Category: News

In the first two months of the pandemic, more than half of former foster children lost their jobs and nearly 40% experienced precarious living situations or homelessless, according to a survey of 127 former foster children between the ages of 18 and 26 that we conducted in May and June of 2020.

They were among the estimated 20,000 people in foster care who are “emancipated” each year when they age out of the system, beginning as young as 18. These young adults typically lose most of the support the government provides foster children – such as caseworker support and access to health care and housing.

Article co-written by Deanna Linville, Associate Professor at the College of Education.

Three University of Oregon educators who have worked to bring innovation and excellence to their teaching are this year’s recipients of fellowships from the Tom and Carol Williams Fund for Undergraduate Education.

The recipients are Raghuveer Parthasarathy, in the Department of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences; Donnalyn Pompper, in the Public Relations Program in the School of Journalism and Communication; and Leilani ​​​​​​Sabzalian, in the Critical and Sociocultural Studies in Education Program in the College of Education.

On May 18, voters in Eugene School District 4j will have the opportunity to choose among the candidates for three seats on the board. 

The race for Position 3 features two newcomers to elective politics taking on an incumbent.  In this program, all six candidates will describe their credentials and opinions about key issues. The order of speakers was set by random drawing. While the positions are numbered, the seats are at-large, and everyone in the district gets to vote on all positions.

Tom Di Liberto is an alumnus of the College of Education.

A research project in the College of Education is helping educators create more inclusive classroom environments and embrace a state requirement to incorporate Native American culture and history into curriculums.

Stephanie Wood, a research associate in the Center for Equity and Promotion, works with her team to develop K­-12 curriculums that include Native American cultures and their histories. The  study units are available to all teachers as downloadable PDFs and are created for diverse grade levels and subjects.

Although delinquency and drug use affect millions of youth, research has identified successful, family-based intervention strategies in childhood and adolescence that can prevent such outcomes, said Leslie Leve, associate director of the UO’s Prevention Science Institute.

Leve will explore those strategies in depth as the featured speaker at Science Knight Out, a community science talk sponsored by the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact.

College of Education faculty members Heather McClure and Dane Ramshaw have partnered with Shift Bias, a virtual reality training development company, to create a new curriculum for diversity, equity and inclusion training.

“The course is augmented with an immersive, lifelike virtual reality experience that guides the learner to discover disparities and inequities in action and to develop the motivation to change behaviors and, thus, outcomes,” McClure said.

The Denver school district will pilot a screener for dyslexia this fall after years of public outcry from frustrated parents, recommendations by school district working groups, and a delay caused by the pandemic.

A University of Oregon group will lead the pilot, which in addition to screening children for dyslexia risk aims to bump up the quality of core reading instruction and intervention programming using a program developed by the university called ECRI — Enhanced Core Reading Instruction.

While discrimination based on race, sex, and gender is regularly seen in the headlines, it is rarer to come across news on body size bias. Two University of Oregon Professors are working to bring more attention and understanding to this common form of discrimination through a new workshop for university faculty members and staff.

Assistant professors Nichole Kelly and Elizabeth Budd – in the College of Education’s department of Counseling Psychology and Human Services – are the researchers who initiated the body size discrimination workshop.

A year of uncertainty: Finding answers and hope for the community during a pandemic

From the early days of researching the novel coronavirus sweeping the globe, to administering COVID-19 vaccinations nearly a year later, University of Oregon faculty, staff, students and alumni have stepped up to provide resources, equipment, and expertise to the community.

Michelle Jacob appears on UO Today to discuss her recent books.

Michelle M. Jacob is an enrolled member of the Yakama Nation and Professor of Indigenous Studies and Director of the Sapsik’ʷałá (Teacher) Education Program in the Department of Education Studies at the University of Oregon. She also serves as affiliated faculty in the Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies, and affiliated faculty in the Environmental Studies Program. Jacob is author of Yakama Rising: Indigenous Cultural Revitalization, Activism, and Healing (published in 2013) and Indian Pilgrims: Indigenous Journeys of Activism and Healing with Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (published in 2016). Her latest books are, The Auntie Way: Stories Celebrating Kindness, Fierceness, and Creativity and Huckleberries and Coyotes: Lessons from Our More than Human Relations, both published in 2020.