extensive technical assistance, training, and research over the next 12 months as the Turkish Ministry of Justice attempts to more thoroughly implement and assess the practice of victim offender mediation and alternative dispute resolution policies and practices. Umbreit and the Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking have been involved in building increasing bridges of understanding and support between Islam and the global restorative justice movement. The work in Turkey, as a large democratic Muslim country, will significantly expand this initiative.

Associate Professor Abi Gewirtz and her team at Project ADAPT are recruiting more than 300 Minnesota National Guard and Reserve families to participate in an ongoing study that provides and evaluates parenting resources for children's resilience as parents deploy and return home from military service. Military families with children between the ages of 4 and 12 who have experienced one deployment since 2001 and live in the Twin Cities, Mankato, and St. Cloud are eligible to join the study.

Since Project ADAPT (After Deployment: Adaptive Parenting Tools) launched last year, nearly 100 families have participated. Groups are now forming for this spring. More groups will follow with the next wave of returning parents--about 2,500 soldiers are expected back in Minnesota in May.

Read the news release.

David Arendale, associate professor in Postsecondary Teaching and Learning and codirector of the Jandris Center for Innovative Higher Education, was invited to Washington, D.C., for a symposium focused on fulfilling President Obama's College Completion Initiative. The Department of Education invited 60 experts on research and best practices to share their expertise on how to better prepare incoming students for the rigor of college courses, and how to better support those students as they progress through higher education.

Education Secretary Duncan called on the group to fulfill the president's goal to return the U.S. to number one in world rankings for college completion by 2020. A final report of the work by the symposium participants will be published as a "Toolkit for College Completion" and made available for postsecondary institutions.

The Minnesota State Legislature is considering a new bill that would empower school board members to include teacher evaluations in future layoff decisions. Currently, layoff decisions are largely based on teacher seniority. In a recent article in the Minnesota Daily, Associate Professor Mistilina Sato (Curriculum and Instruction) and two students weighed in on what the bill might mean in practice.

Sato shared concerns for how seniority might be replaced by teacher evaluation. As a member of the recently appointed Teacher Evaluation Working Group for the Minnesota Department of Education, Sato is involved with developing more effective tools for teacher evaluation.

"One of the really big issues they're going to have to face really quickly is if you don't use seniority ... to make decisions about layoffs or continued contracts, you have to use something else," said Sato.

Read the full story here.

School of Social Work Assistant Professor Hee Yun Lee has been named a Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) KL2 Scholar. This competitive award is supported by the National Institutes of Health and administered through the University of Minnesota Clinical and Translation Science Institute. The program supports new clinical and translational research investigators through a three-year mentored training program. The goal is to develop investigators who can assure that the findings of basic research are translated to clinical settings and from clinical settings into the community.

The program provides funds to secure protected research time for the scholar to conduct research. Dr. Lee's research will focus on developing an intervention to promote breast cancer screening among underserved minority women using mobile phone technology. She will be mentored by Professor Jasjit S. Ahluwalia, M.D., executive director of the University of Minnesota Center for Health Equity; Douglas Yee, M.D., director of Masonic Cancer Center at the University, and Dipankar Bandyopadhyay, Ph.D., associate professor in the Division of Biostatistics in the University's School of Public Health.

The Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare (CASCW), in partnership with the Center on Early Education and Development (CEED), have published the Winter 2012 edition of CW360°, entitled "Using a Developmental Approach in Child Welfare Practice." The print version includes an insert providing an overview of the Science Museum of Minnesota's exhibit, Wonder Years: The Science of Early Childhood Development, and gives the reader free admission to the exhibit gallery. (Please note: This is not available in the online PDF version.)

CW360° is a magazine-length, standalone publication which uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine a prominent issue in the field of child welfare. The publication is meant to provide front line workers, as well as child and family advocates, access to current research and practice methods.

As indicated by the title, this edition highlights the importance of understanding how child development is impacted by child maltreatment at a young age, and what workers and agencies can do to ameliorate the effects of maltreatment on young children. Readers will walk away with a better understanding of how developmental science can inform policy and practice, and how data collecting and sharing can improve the care provided to children and their families. Additionally, this issue provides several examples of existing interventions based on developmental research that can be used with young children who have experienced maltreatment. Finally, perspectives of foster families and the court system, among others, are included.

To view past editions of CW360°, click here.

Patrick Wilson, Kinesiology PhD student in the Exercise Physiology emphasis, recently had an article accepted for publication. His article, "Psoriasis and physical activity: a review," will be published in the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology & Venereology. The listed authors are P.B. Wilson, K.A. Bohjanen, S.J. Ingraham, and A.S. Leon.

Wilson is advised by Dr. Stacy Ingraham and Dr. Art Leon.

Dr. Donald Dengel, Kinesiology associate professor of exercise physiology, along with current and former graduate advisees, had an article published in Clinical Physiology and Functional Imaging. The citation is as follows:

McCue MC, Marlatt KL, Kelly AS, Steinberger J, Dengel DR: Evaluation of gender differences in endothelium-independent dilation using peripheral arterial tonometry. Clinical Physiology and Functional Imaging 32:94-98, 2012.

Authors McCue (Meghan) and Marlatt (Kara) are both current PhD students studying exercise physiology. Dr. Aaron Kelly received his PhD in 2004.

Dr. Connie Magnuson, Kinesiology lecturer and Director of the undergraduate Recreation, Park, and Leisure studies program, led a January-term adventure-learning class, Adventure Recreation, Tourism, and Ecotourism.

Students spent ten days of their winter break in Costa Rica learning about the diversity of the country. Their itinerary included coffee plantation tours, national park visits, and an overnight camping trip through the coastal jungle. View the highlights slideshow here.

The STEM Education Center and co-director Gillian Roehrig are featured in a MinnPost story on the center's many projects aimed at improving math and science education in Minnesota, with a focus on closing the achievement gap for underserved kids. The story, which includes photos and video clips, not only describes center initiatives, such Reach for the Sky on the White Earth Reservation, but also provides comments from educators across the state who regularly partner with the center.

Roehrig's perspectives on the importance of STEM education and its integration into all teaching and learning (see video below) are included throughout the story.

"Improving STEM education is a huge challenge for Minnesota and the United States right now—frankly, across the globe," Roehrig says in the story. "We do not have enough scientists and engineers to solve all of the problems facing us on the planet."

Read the full story here. Also see the companion MinnPost story with former Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Bill Green's high praise for Roehrig and the Stem Education Center, especially for bridging cultural divides.

Mary Hoelscher and Kristie Tank, both current science education Ph.D. students in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, and Graduate Research Assistants at the STEM Education Center, have recently been selected by the NARST Equity and Ethics Committee to receive the Jhumki Basu Equity Scholars Award. As 2012 Basu Scholars, both Hoelscher and Tank will receive a $700 scholarship that supports the expenses of attending this year's Annual NARST Conference that will be taking place this March in Indianapolis, IN. Only 15 NARST members were chosen to receive this award, which supports advanced-level doctoral students and junior scholars from underrepresented groups in the United States.

The Basu Scholarship program is designed to not only provide a financial award to its recipients, but also to help support and develop their research skills. This is carried out by requiring recipients to attend the NARST Conference and to participate in the Pre-Conference Workshop. In addition to the scholarship of $700, recipients will also receive a stipend for additional expenses surrounding the conference.

Leah McGuire, Educational Psychology assistant professor, has co-authored "Bien Educado: Measuring the Social Behaviors of Mexican American Children" with Margaret Bridges & Shana Cohen Hiro Yamada, Bruce Fuller, Laurie Mireles, and Lynn Scott (all of University of California, Berkeley). The report is to be published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly.

According to McGuire, "the paper is exciting because in it we develop a scale for use in multicultural kindergarten classroom to assess students preparation from school in terms of socialization. The scale and interpretation guide will be included in the upcoming volume of ECRQ. It includes a parent and teacher version of the scale. We used it to compare white teachers opinions on socialization of Mexican American students compared to that of their Latino parents. We found significant differences in the opinions of the teachers versus parents. The scale will be used in the future to create further dialogue between Latino parents and (mostly) White teachers about socialization for schooling in the U.S."

Lisa Albrecht, Ph.D., assistant professor for the School of Social Work, has been asked to serve on the Advisory Council for the Waite House Community Center (part of Pillsbury United Communities) in Minneapolis. For the past several months, she has also helped to direct their strategic planning process as they prepare to move into their new space in the Phillips neighborhood.

Dr. Nicole LaVoi, Kinesiology lecturer in sport and exercise psychology and sport sociology and associate director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, was recently invited to serve on espnW's 2012 advisory panel. She joins an impressive group of new members that includes the founding president of the WNBA, the vice president of the Phoenix Mercury and Phoenix Suns, an Olympic swimmer, and the director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport Chair at the University of Central Florida.

Comprised of 25 members, the panel serves as an integral connector between espnW and the women + sports culture, and establishes espnW as ESPN's brand platform for women that "connects female fans to the sports they love and follow."

Dr. Richard Senese, Educational Psychology/Counseling and Student Personnel Psychology alum, is the new Senior Associate Dean of University of Minnesota Extension. The Senior Associate Dean works across all four Extension Centers -- Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Sciences; Family Development; Youth Development; and, Community Vitality with regard to the programs, grants, research, public engagement and international efforts for Extension.

Previously, Dr. Senese was the Associate Dean for Community Vitality and Public Engagement at UM Extension.

Over 160 people attended the Second Annual Tucker Center Film Festival at TCF Bank Stadium on January 30. The festival featured Salaam Dunk, as well as the locally-produced short film, Grappling Girls and a sneak preview of Ready to Fly. The event was part of the 26th annual celebration of National Girls and Women in Sports Day (NGWSD), which continues on Wednesday, February 1, with events at the State Capitol and the U of M campus.

Rashne Jehangir, Assistant Professor in Postsecondary Teaching and Learning, was an invited speaker at the Minnesota College Student Personnel's annual Inclusion Institute. This year the institute focused on "Money Matters: Cash, Class and Higher Education in Minnesota." Jehangir's talk was titled "First-Generation students and higher education: The explicit and implicit costs of making it to college." Institute participants represented two-year, private, and public higher education institutions across the state of Minnesota.

The collaborative research of Ann Masten, Professor, Stephanie Carlson, Associate Professor, and Phil Zelazo, Professor, all at the Institute of Child Development, was highlighted in Simon Says: Minnesota research focuses on helping homeless kids learn, which appeared in The Twin Cities Daily Planet on January 29, 2012. With a recent grant from the National Center for Education Research, Masten, Carlson, and Zelazo have been working on developing kindergarten readiness programs that focus on development of executive function skills.

Dr. Thomas Stoffregen, Kinesiology professor of human factors and ergonomics, gave a talk January 26 on board the M/V Explorer, steaming southeast off the South American coast en route to the mouth of the Amazon. Dr. Stoffregen is heading an international research team that has conducted the first-ever experimental research on how people alter their body movements as they adjust to life at sea. His topic, "The Science of Getting Your Sea Legs," was presented to a general audience aboard the Explorer, home to the Semester at Sea program. Currently 570 undergraduates and 30 faculty are on the early legs of a 4-month, around-the-world voyage.

Dr. Stoffregen gave another talk January 30 on "Sea Legs Study: Results," on the M/V Explorer near Santarem, Brazil. The data were collected January 19-27, and preliminary analyses revealed several novel effects that Dr. Stoffregen reported to the ship's passengers in his presentation.

The Center for Early Education and Development (CEED) at the University of Minnesota, in partnership with Child Trends and SRI International, began evaluating the early childhood education initiatives of the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation (MELF) in 2008. These initiatives included 11[1] innovative early childhood programs and partnerships, Parent Aware, and the Saint Paul Scholarship Program. The final round of evaluation data were collected in fall 2011 just prior to the MELF's sunset at the end of that year.

The data collected for the MELF program evaluations, now known as the MN Early Childhood Dataset, continue to be of use after the MELF's sunset under the guidance of staff at CEED.

The MN Early Childhood dataset is available for use by researchers and students and includes data from approximately 1100 children, their parents, as well as other data, like environmental quality scores.

An information sheet about the dataset is available or visit CEED's MELF project web page.

For more information on using the dataset, please contact: Amy Susman-Stillman, CEED Co-director, at 612-624-3367 or asusman@umn.edu.

________________________________

[1] 500 Under 5, Autism Society of Minnesota, Parent as Teachers, Wilder Family Literacy, Caring for Kids, St. Paul School Project Early Kindergarten, Bloomington Public Schools, Head Start, Suburban Ramsey Family Collaborative, Joyce Preschool, Anoka Healthy Start

In a January 29 New York Times Sunday Review opinion piece, Ritalin Gone Wrong, L. Alan Sroufe, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Child Development, writes: "Three million children in the country take drugs for problems in focusing.... But are these drugs really helping children?" Sroufe adds that while attention-deficit drugs like Ritalin and Adderall may seem to help children by increasing concentration in the short term, research shows that when given to children over a long period of time, these drugs do not improve school achievement or reduce behavior problems.

Sroufe has been studying children for over 40 years through a variety of projects, including the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, and has come to understand more completely the role of environment and early experience in the development of children. Sroufe says he has had a "career-long" concern and passion about the issue of overuse of medication for children. In the article he concludes: "Finally, the illusion that children's behavior problems can be cured with drugs prevents us as a society from seeking the more complex solutions that will be necessary. Drugs get everyone—politicians, scientists, teachers and parents—off the hook. Everyone except the children, that is."

Sroufe's perspectives are also covered in a Huffington Post article, Maybe Private School Is Cheaper Than Ritalin; io9 commentary, Is it time to rethink the treatment of Attention Deficit Disorder?; Wired blog, No Long-Term Benefit of ADHD Meds?; a MinnPost story, Ritalin and other drugs aren't the answer for kids with attention problems, U of M professor writes; and an appearance on the Today Show.

Earthducation Expedition 3, the third in a series of seven-continent explorations investigating the intersection between education and sustainability, begins Feb. 27 in Australia. Led by curriculum and instruction professors Aaron Doering and Charles Miller, the team will discover how education and sustainability intersect on the driest inhabited continent on Earth. In their two-week journey they will collect a diversity of ecological stories from inhabitants across the densely populated regions of Australia as well as the barren Northern Territory and the Great Barrier Reef communities.

"We've been invited by these communities to document the ecological and economic impact of climate change," said Doering. "We start by asking: How can education advance sustainability?" Several environmental topics will be explored including Australia's biodiversity, uranium mining, tourism, and the contributions and concerns of people across the continent, including Aboriginal communities.

The goal of Earthducation is to travel to climate hotspots on all seven continents by 2014, collaborating with different cultures to create a first-of-its-kind narrative from around the world. So far, Doering and Miller have traveled to the Arctic Circle, Burkina Faso, Africa, and northern Norway.

"By gathering stories about education and the environment from around the world, we hope to create a foundation for embedding sustainability in learning at all levels and in all cultures," Miller said. "Ultimately, we anticipate that the Earthducation EnviroNetwork will be the world's leading online community focused exclusively on the increasingly vital fusion of education and sustainability."

The Earthducation project is funded by the University's Institute on the Environment. Doering (project investigator), Miller (co-project investigator), and Cassandra Scharber (co-project investigator) from the Learning Technologies program in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction are spearheading the project and are working with a project team from the Learning Technologies Media Lab.

Sherryse Corrow, doctoral student at the Institute of Child Development, will present Face Blindness: A Disorder We've (Often) Been Missing discussing developmental prosopagnosia at the 2012 Minnesota School Psychology Association Midwinter Conference in Bloomington, MN on February 3. Corrow hopes to build bridges between research and practice in education by providing current research information about developmental prosopagnosia to school psychologists from across the state. Corrow says: "We hope that, by informing school psychologists, we may prevent these children (with DP) from slipping through the cracks or being misdiagnosed." The Minnesota School Psychology Association also will publish a short article in their statewide newsletter written by Corrow and undergraduate research assistant Amanda Wanous that briefly summarizes developmental prosopagnosia and what teachers can look for in the classroom to identify developmental prosopagnosia in their students.

The University's work with colleagues at Anishinabe Academy in Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) was cited in Star Tribune news about a new five-year agreement between MPS and Indian leaders, approved this month.

Unlike the first memorandum of agreement between MPS and the Native American community, the new one sets specific targets for improving performance through 2016, according to the article. Three schools, including Anishinabe Academy, are designated to emphasize research-backed best practices for educating Indian students.

Anishinabe principals have been working with the University of Minnesota and district Indian education specialists on integrating native values for learning into the district's curriculum. "At Anishinabe, 83 percent of the students entering kindergarten from its High 5 prekindergarten program met the district's literacy standard last year, compared with 70 percent for all district kindergartners," the article said. "That's because the school is in the fifth year of putting federal grants and the school's discretionary dollars into its youngest classrooms, hoping for a payoff in later grades." The percentage of students leaving kindergarten with early literacy skills has increased from fewer than half in 2007 to nearly 75 percent.

The collaboration of CEHD educational psychology professor Jennifer McComas and community elder Ida Downwind at Anishinabe Academy was the cover story in the winter 2012 issue of Connect, CEHD's alumni magazine. Their work joins state standards with tradition and includes second-language learning.

"Minneapolis schools set path of success for Indian students" appeared in the Star Tribune on Sunday, Jan. 22.

Three federal grants to Minnesota and the U for early education—Race to the Top, Promise Neighborhoods, and Investing in Innovation or "i3"—are featured on the University of Minnesota home page today in "Three-pronged push for children." In December, the three grants totaling $88 million from the U.S. Department of Education were announced.

The support will allow experts at the University and numerous partners to turn the early-education landscape for thousands of children statewide into something resembling a level playing field. CEHD faculty Megan Gunnar, Scott McConnell, Arthur Reynolds, and Amy Susman-Stillman are quoted.

On Friday, January 27, from noon until 1:30 pm, the Department of Curriculum and Instruction will host the first Diversity Dialogue event of the year, featuring Terrence O. Lewis, Ph.D., MSW, LICSW from Augsburg College who will talk about the Phenomenon of LGBT Affirming Black Churches and their response to the HIV/AIDS Crisis in Black America.

There is a psychosexual health crisis in the African American community, with disproportionate rates of HIV / AIDS infections and poorer medical treatment outcomes for Black men and women (Fullilove, 2006; CDC, 2010). In contrast to the homophobic responses of most Black Churches, some Black Churches are offering an affirmative ministry for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) individuals. Lewis's dissertation examined how these ministries developed and what strategies they employ in response to the HIV/AIDS health crisis. Building on Stigmatization theory, Queer theory, and previous research on Black Churches, Lewis constructs a conceptual framework for interpreting this phenomenon and explores the historical, theological, and practical dimensions of four LGBT-affirming African American ministries.

Using narrative analysis and grounded theory, Lewis analyzed interviews with pastors, church documents, and observational field notes for evidence of the LGBT affirmative ministry. All four pastors credited formal theological education and personal experiences with the LGBT community as sources of their theologies. Two of the pastors self-identified as members of the LGBT community; LGBT inclusion was the central focus of their ministries. The other two pastors integrated LGBT inclusion into a broad-based social justice ministry that focused on multiple oppressions, including racism and sexism. All four pastors seek to provide a ministry that heals the psychological, spiritual, and physical harm that homophobic Black churches inflict on LGBT Black folk. All four pastors seek to discourage behaviors that contribute to the proliferation of HIV/AIDS. Each pastor offered LGBT affirmative strategies for decreasing LGBT stigmatization and HIV infections in the Black community.

Please join us in Peik Hall, Room 40, for some pizza and great conversation.

Dr. Stacy Ingraham, Kinesiology lecturer of exercise physiology, was recently appointed to be a member on the Student Academic Integrity Committee (SAIC) and will serve through 2014.

The Student Academic Integrity Committee is an advisory body to the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost and to the administrative officers responsible for education, outreach, and sanctions related to issues of academic integrity.

Steven Stovitz, graduate faculty in the School of Kinesiology and a Tucker Center affliated scholar, joined with other Minnesota researchers to set up special workstations at a Minneapolis business to assess the health benefits of standing rather than sitting at a desk. Stovitz, a Family Medicine and Community Health associate professor and one of the lead investigators on the study, heads a team that will measure how standing affects muscle tone, blood pressure and an employee's sense of well-being. More ... Minnesota Public Radio, Rochester Post-Bulletin

Dr. Donald Dengel, Kinesiology professor of exercise physiology, recently gave a talk at the GE Lunar National Sales Meeting. His presentation, "Goals of Metabolic Health Research", took place in Phoenix, Arizona this past Tuesday.

In related news, Dr. Dengel also had his article, "Impact of changes in screen time on blood profiles and blood pressure in adolescents over a two year period" published. The citation is as follows:

Dengel DR, Hearst MO, Harmon JH, Lytle LA: Impact of changes in screen time on blood profiles and blood pressure in adolescents over a two year period. In: Williams CA, Armstrong N (eds.), Children and Exercise XXVII: The Proceedings of the XXVIIth International Symposium of the European Group of Pediatrics Work Physiology, September, 2011. Oxon, England: Routledge, pp. 121-125, 2012

Research by Professor Jeffrey Edleson, Ph.D., and colleagues at the Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse (MINCAVA) continues to receive national attention. A recent article in the NASW (National Association of Social Workers) News talked about Honor Our Voices, an online project that aims to help social workers and service providers better serve children exposed to domestic violence.

Honor Our Voices was created by MINCAVA and the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare in the School of Social Work. In addition, Edleson is consulting with officials in Baltimore County, Maryland, on developing a screening tool that would quantify the impact of domestic violence on children. He also was quoted in the Springfield (Missouri) News-Leader about his research on the link between domestic violence and child abuse.

Dr. Arthur Leon, Kinesiology professor of exercise physiology, was recently published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. His article, "Interaction of Aging and Exercise on the Cardiovascular System of Healthy Adults", discusses the rate of decline and associated development of significant functional body impairments with age.

Meghan Palmer, third-year Kinesiology B.S. Honors student, received third place in the University's Driven to Discover student video contest. Students were asked to create an inspiring video portraying what they hoped to discover during their experiences at the University. She was awarded $2,500 for her submission.

See Meghan's video here.

Susie Miller, Kinesiology instructor of Recreation, Park, and Leisure studies, has been recognized by the College of Education and Human Development Alumni Society with the Emerging Leader Award.

The award is presented annually to outstanding graduates who have earned their highest degree from the college within the last 10 years, achieved early distinction in their career related to education and human development, are considered "rising stars" in their profession, and provided volunteer leadership and service to their communities.

Dr. Lisa Kihl, Kinesiology associate professor of sport management, was recently published in Administration & Society, a top public administration journal. Her contribution is titled, "The Legitimacy of a Federal Commission as a Deliberative Democratic Process: The Case of the Secretary's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics."

Dr. Thomas Stoffregen, Kinesiology professor of human factors and ergonomics, has been added to the U of M graduate faculty in Cognitive Science.

Dr. Donald Dengel, Kinesiology associate professor of exercise physiology, recently had an article published in the Journal of Cardiac Failure. The citation is as follows:

Burns KV, Kaufman CL, Kelly AS, Parah JS, Dengel DR, Bank AJ: "Torsion and dyssynchrony differences between chronically paced and non-paced heart failure patients." Journal of Cardiac Failure 17(6):495-502, 2011.

Authors Burns, Kaufman, and Kelly are all recent PhD graduate students. Dr. Burns is also a Kinesiology adjunct instructor.

Associate Professor Mistilina Sato (Curriculum and Instruction) spoke on MPR's Midmorning recently about her new role on the Minnesota Department of Education's Teacher Evaluation Working Group and what the group is hoping to accomplish.

"I think what this piece of legislation is trying to do is to provide a little bit more uniformity for how we approach teacher evaluation," said Sato. She also talked about the challenges facing Minnesota's education system today, bringing into alignment current successful teacher evaluation models and new models.

Listen to the full story here (Sato's portion begins at 40:00) and learn more about the Teacher Evaluation Working Group here.

Two recent gifts to the Tucker Center—"The Tucker Center Doctoral Fellowship for Gender Equity in Sport" and "The Tucker Center Research Fund for Gender Equity in Sports"—are highlighted online and in print in the U of M Foundation's Winter 2012 edition of Legacy, a magazine for members of the Presidents Club and major donor prospects highlighting the impact of private giving through personal stories of generosity and discovery. Both gifts were established from Friends of the Tucker Center Heather Burns and Kathleen A. Maloy through their commitment to and passion for gender equity in sport.

Dr. Nicole LaVoi, Kinesiology lecturer and associate director of the Tucker Center has been invited to write commentary for Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) on gender equity in sport. Her comments expand from recent stories on injuries suffered by two Minnesota high school hockey players. Read her column here: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/01/19/lavoi/

Dr. Don Dengel, associate professor of exercise physiology, recently returned from teaching a course in London, England. KIN 4520: The Impact of 1908, 1948 & 2012 Olympics on London, focused on the legacy of the three Summer Olympics on the city of London as well as the United Kingdom. In addition to lectures on the three Olympics, students toured different venues involved in the 1908, 1948 and upcoming 2012 Summer Olympic Games as well as broadcasting and culture sites in and around London, including the BBC (shown in photo).

The three- week course involved 25 students from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities School of Kinesiology, Carlson School of Management, and Engineering, as well as the University of Minnesota-Crookston. Dr. Dengel plans to offer this course again during the 2012-2013 Winter Break when the 2012 Summer Olympic Games planning and venues will be underway.

Molly F. Gordon, Ph.D, research associate at the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI), has contributed a chapter titled Creating Organizational Cultures of Family and Community Engagement: The Impact of District Policies and Practices on School Leaders to an edited book on leadership, family and community engagement. In the chapter, Gordon uses case studies to explore how district leaders create organizational cultures of engagement and how district engagement policies and practices play out in schools.

The volume, School Leadership for Authentic Family and Community Partnerships: Research Perspectives for Transforming Practice, is edited by Susan Auerbach from California State University, Northridge, and published by Routledge. The book brings together research perspectives that intersect the fields of leadership and partnerships to inform and inspire more authentic collaboration.

The volume offers a mix of empirical, conceptual, and reflective chapters and includes candid advice from district and school-level administrators on this under-documented aspect of leadership. Gordon's chapter is drawn from data collected as part of a larger Wallace Foundation-funded study, Learning from Leadership, conducted by CAREI and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto.

Stephanie Carlson, Associate Professor at the Institute of Child Development, has been awarded Fellow status by the Association of Psychological Science (APS). APS awards Fellow status to its members for their sustained outstanding contributions to the science of psychology and for exceptional contributions to the field through the development of research opportunities and settings. Congratulations, Stephanie!

Jens Omli, 2008 PhD graduate and Texas Tech faculty member, and his adviser Diane Wiese-Bjornstal, School of Kinesiology associate professor, published a recent paper based on his dissertation work. "Kids speak: Preferred parental behavior at youth sport events" appears in the December 2011 issue of the Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport.

The citation is as follows: Omli, J., & Wiese-Bjornstal, D. M. (2011). Kids Speak: Preferred Parental Behavior at Youth Sport Events. Research Quarterly for Exercise & Sport, 82(4), 702-711.

Dr. Donald Dengel, Kinesiology associate professor of exercise physiology, recently had a manuscript published. The citation is as follows:

Marlatt KL, McCue MC, Kelly AS, Metzig AM, Steinberger J, Dengel DR: Endothelium-independent dilation in children and adolescents. Clinical Ultrasound and Functional Imaging 31: 390-393, 2011.

Authors Kara Marlatt and Meghan McCue are both current PhD graduate students. Aaron Kelly is a Kinesiology PhD alumni, and Andrea (Thelen) Metzig is a Kinesiology M.S. graduate.

The Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare (CASCW) has released the results of a new study that shows the positive effects of supportive housing on the educational outcomes and overall well being of children in homeless families.

The study, by Minn-LInk—Minnesota-Linking Information for Kids, focused on children enrolled in Hearth Connection's supportive housing program throughout Minnesota. The children involved in the study experienced increases in educational stability and decreases in maltreatment reports and out-of-home placements.

See a recent MinnPost story on this report.

The full report, titled "The Role of Supportive Housing in Homeless Children's Well-Being: An Investigation of Child Welfare and Educational Outcomes," can be accessed here. In addition, there are two briefs available, one on educational outcomes and another on child welfare outcomes.

To see past Minn-LInK reports, go to Minn-LInK Publications on CASCW's website.

The Center for Early Education and Development (CEED) and the Institute of Child Development (ICD) warmly welcome Michele Mazzocco, Ph.D., to a joint position as Research Director at CEED and a tenured faculty member in ICD. Dr. Mazzocco brings an active line of research to CEED focusing on early mathematical development. She is a developmental psychologist with a primary interest in cognitive development. She received training in early childhood education (MEd) and experimental psychology (PhD)  at Arizona State University, where she enjoyed involvement in two Child Study Lab preschools; and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Denver where her studies focused on learning difficulties and developmental neuropsychology. Her most recent work has focused on cognitive underpinnings and predictors of mathematics achievement, via a recently completed longitudinal study she carried out at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, following a small cohort of students from kindergarten through high school. She plans to pursue studies with a new cohort focused on the construct of "number sense" in early childhood.

Dr.  Mazzocco begins her position at the University on February 6 and will be splitting her time between CEED and ICD. 

Mary Jo Kane, professor of sport sociology in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, has been chosen by the Minnesota Coalition of Women in Athletic Leadership to receive their Special Merit Award. The award is presented to an individual or organization who exemplifies the highest levels of commitment and contribution to breaking barriers for girls and women in sport.

The award will be presented to Professor Kane at the State Capitol Rotunda on February 1 from 12:00-1:00pm as part of Minnesota National Girls and Women in Sports Day, which this year recognizes and celebrates the 40th anniversary of the passage of Title IX.

Chris Lundstrom, kinesiology Ph.D. student, placed 66th in USA Track & Field's Olympic Trials Marathon on Saturday in Houston, Texas. Lundstrom's time was 2:22:03 (5:25 minute per mile pace). Lundstrom is the advisee of Dr. Stacy Ingraham and Dr. Arthur Leon.

Austin Stair Calhoun, Kinesiology Ph.D. candidate in sport sociology, is quoted in a Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder article, "Sport world still rife with gender inequities." Calhoun speaks on gendered presentations of female and male athletes noting a continued homophobia in sport media articles also reflected in her own research on online coaching biographies. Calhoun's original commentary can be found in her blog.

More than a million Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) receive publicly-funded support services. The majority (58%) live in the home of a family member, while 31% live in residential facilities or with host/foster families and 9% live in homes of their own. With the continuing shift toward community living, there's a need for federal and state agencies to better understand the current status and emerging trends in supporting individuals with IDD who are living in their own home or with family members, as well as supports targeting the family members rather than the individual. These are the areas that will be explored in a new collaborative project housed at the Institute on Community Integration's Research and Training Center on Community Living (RTC) titled the "Supporting Individuals and Families Information Systems Project." Read more...

Thursday, February 9th 6-9 PM
McNamara Alumni Center, 200 Oak Street SE, Minneapolis

The Phillips Neighborhood Clinic (PNC) is a free clinic operated by University of Minnesota health professional students, including those in the master's of social work program. Last year, the clinic provided free healthcare services, to more than 1,200 patients. Please join the students for an evening of hors d'oeuvres, drinks, live music, and the chance to bid on unique items at this year's silent auction fundraising benefit. Tickets may be purchased online.

Dr. Cathy Solheim, Department of Family Social Science, is currently leading a group of students on a learning abroad course, Families and Healthcare in Thailand. Students are sharing their stories and what they are learning in real time on the course blog, http://thailandfamilieshealth.blogspot.com/, as they travel to Chiang Mai, Chiangrai, Prachinburi, and Bangkok in Thailand.

Catch up with their experiences and keep reading as they update through the remainder of their trip in the next week.

Family Social Science doctoral student Kari Smalkoski was awarded a graduate fellowship for Spring 2012 with the Institute for Advanced Study. While in residence at IAS, Smalkoski will have regular opportunities to converse with faculty and graduate fellows throughout the University of Minnesota and beyond to discuss her dissertation project, "Performing Masculinities: The Impact of Cultural Practices, Racialization and Space on Hmong Male Youth and their Families." She will be mentored by Professor Diyah Larasati who will engage with Smalkoski in her dissertation questions that are located in larger theoretical conversations about Hmong male youths' embodied cultural practices connected to and influenced by their families, neighborhoods and peers.

Dr. Don Dengel, associate professor of exercise physiology, was mentioned in a FOXBusiness piece titled, "Doctors Get New Tool to Measure Belly Fat." The piece discusses CoreScan, a new technology from GE, that can quickly measure visceral (belly) fat during a body composition analysis.

According to Dengel, "Just as important as obesity is where the fat is located. If the fat is packed into the visceral area, we've found it has a high relationship with cardio vascular disease ... Before CoreScan came along we didn't have the option. When someone came in they got an analysis of their body composition, but they didn't have the option to look at visceral fat."

[Read the entire FoxBusiness article]

CASCW has added three more modules which can be viewed independently and, if desired, taken for continuing education credit. These modules were developed by researchers at the Center for Early Education and Development through a collaboration with CASCW. Follow these links to the modules on: Introduction to Infant Mental Health, Development of Self Regulation Over the First Five Years, and Theory of Mind. Go to the CASCW Online Learning Modules page to see a list of all the available modules.

Learning Dreams, a program that helps parents follow their own educational goals, has been welcomed by St. Paul and Minneapolis schools as a way to develop a culture of learning in their communities. Founded by social work senior fellow Jerry Stein, the program has been working in Minneapolis since the 1990s and has expanded its success to St. Paul's Cherokee Heights Elementary School, according to a recent story in the Pioneer Press.

"Launching parents on educational missions of their own—from getting a driver's license at age 30 to giving college another shot—turns them into stronger advocates for their childrens' learning," writes Mila Koumpilova. Stein and "a stable of volunteers set out to engage 'unreachable' parents who often have changing addresses and busy, chaotic lives."

Stein says that "homes and communities are loaded with potential learning strengths and riches." He "likens his 'volunteer neighborhood educators' to taxi cab drivers, shuttling parents to untapped resources," Koumpilova writes.

Cherokee Heights principal Sharon Hendrix (M.Ed. '04) secured approval from St. Paul Public Schools superintendent Valeria Silva (M.A. '91) and $180,000 foundation funding to adapt the program over two years.

Read the full story here and see more about Learning Dreams here.

An article, "Is Adding the E Enough?: Investigating the Impact of K-12 Engineering Standards on the Implementation of STEM Integration," was published in the journal School Science and Mathematics in the January 2012 special issue on STEM education, Volume 112, Issue 1, pages 31-44. Authors of the article are Dr. Gillian Roehrig, Dr. Tamara Moore, Hui-Hui Wang, and Mi Sun Park, of the STEM Education Center.

See more on the STEM Education Center website.

The Ah Neen Dush research project team contributed a chapter to the new book Voices of Native American Indian Educators, which was published in December 2011. The chapter by the Head Start team is titled, "Ah neen dush: Harnessing Collective Wisdom to Create Culturally Relevant Science Experiences in Pre-K Classrooms." Authors and members of the project team are Dr. Ann Mogush Mason, Dr. Mia Dubosarsky, Dr. Gillian Roehrig, Mary Farley, Dr. Stephan Carlson, and Barbara Murphy. The Ah Neen Dush project was a Head Start grant funded by the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Gillian Roehrig, the principal investigator of the Ah Neen Dush project, is the co-director of the STEM Education Center.

The importance of teaching science from a culturally relevant perspective is especially important at a young age so students' first experiences with science are interesting and fit with what they have been taught is valued in their culture.

See more on the STEM Education Center website.

Diane Wiese-Bjornstal, associate professor in sport and exercise psychology, is featured in the "Women's Work" section of the article "Sports Smarts: Stay Healthy as you Play," which appears in the January/February 2012 New Moon Girls publication.

Dr. Don Dengel, associate professor of exercise physiology, has published the following article:

Hearst MO, Sirard JR, Lytle LA, Dengel DR, Berrigan D: Comparison of 3 measures of physical activity and associations with blood pressure, HDL, and body composition in a sample of adolescents. Journal of Physical Activity and Health 9:78-85, 2012.

The Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare has recently published on its Web site three cultural guides to help social workers understand the children and family environments of those in the Latino, Hmong and Somali communities.

The Robert Schreiner Reading Fellowship competition is open to Ph.D. candidates in reading education who have completed course work, written and oral comprehensive examinations, and have an approved dissertation proposal. The fellowship is designed to support the candidate's dissertation research in reading education. Selection are made on the basis of the importance of the research, the clarity with which it is described, the potential for making a significant contribution to the field, and the probability that the research will be completed in a timely manner. Two individuals are co-winners of the 2011 award, Amy Frederick and Brad Biggs.

Amy Frederick's research interest is in how bilingual children learn to read in English and how their teachers can best support their success in literacy and language development. Her dissertation study will investigate the decision-making processes used by a team of educators as they plan literacy instruction for their English learning students. Amy hopes that the in-depth description of the processes undertaken by a successful teacher team will provide educators with a better understanding of how to plan and implement reading instruction for young English learners. Amy has worked in the Saint Paul Public Schools since 1996 as an ELL teacher, program coordinator, and literacy coach. She is currently a Research Fellow with the Minnesota Center for Reading Research and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.

Brad Biggs' research interests include the preparation of content area teachers to support academic literacy in middle schools and high schools. His dissertation study investigates a newly designed, online and face-to-face disciplinary reading instruction course developed from Minnesota Board of Teaching standards for all content area preservice teachers. Brad hopes that analysis of course design and preservice teacher dispositions and understandings will aid postsecondary educators as they prepare teaching candidates to meet federal and state teacher standards. Brad was a secondary educator for 17 years, first in a small town and later in an inner-city setting. He is a graduate instructor at the University of Minnesota and coordinates the Center for College Readiness's reading program for Minnesota State Community and Technical College and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities.

Martha Bigelow, associate professor in the second languages and cultures program (Department of Curriculum and Instruction) recently gave a plenary address at the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology (RCLT) at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. The workshop was called "Dialogue with Diversity: Linguistic fieldwork in urban settings." The RCLT researchers document endangered languages around the world and are in the process of learning to do linguistic fieldwork in local urban settings such as Melbourne and Sydney, where there are immigrants who speak many of the endangered languages typically documented abroad.

Here Martha is pictured with Dr. Howard Nicholas from La Trobe University.

Dr. Nicole LaVoi, Tucker Center Associate Director, and colleague Jens Omli, assistant professor at Texas Tech University, have published "Emotional Experiences of Youth Sport Parents I: Anger" in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology (2012; 24:1, 10-25). The study behind the article attempts to discern sources of anger in inappropriate sideline behavior from the perspective of parents.

E-books can be a great resource for improving literacy and engaging children in the reading experience, according to a recent article in the Star Tribune, but adult interaction and guidance needs to be a part of that experience, says Lori Helman, associate professor of literacy education and co-director of the Minnesota Center for Reading Research. She says human relations are crucial to child development.

"We need a lot of opportunities for face-to-face interaction so children can learn what it means to be human," she says in the article. "A developing person, whether they're 2 or 7, needs to be able to ask questions and check out their understanding. And no app can be responsive to all the questions and thoughts and wonderings that a young person needs. You need people."

Helman believes, however, that apps and e-books can improve access to books and put more resources at their fingertips.

"If we're using these things as little babysitters, I think kids will get tired of them," she says. "But if we use them to enhance our interaction, imagine the great conversation that could spark."

See the full story here.

Tucker Center Associate Director Dr. Nicole LaVoi and School of Kinesiology associate professor and TC Affiliated Scholar Diane Wiese-Bjornstal are quoted in a Star Tribune article about female athletes and concussions, "Girls deal with concussions, too." The article talks about signs and symptoms as well as changes in process and protection to prevent concussion in girls and boys.

The Tucker Center and the University of Minnesota Athletic Department are pleased to announce the return and official 2012 selections of the Tucker Center Film Festival. The festival will take place on January 30, 2012, at TCF Bank Stadium in the DQ Club Room and will feature the Midwest Premiere of Salaam Dunk, as well as the locally-produced short film, Grappling Girls. The event is part of the 26th annual celebration of National Girls and Women in Sports Day (NGWSD).

The feature film, Salaam Dunk, is a stirring account of an Iraqi women's basketball team at the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani (AUIS) in Kurdistan. Grappling Girls is a documentary-in-progress about women's competitive wrestling—an emerging sport in the US.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m., with the films beginning at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are available online at tcff2012.eventbrite.com. Discounted rates are available to students and to groups of 15 or more.

SALAAM DUNK TRAILER

GRAPPLING GIRLS TRAILER

Carolyn Zahn-Waxler (Ph.D. 1967) was among twenty-nine CEHD Distinguished Alumni Award winners honored on November 15 for bringing distinction to their professions and communities.
Recipients span a diverse range of academic disciplines and career paths: business and civic leaders, counselors and social workers, educators and activists, entrepreneurs, and the most dedicated of volunteers. All are community builders and leaders who make a positive difference in the lives of children, youth, families, schools, and organizations, and whose achievements bring honor to the college. See the complete list of 2011 winners on the CEHD alumni website.

Tucker Center Associate Director Dr. Nicole LaVoi traveled to Denver last week to deliver a session on Effective Motivational Strategies to 45 coaches at the 25th anniversary of the NCAA Women Coaches Academy. For more information on the Alliance of Women Coaches, visit their website.

"Postural activity and motion sickness during video game play in children and adults," by Chih-Hui Chang, Wu-Wen Pan, Li-Ya Tseng, and Thomas A. Stoffregen, has been accepted for publication in Experimental Brain Research. In 2010, Experimental Brain Research had an impact factor of 2.296. Dr. Chang, who is a professor of physical education at National Kaohsiung Normal University (Taiwan), received her PhD in Kinesiology from Minnesota in 2006. Her adviser was Prof. Michael Wade.

The University of Minnesota, CEHD, and partners have been awarded an Investing in Innovation or "i3" grant of $15 million over five years from the U.S. Department of Education. The project will implement the Child-Parent Center (CPC) education program, one of the nation's most comprehensive early childhood interventions, at 33 sites in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois.

The CPC education program provides intensive and continuous educational and family-support services for pre-kindergarten to third-grade children in low-income families and high-poverty neighborhoods. Its goal is to promote school readiness, parent involvement, and early school achievement that enhance longer-term effects on achievement, graduation, and career success. Cost-benefit analyses indicate a return of $8 to 11 for each dollar invested in the program, among the highest returns of any social program.

"The University of Minnesota is pleased to have been awarded a grant to bolster a long-running and highly effective educational program which directly works to close the achievement gap within our schools and communities," said project director Arthur Reynolds, a professor in the Institute of Child Development. "The Child-Parent Center education program is an exemplary model with strong evidence of large and sustained effects on school achievement and social competence. Because of this new grant, the project will expand for the first time into other school districts in the Midwest."

An estimated 9,000 children ages 3 to 9 across the three states will be served. Partners in Minnesota include the St. Paul Public Schools, Arrowhead Head Start, and Virginia Public Schools.

Beginning in fall 2012, St. Paul Public Schools will implement the intensive education enrichment and family-support intervention in six schools serving more than 1,000 students over the duration of the project. St. Paul has committed district Title I funds to support implementation.

"Professor Reynolds' research has been a driver in our efforts to improve children's school readiness and achievement for years," said St. Paul Public Schools Superintendent Valeria Silva (M.A. '91). "We're honored to now be partnering directly with Arthur, the university and the project partners."

The project was developed by the Human Capital Research Collaborative and its partners. HCRC is a partnership between the University of Minnesota and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis to promote effective public policies and programs for young people through multidisciplinary research on human development and learning. Reynolds and Art Rolnick, senior fellow at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and former vice president and research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, co-direct the HCRC.

Reynolds is principal investigator on the grant. Co-principal investigators on the grant are Rolnick and Judy Temple, senior fellow and associate professor, respectively, at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, and Barbara Bowman, professor of child development at Erikson Institute and chief early education officer in Chicago Public Schools.

Combined federal, private, and district funding for the project totals more than $20 million. Contributors in Minnesota include the Greater Twin Cities United Way, Target Corporation, McKnight Foundation and the Saint Paul Foundation. Others include Northwestern University, the Evanston Community Foundation, Foundation for Child Development, Foundation65, J. B. and M. K. Pritzker Family Foundation, Robert R. McCormick Foundation and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

The i3 innovations grant follows the recent news of two other federal grants received in Minnesota for early childhood education, the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant and the Promise Neighborhood Implementation Grant.

For more coverage of the impact of these grants on children and families, see this MinnPost commentary and these Star Tribune news and editorial articles.

For more information on the i3 grant, see the Human Capital Research Collaborative website.

Beverly Dretzke, Sue Rickers, and Judy Meath presented their research at the Mid-Western Educational Research Association (MWERA) conference held in St. Louis in October. Dretzke is a research associate at the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI). Rickers, a research assistant at CAREI, is a doctoral candidate in the School of Social Work. Meath is a doctoral student in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development, and a former CAREI research fellow.

Their co-authored paper was entitled "An Investigation of a Professional Development Program for Arts Educators." The paper presented the results of an evaluation of Focus on Arts, Culture and Excellence for Teachers and Students (FACETS), a three-year professional development program implemented by the Minneapolis Public Schools district. The primary purpose of FACETS was to enhance music and visual arts teachers' knowledge and skills related to providing effective instruction for students of the ethnic/cultural backgrounds present in their classrooms, especially African American, Somali, Hmong, Latino/Hispanic, and American Indian. FACETS was funded by the U.S. Department of Education through the Professional Development for Arts Educators Grants Program. CAREI served as the external evaluator for FACETS.

Dretzke also presented "Why Parents Choose Chinese Immersion for Their Children." The paper described the results of a survey of parents who have enrolled their children in a Chinese immersion program offered by the Hopkins, Minnetonka, and St. Cloud school districts. Four elementary schools in these districts comprise the Minnesota Mandarin Immersion Collaborative (MMIC). The four schools are: Eisenhower Elementary XinXing Academy (Hopkins, MN), Excelsior Elementary (Excelsior, MN), Scenic Heights Elementary (Minnetonka, MN), and Madison Elementary Guang Ming Academy (St. Cloud, MN). The MMIC is the recipient of a five-year Foreign Language Assistance Program grant from the U.S. Department of Education to support instruction in Mandarin that has a content focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). The evaluation of the Chinese immersion programs offered by MMIC is being conducted by CAREI.

The First Year Inquiry (FYI) Capstone Showcase was another PsTL First Year Experience success. CEHD freshmen had their capstone projects on display throughout six rooms in the STSS building on the last day of class (Wednesday, December 14). They took the form of live performances, group presentations, digital stories, posters and videos. FYI students were not the only ones roaming the halls of STSS to enjoy each other's final projects. A group of visiting AVID eight-graders and other members of the college community took the time to view the projects that addressed the question How can one person make a difference?, and were, by all accounts, creative and of strong quality! Congrats to all!

After more than a decade of success with its College of Direct Support, an innovative online curriculum for Direct Support Professionals, the Research and Training Center on Community Living in the Institute on Community Integration is partnering with Elsevier/MC Strategies to further expand online training for professionals who support people who have intellectual, developmental, and physical disabilities; those with psychiatric disabilities; as well as those who are aging. In November, they launched DirectCourse, an expanded suite of online curricula that will not only include the College of Direct Support, but also three additional curriculum series developed by new partners from other universities. Read more...

Donna Tilsner, Kinesiology adjunct instructor in Recreation, Park, and Leisure Studies (RPLS), will be honored with one of the top recognition awards in Minnesota for her outstanding work in recreation. On Jan. 12 she will be presented with the Clifton E. French Distinguished Service Award, the highest professional award given by the Minnesota Recreation and Parks Association (MRPA).

The award is open to candidates with over 20 years of professional service. Nominees are judged on community volunteerism, research, speeches, published articles, and professional certifications. Tilsner, an RPLS graduate ('76), has worked for the City of Edina since 1999 as a recreation supervisor, coordinating many programs and services for the Park and Recreation Department. She has also worked for Hopkins/Minnetonka and Eagan.

The award is named for Clifton E. French, who graduated from the University in 1948 with a B.S. and received his M.Ed. in recreation leadership in 1949. He worked as the director of Coffman Union and was the director of Edina Parks and Recreation and the executive director of the MRPA. He was the first superintendent of Hennepin County Park Reserve District.

(Photo shows Tilsner with RPLS student and Gopher basketball player Trevor Mbakwe at the Gopher Adventure Race.)

Dr. Michael Wade, Kinesiology professor of motor learning and motor development, traveled to Leeds University this month to give an invited talk on the topic of "Postural sway and suprapostural performance in clinical populations." He presented on Monday, December 12.

While in Europe, Dr. Wade and Fu-Chen Chen, Kinesiology graduate and his advisee (PhD, 2011), presented a poster at SKILLS, a meeting of the European Commission in Montpellier, France. Their topic was "Postural sway and suprapostural performance in children with and without Developmental Coordination Disorder."

Dr. Thomas Stoffregen, Kinesiology professor in human factors and ergonomics, gave an invited talk at Leeds University, England, on December 12. His topic was "Motion sickness considered as a movement disorder."

Dr. Stoffregen also presented at SKILLS, a meeting of the European Commission, in Montpellier, France, on December 16. His topic was "Interface solutions for interface problems."

Also at SKILLS, Dr. Stoffregen and Yi-Chou Chen, Kinesiology PhD student and Dr. Stoffregen's advisee, presented a poster on the topic, "Control of a virtual avatar influences postural activity and motion sickness."

The Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ), in partnership with the Center for Early Education and Development (CEED), Minneapolis Public Schools, and more than 50 community partners, has been awarded a $28 million Promise Neighborhood Implementation Grant from the U.S. Department of Education (USDE). NAZ is one of only five organizations across the country receiving implementation grants. The grant will help expand and improve services that directly engage North Minneapolis families by promoting developmental and educational attainment and life-long success for children from birth through college.

Minnesota's achievement gap is consistently among the largest in the nation, with arguably the most significant effects noticed among African American students in North Minneapolis. The Northside Achievement Zone, in cooperation with CEED, is committed to reducing this gap through improved and expanded educational services and a wide array of family support initiatives. CEED faculty and staff, for example, are working on program design, management, and evaluation, partnering with other community experts in early childhood, elementary education, behavioral and mental health, housing, and career and financial development.

"The NAZ mission is to build a culture of achievement in a geographic area in North Minneapolis to ensure all youth graduate from high school college-ready," according to the USDE project description. "NAZ is an organization that anchors a collaborative of over 50 service providers who work together to create a 'cradle to college to career' continuum of solutions, with strong schools at the center."

CEED's director of community engagement Scott McConnell says, "NAZ is modeled on the Harlem Children's Zone and is designed to expand and improve services to children, their families, and the schools and programs that serve them in a 234-block area in North Minneapolis. We have a chance here, working with NAZ and its educational and human services partners, to extend the University's commitment to integrating research and practice and to working together to reduce Minnesota's persistent educational disparities."

"Promise Neighborhoods recognizes that children need to be surrounded by systems of support inside and outside of the classroom to help them be successful in school and beyond," says U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in the official announcement.

With this new funding, NAZ will engage parents with aligned education support, including nine committed and innovating schools within a continuum of support service, and will provide effective whole-family support programs. This approach connects families to high-quality services through a "high touch" process, in which parents are supported by skilled coaches from their own community who work with them to set and implement family plans of action. The plans are then tracked through an online achievement planning and data system.

Faculty, staff, and graduate students from CEED, led by McConnell and research associates Tracy Bradfield, Lauren Martin, and Alisha Wackerle-Hollman, will help NAZ to develop, improve, and evaluate Family Academy (a parent education component for young children and their parents), and to build and implement an internal evaluation system that monitors and helps improve all components of NAZ.

The grant will provide up to $6 million in the first year and the remaining funds over four more years.

CEED and the Northside Achievement Zone are also recipients of funds from a Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant announced by the Obama administration Dec. 16. Approximately $45 million over five years will expand capacity and infrastructure of Minnesota to serve its most high-risk preschoolers through a variety of initiatives. Minnesota is one of nine states to be awarded funds through that grant program.

For more coverage of the impact of these grants and more on children and families, see these Star Tribune news and editorial articles.

Martha Bigelow, associate professor in the second languages and cultures program (Department of Curriculum and Instruction), was invited to Hanoi, Vietnam recently by the U.S. State Department and the University of Languages and International Studies - VNU. She worked with the Faculty of English Language Teacher Education to create new English language courses for first and second year undergraduate students. While in Vietnam, Martha presented on this work to 90 foreign language instructors (Japanese, Russian, French, Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese). She also visited teachers' colleges in Lan Son and Thai Binh provinces to meet with elementary English teachers and Engllish language teacher educators.

Here Martha is pictured with one of the ULIS instructors, Chi Hạnh Đỗ.

Two years ago, educational psychology professor Asha Jitendra began working with 13 elementary schools in Minneapolis to investigate the effectiveness of small-group tutoring intervention in improving the mathematics problem-solving performance of struggling third graders. Now this effort is showing promising results in schools such as Lake Nokomis Community School, where she was recently conducting training (see photo).

With funding from a National Institutes of Health Challenge Grant in 2009, from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, Jitendra and her staff began Project MAPPS to evaluate the effectiveness of a fully developed tutoring intervention called Schema-Based Instruction. They have been pleased to see improvement in students' Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) math scores, which can be attributed to the small-group tutoring component. Even as the funded component of the study is ending, Jitendra is continuing to provide training to groups of tutors in hopes of continuing the progress.

"It is a both a privilege and a pleasure to watch one's work come full circle, evolving from a mere idea to reality in the classroom," says Jitendra, who is the Rodney Wallace Professor for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning in the Department of Educational Psychology.

Associate Professor Mistilina Sato (Curriculum and Instruction) has been selected to serve on The Minnesota Department of Education's Teacher Evaluation Working Group.

The Minnesota Department of Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius has appointed 35 members to a panel charged with developing a new evaluation system for Minnesota teachers. Mandated by the legislature as part of the new teacher evaluation law passed during the 2011 special session, the Teacher Evaluation Working Group will develop an evaluation model to be used by school districts and teachers in the event they do not agree on a local evaluation model.

"This task force has the opportunity to develop a rich and meaningful tool that will benefit students and assist teachers in their continued quest to become outstanding professional educators," said Commissioner Cassellius.

See full story.

The Obama administration has announced that Minnesota is one of nine states to receive a Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant. For Minnesota, this will mean approximately $45 million over five years to expand the capacity and infrastructure of the state to serve its most high-risk preschoolers through a variety of efforts and initiatives. CEHD's Center for Early Education and Development (CEED) played a role in the grant's preparation, and will play a role in its implementation.

Dr. Karen Cadigan, a CEED alumnus, now serves as director of Minnesota's Office of Early Learning and will coordinate and lead much of the grant-funded efforts. Dr. Amy Susman-Stillman, CEED co-director, and her colleagues proposed creating professional development materials and conducting training sessions to implement the expansion of Parent Aware as part of the coming effort.

Other CEED staffers will be working with the Northside Achievement Zone and three other high-poverty communities that will serve as a place-based focus for Minnesota's efforts. Details will emerge in the weeks ahead, as this grant represents both an acknowledgment and investment in Minnesota's early childhood system.

For more coverage of the impact of this new grant and others on children and families, see these Star Tribune news and editorial articles.

Nationwide, nearly a million schoolchildren experience homelessness each year, with many school districts, including Minneapolis Public Schools, reporting increases since the economic crisis began. Addressing this challenge, child development professor Ann Masten is researching ways to help homeless and highly mobile children prepare for kindergarten.

Masten, a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Institute of Child Development (ICD), is leading efforts at Minneapolis homeless shelters, such as People Serving People, to develop mental capacities and improve children's skills that predict school success and resilience. Known as executive functions, these skills typically involve self control, which develops between the ages of 3 and 7.

"To do well in kindergarten, you need to be able to listen to the teacher, follow instructions, and resist the temptation to get distracted, run around the room, or hit the child next to you," says Masten, who has been collaborating with shelters and community partners since 1980. "To learn anything, you have to have some control over your own behavior and attention."

Masten's work has grown to include several of her faculty colleagues, graduate and undergraduate students, and University staff, working alongside staff from local schools and community organizations.

In July, Masten and ICD faculty members Philip Zelazo and Stephanie Carlson were awarded a three-year grant from the National Center for Education Research. Their task is to develop an intervention to build executive functions as a strategy for improving school readiness, learning, and early school success of homeless and other highly mobile preschoolers.

See the UMNews story here.

Jim Winges, CC-AASP, Ph.D. candidate in Kinesiology in the sport psychology emphasis, recently presented on the use of motivational techniques in youth sport to 165 Minnesota youth hockey coaches as part of Minnesota Hockey's Coach Education Program. Since the 2007-2008 ice hockey season, Mr. Winges has presented to more than 2,400 coaches for Minnesota Hockey's Coach Education Program. Mr. Winges is advised by Professor Diane Wiese-Bjornstal.

Five doctoral students and one faculty member from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction's social studies education program gave presentations at the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Conference in Washington, DC, November 30 - December 4. In total, nine graduate students from the U of MN social studies program attended the conference.

At a symposium titled Negotiated Identities and Social Studies Education, two current doctoral students and one former Ph.D. student presented their research. Sara Levy presented a paper entitled "Heritage History, Identity, and the Public School Classroom," and Annette Simmons delivered a paper entitled "Hmong Constructions of Citizenship Identity in an American Government Classroom." "Negotiating Identity in an American History Classroom" was the third and final paper, presented by former Ph.D. social studies student Maia Sheppard, currently an assistant professor at George Washington University.

Kathryn Engebretson presented her research paper, "Preservice Teacher Talk Surrounding Gender in the Formal Curriculum: How Preservice Teachers Encounter Themes of Sexual Violence," and joined colleagues Judie Harrington and Jessica Winkelaar in developing a dynamic presentation for elementary teachers, "What's the Big Idea? Reading to Teach Elementary Social Studies."

Assistant Professor J. B. Mayo, Jr. presented a recently published book chapter, "GLBTQ Issues in the Social Studies," and was a key participant in the closing panel discussion for the conference, "Can We Move Beyond Scholarship That is 'Weak, Isolated, and Incestuous'? Creating a More Viable Future for Social Studies Research."

Professor Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, was featured in the Winter 2012 issue of Minnesota, the University of Minnesota Alumni Association magazine.

The article, "Athletes, Not Babes, Sell Tickets," discusses how Kane and her former Ph.D. student, Heather Maxwell (Kinesiology Ph.D., 2009), challenged the prevailing assumption that if women athletes are portrayed as sexy versus athletically competent, attendance at women's sporting events would increase and female athletes would get more media attention and corporate sponsorship. However, according to Kane's and Maxwell's findings, sexualized images of athletic females actually produced the opposite effect among focus groups, including 18- to 34-year-old women and 35- to 55-year-old men.

"We now have empirical data and it's very clear," says Kane. "Portraying women athletes as athletes is an effective marketing strategy for many consumer groups, while on the flip side, portraying women athletes as sex objects produces a significant backlash among most consumer groups. The bottom line of our research is that sex sells sex, not women's sports."
View the full article here.

The School of Kinesiology continued its 2011-12 Colloquium Speaker Series on December 8, with Dr. Deborah Rohm Young of the University of Maryland speaking on "Multi-Level Predictors of Physical Activity in Early, Mid, and Late Adolescent Girls." Dr. Young also facilitated a seminar for graduate students on December 9 titled, "Navigating the Grants Game: Lessons Learned."

This research presentation was the final presentation of the Fall semester. The School will recommence the series in the Spring on March 29 with Dr. Jennifer Etnier of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dr. Etnier will present a talk titled, "Move It or Lose It: Evidence for the Relationship Between Exercise and Cognition."

The Speaker Series is an initiative the School of Kinesiology launched this year to provide an opportunity to learn about cutting-edge research from distinguished scholars; to promote multidisciplinary ideas and collaborations; and to develop a culture in which the School celebrates their mutual commitment to the study of physical activity and health in the broadest sense.

In the wake of alleged sexual abuse cases at Penn State and Syracuse, the Star Tribune has published an article, "Sports can act as cover for abusers," on sport as a particular environment where abuse can occur. The article features commentary from Dr. Nicole LaVoi, kinesiology lecturer and associate director of the Tucker Center, as well as from Tucker Center Affiliated Scholar Doug Hartmann, professor of sociology.

LaVoi and Hartmann are interviewed on the culture of sport and how various factors including the unassailable authority of coaches, a homophobic/machismo environment, and huge financial stakes can provide a fertile ground for sexual abuse that can go largely unreported.

Nancy Jones will tell traditional Ojibwe winter time stories, in Ojibwe, with English translation by her son Dennis Jones. These special stories can only be told in the winter, when the ground is frozen. Nancy Jones is a master speaker, storyteller and much revered Elder, now actively engaged in many language revitalization efforts. Come and hear the beautiful sounds of the Ojibwe language, as told by someone whose first language is Ojibwemowin.

12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.
40 Peik Hall
Pizza will be served.

Diversity Dialogues are monthly gatherings sponsored by the Department of Curriculum & Instruction.

Megan Gunnar, Regents Professor and Distinguished McKnight University Professor, and Maria Kroupina (Ph.D. 2003), assistant professor of pediatrics in the Division of Global Pediatrics, discussed what research is beginning to show us about "the complex story of human development and early adversity," as Gunnar describes it, that is illuminated through the study of the complicated physical and psychological issues and challenges that come along with international adoption of children raised in orphanages. The family profiled in the article sought help through the International Adoption Clinic, which both Gunnar and Kroupina have been involved with for several years.

Gunnar, director of the Institute of Child Development (ICD), goes on to say that studies are showing that the human organism is remarkably resilient in overcoming early adversity, given proper medical and psychological support. And, as Maria points out, "With the right intervention. . . .You can see each child bloom like a flower slowly opening." Read the full article here.

Educational Psychology Assistant Professor Amanda Sullivan has received a two-year, New Connections grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). The funding will support Sullivan's research to examine the mental health needs and related evidence-based school mental health services for adolescents with severe emotional disorders.

"This award will connect me to a network of establish experts in research and evaluation related to health and health care, while providing me with an opportunity to contribute to a program that has far-reaching implications for the education and treatment of youth with serious mental health needs," said Sullivan.

New Connections is a national program designed to introduce new scholars to RWJF and expand the diversity of perspectives that inform the foundation's programming.

Former Minnesota Wild hockey player Derek Boogaard, who died at age 28 last May, was the focus of a New York Times article last Sunday on the degenerative brain injury he suffered that was caused by repeated blows to the head. WCCO-TV's Good Question Monday evening asked, "Why do we like violence in sports?" Dr. Nicole La Voi, Kinesiology lecturer and associate director of the Tucker Center, was interviewed for the story. She said violence in sports has become a form of entertainment for fans. See the interview here:
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2011/12/05/good-question-why-do-we-like-violence-in-sports/

In October, Jessica Nichols, ICD Executive Office and Admin Specialist, set up a department-wide potluck lunch at ICD with a raffle of gift cards donated from local Dinkytown businesses and restaurants to raise awareness of the Community Fund Drive. But she didn't stop there in her efforts to increase participation in the drive. She also organized a CEHD Pancake Breakfast that was expanded to a university-wide event at the McNamara Alumni Center on October 30. The McNamara Center generously donated the space and D'Amico Catering offered a reduced rate on food for the event. Jess was also able to get Gopher sports events tickets donated by the Gopher Athletics department and gift cards donated by Dinkytown businesses and restaurants as prizes for those participating in the breakfast. Both the potluck and the pancake breakfast were huge successes. Her efforts earned her a place among only 7 others at the University chosen to receive a People's Choice Award. The full list of recipients can be found here.
Congratulations and great work, Jess!

David Chapman, Birkmaier Professor of Educational Leadership in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD), was in Hanoi, Vietnam as a member of the five-person University team at the deans' meeting of the Southeast Asia One Health University network. The interdisciplinary team included faculty from medicine, nursing, public health, and CEHD.

Chapman also spent 10 days in Vietnam as a member of a four-person team conducting a baseline study of the Vietnam One Health University network in Vietnam. His work was part of the USAID-funded RESPOND project, housed in the University's College of Veterinary Medicine. Chapman serves as the monitoring and evaluation lead on the project for the University.

Dr. Arthur Leon, professor of exercise physiology, was invited to make a presentation to the Women's Cardiac Support Group at Abbot-Northwestern Hospital's Heart Center on December 5. He lectured on the pathophysiology of the development of atherosclerosis (plaque build-up in the arteries) and the implications of exercise to address the disease.

"Mongolia's population is very small—only three million people. I know it's possible to reach more families."

Family Social Science senior Delgermend "Deggi" Tserendamba is not just a pie-in-the-sky optimist. Her goals for helping families in her home country of Mongolia are as much grounded in research, study, and determination.

A participant in the University's 2012 Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), Tserendemba received funding to return to Mongolia during the summer of 2011 and conduct research with families. She spent two months conducting surveys with more than 200 participants across the country. Her UROP mentor is Dr. Cathy Solheim, associate professor in Family Social Science, who has worked closely with Deggi throughout the research process.

Considering the rising influence of the West in Mongolia, Tserendemba interviewed Mongolians of all ages to understand the gap between generations and investigate ways that traditional values can be passed on.

"The older generation grew up while Mongolia was communist," she said. "Things were very homogenous, and the government took care of a lot of social needs, including child care. After communism fell in the 1990s, a lot changed. Now the younger generation is more concerned with money and status, and is facing problems like unemployment and rising alcoholism."

Tserendamba feels that working with the younger generations in Mongolia will be the most productive way to effect change. She wants to examine the roots of the alcoholism and public intoxication that are common among young people, and give them tools to improve their lives and increase mobility.

"Nobody is asking 'What does it mean to be Mongolian?'," she said. "I want to create an understanding between generations to help everyone embrace Mongolian culture."

Tserendamba will showcase her work at the annual UROP research conference in May of 2012. After her graduation in the spring, she plans on returning to Mongolia to work and be better prepared for eventual graduate work. "I want to have a good understanding of the people I want to help before I start graduate school," she said.

The toll of crossing multiple time zones between Europe and the United States can wear down even the most seasoned traveler, but just one week after returning home from delivering a keynote address in Italy, Dr. Sharon Danes boarded another plane and flew back to the continent to collaborate with fellow chapter authors in Sweden.

Danes delivered a keynote address at the annual conference for the International Family Enterprise Research Academy (IFERA), held at the University of Palermo in Sicily, Italy, from June 28 through July 1, 2011. The keynote was entitled "Family Constructs in Family Business Research: Present and Future."

"There are very few family scientists who research family businesses," said Danes. IFERA is attended mostly by people from business schools, and Danes said that her being asked to keynote meant her work "has reached the next level of global recognition."

Danes' spoke about her research concentration at the intersection of family and business. When there is a time of high demand in a family-run business, who helps out and how are responsibility lines changed, blurred, or split between family responsibilities and business responsibilities? How is the flow of money from family savings to business expenses affected? "When families and business intersect, you need to look at family communication patterns as well as business management processes," she said.

Danes also discussed her Sustainable Family Business Theory, which can be summarized as: family-run businesses are not successful unless the family has healthy family functionality as well as a financially healthy business. Danes noted that this does not mean there is an absence of tension in families, but that high tension families are able to address the tension in a healthy way.

"My time at the IFERA conference was wonderful," she said. "I renewed and built on previous relationships, as well as made new ones, and discussed partnerships with fellow scholars from Finland, a French professor teaching in Canada, and a consultant from Malaysia."

Since most of her previous work outside the U.S. has been centered in Central and South America, Danes was excited to spend additional time in Europe. Through the Road Scholar educational program, she traveled with her husband to Rome, Florence, and Venice. The program provided lectures on history and culture before going to museums and famous sites, making the excursion experience richer.

After returning to Minnesota for six days, Danes returned to Europe on July 9, this time to Sweden. Danes is the author of a chapter in the upcoming SAGE Handbook of Family Business.

"The book editors, funded by a Swedish family business, brought all of the chapter authors together to ensure continuity in the chapters," said Danes. "It was a good way to work on content and get structural feedback beyond just the authors."

Danes' chapter features many of the same concepts from her IFERA keynote. The book features chapters by authors from across the globe, and will be published in 2012.

In August 2011, Pauline Boss, professor emeritus of Family Social Science, published "Loving Someone Who Has Dementia: How to Find Hope While Dealing with Stress and Grief," a resource for family members and caregivers, and her third book on the subject of ambiguous loss.

"This book is for anyone who cares for somebody with dementia," said Boss. "I worked hard not to pathologize caregivers. There is a difference between being depressed, which is pathological, and being sad, which is a normal part of this experience. Caregiving can be a long and sometimes traumatic process."

Boss' first book, Ambiguous Loss, named the experience and laid out the theory behind it. Her second book, Loss, Trauma and Resilience - Training for Professionals, was published in 2009 and was made to facilitate on-site training for care professionals and those who work with individuals suffering from dementia and their families. Boss found the demand for training in ambiguous loss theory was too great for her to personally attend to, which prompted the writing of the book.

For her third and most recent book, Boss wanted to be able to make something that family members could find useful while experiencing times of high stress. "The writing is accessible, but is all grounded in research. It is fine if you only want to read snippets here and there when you have the time." The book does not address how to give care, but looks at relationships and the psychological journey of caregiving, so caregivers can stay strong despite illness and relationships which have been changed or compromised.

Boss' work with ambiguous loss and family members of World Trade Center workers who were killed in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, found her invited back to the site for the memorial services to commemorate the tenth anniversary.

"My heart is with the working people of 9/11," said Boss. "The cooks, the cleaners, the elevator operators, the people who made the towers work. They were kind of invisible in the coverage of the attacks, and much more attention went to people in uniform. They and their families represented a multitude of faiths and nationalities."

Shortly after the attacks in 2001, Boss and several Family Social Science graduate students flew to New York City and began working with families, using a family meeting model for the physically missing that was developed with late Professor Wayne Caron.
Boss co-authored "Healing Loss, Ambiguity, and Trauma: A Community-Based Intervention with Families of Union Workers Missing After the 9/11 Attack in New York City," published in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy in October of 2003, remains one of the journal's most accessed articles.

Robert Shumer, Ph.D., lecturer in Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development (OLPD), was honored by the National Dropout Prevention Network with a Crystal Star Award of Excellence in Distinguished Leadership and Service at the 2011 National Dropout Prevention Network Conference, held October 9-12, 2011, in Schaumburg, IL. This award is the highest award given by the Network. You can listen to an interview with Dr. Shumer by Marty Duckenfield, Public Information Director of the National Dropout Prevention Center, at http://cufan.clemson.edu/psaradiopod/NDPC/NDPCChShumer.mp3.

In the photo, from left to right: Marty Duckenfield, Public Information Director of the National Dropout Prevention Center, Dr. Shumer, and Dr. Sam Drew, Executive Director of the National Dropout Prevention Center.

Dr. Samuel Museus received the Early Career Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) at its annual convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. He received his M.A. in higher education from the Department of Educational Policy and Administration (now Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development), and subsequently received his Ph.D. in higher education from Penn State University. He is currently an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Frances Vavrus, associate professor in Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (OLPD) and Ph.D. student Matthew Thomas participated in a panel in Washington, DC at the 50th anniversary meeting of the African Studies Association (November 16th-19th). The panel, entitled Unfinished Liberation Struggles: Education for Self-Reliance in Tanzania Revisited, examined changes in educational philosophy and practice in Tanzania during the past 50 years and drew upon their ongoing research into current educational reforms with colleagues at Mwenge University College of Education (MWUCE) in northern Tanzania. One faculty member from MWUCE, Allen Rugambwa Kamanzi, also presented a paper on the panel as part of a faculty development project supported by the Open Society Foundations and coordinated by Dr. Vavrus. Their three papers will form chapters in a book on teacher education reform in Tanzania edited by Dr. Vavrus and Dr. Lesley Bartlett at Teachers College, Columbia University.

The University of Minnesota was well represented at the recent conference of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) held November 16-19, 2011 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

A new Urban Indian Education Partnership among Anishinabe Academy, Minneapolis Public Schools, and the College of Education and Human Development is creating ways to improve student performance by fully integrating academic instruction with cultural teachings and American Indian approaches to learning. The cover story, "Culture Matters," in the winter 2012 issue of Connect magazine describes an inspiring partnership that is closing the achievement gap for Native American students.

The story highlights the challenging yet successful work of Jennifer McComas, Rodney Wallace Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology, and Ida Downwind, program facilitator for the school district's Department of Indian Education. Thanks to their leadership, and the efforts of many teachers at Anishinabe and graduate students from CEHD, the program is showing positive results for students in reading and other areas.

"The data showed us that, indeed, culture and academic rigor are both necessary, and that neither one alone is sufficient to produce desired outcomes for students," says McComas. "It's very exciting."

As a result of this success, the Urban Indian Education Partnership is expanding its work to other schools during the 2011-12 school year. Also, the partnership will continue to use instructional practices identified by McComas and Downwind, who hope for further implementation of the practices and improvement in student outcomes.

"We're seeing in our data and data collected from other studies across the country that the more enculturated students are, the more likely they are to succeed," says McComas.

The graduate student striding down the halls of Cooke in bare feet has good reason to kick up her heels. Ness Madeiros, an M.A. student in sport sociology, is featured in this semester's issue of Connect. Ms. Madeiros, a marathoner, began running barefoot in her native Bermuda, and has bravely continued to run shoe-less since starting at the U last fall. This year she ran in the Twin Cities Marathon, barefoot, and has been running to raise money for philanthropic causes. Read Ness's story here. Check out her blog, Barefoot for Kids, at barefootadventures.wordpress.com

An article on the Gopher Adventure Race in the winter issue of the College of Education & Human Development's Connect shines the spotlight on three School of Kinesiology lecturers.

Connie Magnuson, Ph.D., director of the B.S. program in recreation, park, and leisure studies, was mentioned for serving as the race organizer and supervising a 96-person staff of students. KIN lecturers Jennifer Bhalla, Ph.D. and Nicole LaVoi, Ph.D., were also noted for winning the race's faculty category.

Download the Winter 2012 issue of Connect magazine (PDF).

CEED staff presented at the 2011 Division of Early Childhood (DEC) 27th Annual International Conference on Young Children with Special Needs and Their Families in National Harbor, MD November 17-19, 2011. Megan Cox and Christopher Watson presented a poster, Regional, Specialized, Professional Development Systems: Using Data to Expand Resources. Christopher Watson and Shelley Neilsen Gatti presented Transformative Professional Development Tool in Infant Mental Health: Reflective Practice. Scott McConnell, Professor in Educational Psychology, presented Measuring Up: Constructing Progress Monitoring Measures in Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education.

Karen Miksch, Associate Professor in the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning, presented on November 16th at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) in Charlotte, North Carolina. The symposium was entitled "Meeting the Policy Challenges of a Technology Enhanced Future: State Open Records Act Requests, Email, and Text Messages. " Along with her colleagues Jeff Sun (University of North Dakota) and Neal Hutchens (University of Kentucky), Professor Miksch argued that recent open records act requests targeted at individual faculty members may have a profound impact on faculty work. More information about the session and a copy of the slides are available at Views, News, and Information about Higher Education Law

JaeRan Kim, coordinator of Stability, Permanency & Adoption programs at the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare and also a PhD candidate at the School, was featured in the most recent edition of the Minnesota Center for Social Work Research's e-newsletter. Here's the link to the online article from the e-newsletter.

Dr. Donald Dengel, Kinesiology associate professor of exercise physiology, has had a manuscript published in the December 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

The full listing of the article is: Fulkerson JA, Farbakhsh K, Lytle L, Hearst MO, Dengel DR, Pasch KE, Kubik MY: Away-from-home family dinner sources and associations with weight status, body composition and related biomarkers of chronic disease among adolescents and their parents. Journal of the American Dietetic Association 111:1892-1897, 2011. The publication can be accessed at http://www.adajournal.org/.

School of Kinesiology lecturer and Tucker Center associate director Dr. Nicole LaVoi is featured in an ESPN.com blog on determining a good fit between a coach and an athlete.

As part of the process, LaVoi suggests that athletes ask coaches directly what their coaching style is. "Be willing to ask, 'What's your philosophy?' and 'Why do you coach?' when you meet potential college coaches," she says. "It's a big red flag if a coach is unwilling or unable to answer."

The blog post also appears as a special report in the Winter 2011 issue of the magazine ESPNHS Girl.

Twenty-nine CEHD Distinguished Alumni Award winners were honored Nov. 15 for bringing distinction to their professions and communities.

Recipients span a diverse range of academic disciplines and career paths: business and civic leaders, counselors and social workers, educators and activists, entrepreneurs, and the most dedicated of volunteers. All are community builders and leaders who make a positive difference in the lives of children, youth, families, schools, and organizations, and whose achievements bring honor to the college. See the complete list of 2011 winners on the CEHD alumni website.

Jackie Voigt, a master's student in applied kinesiology and alumni of the undergraduate sport management program, was featured in the South Washington County Bulletin regarding her women's basketball career at the U of MN, where Voigt has had a very positive experience.

"I have no regrets picking the University of Minnesota. I'm glad I made this decision," Voigt said. "I've had some great teammates and great coaches. I've gotten a great education and have graduated with my degree - which was my No. 1 priority. I think I've grown in a lot of different areas outside of basketball, too."

A six-one forward, Voigt is a three-year letterwinner and 2011-12 team captain for the Gophers. Thus far this season, she is averaging 5.0 points and 4.9 rebounds per contest.

Voigt's former high school coach, Stephanie Tolkinen regards her as the "the hardest worker" she's ever come across. Tolkinen also notes, "she wants to be the best at everything she does, but she keeps a good balance between her family, her life and basketball."

Mary Jo Kane, PhD, professor of Kinesiology and director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, and her research on "sex selling" women's sport was referenced in a The Globe and Mail article, "Do female athletes have to wear miniskirts to be taken seriously?"

The author of the article, Katrina Onstad, writes, "Yet it turns out that sex isn't necessarily smart sports marketing. Mary Jo Kane, a professor at the University of Minnesota, conducted a study in which male and female subjects were shown various images of women athletes - some of them at moments of great athletic triumph, some of them lounging and some in supine soft-porn positions. The ones that made the subjects most want to watch sports were the ones highlighting athletic prowess. The sexy images were deemed "hot" by some young male participants but provoked no interest in women's sports."

Dante Cicchetti, McKnight Presidential Chair, William Harris Professor of Child Development and Psychiatry, has been elected to the rank of AAAS Fellow by the the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Each year the AAAS Council elects members whose efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications are scientifically or socially distinguished. Dr. Cicchetti is being honored for groundbreaking research in the fields of developmental neuroscience and child psychology, impacting theory and practice related to child maltreatment, depression, and developmental psychopathology.

Dean Jean Quam's annual International Thanksgiving Dinner provided a meal and an intercultural experience to more than 60 international students from 18 different countries on Nov. 21. The event, started in 2007, featured traditional U.S. Thanksgiving food and included opportunities for faculty, staff, students, their spouses, and even friends from other colleges to interact.

It's a "wonderful event" that allows international students to feel welcomed and connected, says Director of International Initiatives and Relations Christopher Johnstone (in center of photo with students). The event, which included an "ice breaker" by Student Services staff, is arranged by events manager Serena Wright in the Office of Communications.

Abi Gewirtz, assistant professor, Department of Family Social Science and Institute of Child Development, has received the Professional of the Year Award for 2011 from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) of Minnesota. The award recognizes a professional or staff person who provides high quality services, exemplifies best practices, and demonstrates commitment to and leadership in the field of mental health.

Dr. Stephen Ross, School of Kinesiology director of undergraduate programs and associate professor of sport management, was quoted on the role of National Basketball Association commissioner David Stern in the league's lockout in an article that appeared in the online version of Fortune Magazine.

In this piece, Ross contends that the NBA could lose fan support and hurt its finances with the lockout. Ross states, "Your diehard NBA fans, they won't defect. But most fans watch sports for the drama of the game ... and they will take their discretionary dollars elsewhere if the lockout continues."

Thanks to a generous donation of $5,000 from an ICD alumnus who wishes to remain anonymous, we have been able to offer two scholarships of $2500 each to graduate students in our department. We are pleased to announce that Wan-ling Tseng and Sally Kuo are the recipients of this fine honor.

School of Kinesiology chefs and bakers came together for the First Annual Community Fund Drive Crockpot Cooke-Off last month. Ten entrants prepared sweet and savory dishes that were enthusiastically sampled and voted on by the lunch crowd who attended. Thanks to all who contributed, either with culinary delights or donations. The Cooke-Off was a fund-raising success, with contributions of $142 going to the U's Community Fund Drive federations. Cooks and their entries are listed below. Stacy Ingraham and Liz Plunkett tied for first place in Savory, and Kelsey Savoie won the entry for the Sweet category.

Italiano Tortellini Stew, Rayla Allison
Fall Fruits and Bacon Cobbler, Austin Calhoun
Hot Fudge Kahlua Chocolate Cake Pudding, Tricia Davies
Tortellini Soup, Brandi Hoffman
Swagalicious White Chili, Stacy Ingraham
Hearty Beef Stew, Nicole LaVoi
Cheesy Jalapeno Corn Souffle, Alyssa Maples
Savory Turkey Meatballs, Carol Nielsen
Mexican Chicken Chili Chowder, Liz Plunkett
Apple Crisp, Kelsey Savoie
Slow Cooker Hawaiian Beef, Tom Smith