For student scholars, this is an opportunity to engage in academic dialogue with peers and faculty mentors. For faculty, this conference presents an opportunity to explore about how other disciplines conduct research that creates new knowledge and understanding about equity and social justice and to be inspired by the next generation of scholars.

This conference seeks to bring staff, faculty and undergraduates together to celebrate the engaged scholarship, and reflective learning.  The purpose of this conference is:

• to honor scholarship which focuses on challenges facing society with regard to equity and inclusion and historically marginalized and under-represented communities;
• to illuminate community-engaged research which reflects qualities of reciprocity and mutuality in the co-creation of scholarship, in addition to being transdisciplinary and inclusive of knowledge from outside the academy.
• to provide undergraduate researchers an opportunity to engage in academic discourse and research dissemination

Learn more about the conference and submitting a proposal.

The Scholarship & Social Justice Undergraduate Research Conference will be held on April 8th & 9th, 2021. We are pleased to announce that our keynote speaker will be, Roberto G. Gonzalez, professor of education at Harvard Graduate School of Education and director of the newly formed Immigration Initiative at Harvard (IIH), a university-wide effort aimed at advancing and promoting interdisciplinary scholarship and intellectual exchange around issues of immigration policy and immigrant communities.

You can learn more and register here.

The Saul Zaentz Early Education Initiative at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) promotes the knowledge, professional learning, and collective action necessary to cultivate optimal early learning environments and experiences. The initiative is supported by a $35.5 million gift from the Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation, one of the largest gifts ever given to a university for advancing early childhood education.

The Zaentz Initiative has announced the launch of the 2019 Zaentz Early Education Innovation Challenge. Now in its second year, the challenge invites individuals or teams to submit ideas, concepts, and strategic approaches aimed at driving transformative change in early education. Through the challenge, the initiative will provide funding in support of promising new ideas that have the potential to accelerate positive change and innovation in early education.

Submissions to the challenge may target short- or long-term change at multiple levels of the early education system, including the home, classroom, program, networks, and/or policy. To support innovation of all kinds, there are three submission tracks:

• The Idea Track is for new ideas or concepts that have not yet been put into action.
• The Pilot Track is for ideas or approaches that have been developed as a prototype.
• The Scaling Track is for products or services that have been launched and are at a point where further sharpening or refining is needed to support scaling.

Idea Track winners will receive $10,000 (1st Place), $5,000 (2nd Place), and $1,000 (Audience Choice). Pilot Track winners will receive $15,000 (1st Place), $10,000 (2nd Place), and $5,000 (Audience Choice). And Scaling Track winners will receive $15,000 (1st Place), $10,000 (2nd Place), and $5,000 (Audience Choice).

In 2018, the challenge attracted more than two hundred ideas from organizations and individuals across the country.

Submissions are due August 30, 2019.

For details, eligibility criteria, an FAQ, and a list of past winners, see on the Zaentz Early Education Innovation Challenge website.

Deadline: August 30, 2019

https://zaentz.gse.harvard.edu/innovation-challenge

Design family engagement practices that are directly connected to student learning. Increase your capacity to engage staff, families, and your community to improve student outcomes.

Overview
Family engagement is critically important to student achievement, but while most educators recognize its importance, they need opportunities to develop particular skills, knowledge, and dispositions to effectively integrate families into the life of the school.

Family Engagement in Education prepares educators to create a school culture that honors and respects the knowledge that families bring to the learning process. With guidance from Harvard faculty and district and community leaders, participants study best practices in family engagement and identify strategies they can use to promote student learning and improve educational outcomes for all.

Read more and RSVP: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/program/family-engagement-education-creating-effective-home-and-school-partnerships-student

Learn how to raise achievement levels for all students—while narrowing gaps between groups—by increasing teacher, student, and family engagement.

Overview
Most of today’s American schools seek to raise achievement and close gaps for students whose achievement lags—but what does it really take to improve outcomes for all students in a diverse school community?

Closing the Achievement Gap uses cutting-edge frameworks to help participants consider how instructional quality, student engagement, youth development practices, parenting, and school leadership all contribute to student achievement. The program gives special focus to the challenges of responding effectively to racial, ethnic, and socio-economic differences. Using a socio-ecological approach, participants will consider the interdependence of various stakeholders and will learn how their school community can work together to pursue shared improvement goals.

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/program/closing-achievement-gap-strategies-excellence-equity

Post-Secondary Success: In Schools, Communities, and Families will provide a foundation for understanding the arc of post-secondary readiness, including relevant developmental psychology across the K-16 continuum. This program is designed for educators and community-based professionals who want to become more effective at preparing young people for success in college and the workplace. Participants will learn from experts on post-secondary readiness, exploring what post-secondary readiness really looks like, how factors like race, income, and immigration status influence post-secondary opportunity, and how schools and communities can help students develop the skills and support network they need to achieve their long-term goals.

June 23-26, 2019

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/program/post-secondary-success-schools-communities-and-families

Leading inclusive schools, where all students are afforded opportunities to achieve, requires an understanding of the intersections of race, power, and privilege and calls for leaders who have the courage and capacity to engage in thoughtful conversation and action in their school communities.

Race, Equity, and Leadership in Schools, a program of The Principals’ Center, offers an historical and cultural context for understanding how inequality plays out in schools and provides educators with the skills and confidence to lead more excellent, equitable schools. Participants will learn to recognize structures that perpetuate inequality, address assumptions about how people learn, and create opportunities for more children to succeed.

PRIORITY APPLICATION DEADLINE:
Monday, April 1, 2019
Early application, in advance of the priority deadline, is strongly recommended as applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. Once the priority deadline has passed, we will accept and review applications as space is available through the final deadline of May 6, 2019.

Learn more and apply: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/program/race-equity-and-leadership-schools

https://publicservice.fas.harvard.edu/essj

While students are presented with many options after completing high school, the path to post-secondary success is filled with uncertainty and challenges. How do we best guide students to make well-informed decisions about their post-secondary options?

Led by HGSE faculty member Mandy Savitz-Romer and designed for school- and community-based professionals, this program bridges the gap between research and practice, building upon the strong foundation of existing practices while deepening understanding of the critical issues that influence post-secondary readiness and success.

In this program, you will:

• EXAMINE the research behind adolescent development and how it applies to preparing students for post-secondary success
• CONSIDER the effects of race, family income, disability, and immigration status on post-secondary opportunity and success
• IDENTIFY opportunities and barriers for students and learn effective approaches for ensuring the success of all students
• DEVELOP systems and learning plans for supporting students on paths to post-secondary readiness and success.

Apply Today »
https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/program/post-secondary-success-schools-communities-and-families

“Learning Time in Pursuit of Educational Equity” is a collection of papers and essays looks beyond traditional notions of “schooling” to embrace more and better learning times for youth living in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty. The book was inspired by multi-year, multi-site initiatives at the Ford and the James Irvine Foundations. Of particular interest to the readers of Partnership Press will be the multiple descriptions of and references to community schools, including the chapter by Kendra Fehrer and Jacob Leos-Urbel devoted to the district-wide initiative in Oakland, CA.

Read More.

http://hepg.org/hep-home/books/learning-time

These programs address an urgent challenge or priority — from narrowing achievement gaps and postsecondary success to modeling courageous conversations and leading inclusive schools — and provide educators with important context and data as well as concrete solutions for expanding opportunity and achieving excellence with equity.
Post-Secondary Success: In Schools, Communities, and Families
June 24 – 27, 2018 | On Campus
Faculty Chair: Mandy Savitz-Romer
Develop systems and learning plans that support students on paths to post-secondary readiness and success.

Learn More: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/program/post-secondary-success-schools-communities-and-families

Closing the Achievement Gap: Strategies for Excellence with Equity
July 8 – 12, 2018 | On Campus
Faculty Chair: Ronald Ferguson
Learn how to raise achievement levels for all of your students — while narrowing the gaps between groups. The program gives special focus to the challenges of responding effectively to racial, ethnic, and socio-economic differences.

Learn More: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/program/post-secondary-success-schools-communities-and-families

Family Engagement in Education: Creating Effective Home and School Partnerships for Student Success
July 23 – 26, 2018 | On Campus
Faculty Chair: Karen Mapp
Establish a culture and set of practices that promote family engagement as an element of successful whole-school reform. Design family engagement practices that are directly connected to student learning. Increase your capacity to engage staff, families, and your community to improve student outcomes.

Learn More: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/program/family-engagement-education-creating-effective-home-and-school-partnerships-student

Does access to 4-year colleges affect degree completion for students who would otherwise attend 2-year colleges? Admission to Georgia’s 4-year public sector requires minimum SAT scores. Regression discontinuity estimates show that access to this sector increases 4-year college enrollment and college quality, largely by diverting students from 2-year colleges. Access substantially increases bachelor’s degree completion rates for these relatively low-skilled students. SAT retaking behavior suggests students value access to 4-year public colleges, though perhaps less than they should. Our results imply that absolute college quality matters more than match quality, and they suggest potential unintended consequences of free community college proposals.

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/joshuagoodman/files/jole_final_version.pdf

WHAT IS SUMMER MELT?

Across the country, 10–40% of seemingly college-intending students, particularly those from low-income backgrounds, fail to enroll in college the fall after graduation. This phenomenon is known as summer melt. College-intending students have completed key college-going steps, such as being accepted to college and applying for financial aid, and have concretely signaled their intention to enroll in college. A student has melted if he or she was college-intending, and yet still fails to transition successfully to college the fall after high school graduation. Summer melt is a prevalent issue for education leaders because large shares of students are failing to bridge that gap between institutions. Yet research has identified interventions that can have a significant impact on alleviating the summer melt phenomenon and increasing college enrollment rates. Moreover, it is possible to do so at a relatively low cost.

http://sdp.cepr.harvard.edu/summer-melt-handbook

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report. The IAT may be especially interesting if it shows that you have an implicit attitude that you did not know about. For example, you may believe that women and men should be equally associated with science, but your automatic associations could show that you (like many others) associate men with science more than you associate women with science.

We hope you have been able to take something of value from the experience of taking one or more of these tests. The links above will provide more information about the IAT and implicit attitudes; we will periodically update the information to reflect our current understanding of the unconscious roots of thought and feeling.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/education.html

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University is accepting applications for its 2016-17 Fellowship Program

One-year fellowship grants of up to $75,000 will be awarded to individuals working in the creative arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, or mathematics to pursue projects within their respective field. In addition, some support for relocation expenses will be provided where relevant. If so directed, Radcliffe will pay the stipend to the fellow’s home institution.

Fellows receive office or studio space and access to libraries and other resources of Harvard University during the fellowship year, which extends from early September 2016 through May 31, 2017. Visual, film, and video artists may apply for either one or two semesters. In the event that they come for one semester, the stipend is $37,500.

Fellows are expected to be free of their regular commitments so that they may devote themselves full time to the work outlined in their proposal. Since this is a residential fellowship, fellows are expected to reside in the Boston area during the fellowship period and to have their primary office at the institute so as to participate fully in the life of the community.

The deadline for individual applications in the creative arts, humanities, and social sciences is September 24, 2015. For applications in the natural sciences and mathematics, the deadline is October 15, 2015.

Visit the Radcliffe Institute website for complete program guidelines, information about fellows from previous years, and application instructions.

https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/fellowship-program/how-apply

Martin Conference Center, Harvard Longwood Medical Area

The Event: featuring an international cast of speakers – macro-economic shocks and health (David Stuckler, Cambridge University) SES (Nancy Adler, UCSF) neighborhoods (Jussi Vahtera, University of Turku) racial disparities (David Williams, Harvard University) and more.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/social-and-behavioral-sciences/inaugural-forum-on-population-health-equity-3/

A published CHOICES overview paper discusses the rigorous methods behind four preventive childhood obesity strategies that were found to be more cost-effective than existing clinical interventions to treat obesity.

As the childhood obesity epidemic continues in the U.S., fiscal crises are leading policymakers to ask not only whether an intervention works, but also whether it offers good value for money spent. However, cost-effectiveness analyses have been limited, and currently practiced strategies such as individual clinical interventions are often an expensive burden on the healthcare system.

“Reversing the obesity epidemic will require a broad range of intervention strategies, and identifying the best strategies necessitates analysis of the costs, impact, healthcare cost savings, and broader context of each strategy,” says lead investigator of the CHOICES Project, Dr. Steven Gortmaker, who also serves as the Director of the Harvard Prevention Research Center and a Professor of the Practice of Health Sociology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “The consideration of all these key metrics is crucial, yet currently absent from our national conversation on obesity prevention and control.”

http://choicesproject.org/publications/choices-evidence-methods-summary/

Students in this free online course explore the people, places, and practices that link restoring nature with revitalizing neighborhoods. Civic ecology practices – such as community gardening, restoring streams, planting trees, and removing invasive species to restore native habitat — are a means for communities to rebuild and express resilience in places impacted by war, natural disaster, poverty, crime, and environmental degradation. Civic ecology is the study of the individual, community, and environmental outcomes of these practices, and their roles in governance and ecosystems. Participants in this interdisciplinary course learn about contemporary thinking in social-ecological systems, resilience, and nature and human and community well-being. They also contribute to a local civic ecology practice through the course service learning project.

What is a MOOC?

A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course. All MOOCs are free and anyone can register and receive all the course lectures, readings and other resources once the course goes online April 10. You can simply access the lectures that most interest you, or you can complete the assignments and receive a Harvard EdX/CornellX certificate.

Why would you want to sign up for this MOOC?
You want to hear some positive news about people and the environment. You will learn about how people all over the world are reclaiming broken places.

You are engaged in local river or vacant lot cleanups; community gardening; tree planting; oyster, fish, or wildlife restoration; friends of parks, rivers, or cemeteries; or other activities where you care for your local environment. You want to understand the larger importance of your work and to meet people with similar interests, or simply access information that you can use to bolster grant applications.

You are curious about cutting edge research being conducted to understand the outcomes and larger implications of civic ecology practices—that is people coming together to care for their local environment and community.

You are seeking a means to get engaged in meaningful activities in your community or online. Through the course service learning project, you will contribute to a local civic ecology practice or one you discover online.

You are an environmental sciences teacher and want to incorporate current research on resilience, environmental governance, social-ecological systems, social learning, and nature and human health into your course.

You have heard the term resilience a lot lately, and you want to understand what it means from scientists who study resilience.

Call for workshop and poster proposals

Please submit by: January 20, 2015

Does your work connect to the food system? Food Better Harvard seeks proposals that focus on issues of social, economic, and environmental justice in the food system. We encourage proposals that highlight entrepreneurial initiatives and insights, lessons learned, successes, and opportunities to create a more just food system. We are seeking two different types of proposals:

• Conference sessions in a panel discussion or workshop format to share research and knowledge of a topic or spark conversation and ideas.
• Showcased work in a poster, exhibit, or demonstration format for scholars and entrepreneurs to share their current projects and research.

Possible Session Topics

· The food system and climate change

· Disappearing water and US agriculture’s future

· Real food- the gap: economically fair for the farmer and consumer

· International development and global resource strain

· The Susceptibility of Industrial Agriculture

· New Legal Regimes to Address Food Injustice

· Realizing a Right to Food

· Improving SNAP and Economic Access to Food

· Rural and urban food security- from farmers to consumers

· Rich World Maladies: The Rise of Chronic Disease in the Developing World

· The Privatization of Food

· Fighting hunger with food waste

· From Farms to Fast Food- labor in the food system

· Ecological implications and opportunities in our food system

· Agricultural adaptation in a changing world

· New farmers and food entrepreneurs

· And more!

Please submit your proposal online: http://bit.ly/11tF75B.

Contact foodliteracy@harvard.edu with questions.

Food Better is an initiative of the Food Law and Policy Clinic, the Food Law Society, the Food Literacy Project, the Harvard University Dining Services, the Office for Sustainability and others. Find out more at: http://foodbetter.squarespace.com/food-justice-conference/

Margiana Petersen-Rockney
Food Literacy Project Coordinator
617.495.8052 (office)
617.735.7714 (cell)

The U.S. housing recovery should regain its footing, but also faces a number of challenges, concludes the 2014 State of the Nation’s Housing report. Tight credit, still elevated unemployment, and mounting student loan debt among young Americans are moderating growth and keeping millennials and other first-time homebuyers out of the market.

With promising increases in home construction, sales, and prices, the housing market gained steam in early 2013. But when interest rates notched up at mid-year, momentum slowed. This moderation is likely to persist until job growth manages to lift household incomes. Even amid a broader recovery, though, many hard-hit communities still struggle and millions of households continue to pay excessive shares of income for housing

http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/research/state_nations_housing