The Educator Volume III/No. 4 Spring 2015

The University of Miami School of Education & Human Development

Upcoming Events Holocaust Institute - June 8-12, 2015 - Storer Auditorium Glazer Lorton Writing Institute - June 15-26 - Terra Environmental Research Institute Chris Gilbert Farewell Gathering - June 19 - Newman Alumni Center

Notes from the Dean…

As I read Robert Putnam’s new book Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, and peruse this issue of the Educator, I’m reminded of the importance of our vision to study, promote, and integrate educational, psychologi-cal, and physical well-being in multicultural communities. The work described in these pages of The Educator strives to engage children and adults from diverse back-grounds in meaningful learning for educational, physical, and psychological development. Putnam’s book describes the growing gap in opportuni-ties between poor and middle class children. Just about every indicator you can think of, from time spent with parents reading, to school graduation rates, to social mo-bility, poor kids do worse than the rest. Putnam offers multiple case studies of families around the country struggling to make ends meet, and the stressors associ-ated with it. Confirming what we know from developmen-tal research, parental stressors result in diminished ener-gy devoted to parenting. While there are many resilient kids and families, the structural inequalities in opportunities inflict educational, psychological, physical, occupational, and economic wounds that are hard to overcome. This is why preven-tive interventions are so essential. When I think about all our educational, research, and outreach programs, I ponder to what extent we engage in preventive efforts. Are we getting to people early in life? Are we teaching our students to consider the root causes of the many educational, physical, and psychological problems they will encounter at work? Are we equipping our students with intellectual and practical resources to prevent the systemic causes of the problems that Putnam so aptly describes?

Reading Putnam’s book, it is hard to avoid the conclu-sion that, for poor kids, the odds are stacked against them, which leads me to fairness. When I think about well-being, there are three F’s: Fit, Fitness, and Fair-ness. Fit pertains to the match between the needs of the individual and what the environment has to offer. Fitness refers to the set of skills the individual possesses to navi-gate interpersonal, educational, occupational, and com-munity challenges. Fairness, in turn, refers to the equita-ble allocation of resources and opportunities in life. Our Kids demonstrates that, for poor kids, the fit or match between what children need and what the environment can offer is totally inadequate.

Children growing up in poverty do not have enough ac-cess to enriching environments. When it comes to fit-ness, or the skills required to succeed in educational, interpersonal, and occupational domains, they do not fare well. And if you ask yourself why is it that they do not have a great fit or fitness, it is because lack of fair-ness.

Great societies are measured by the extent to which they support the most vulnerable. Children growing up in pov-erty are a most vulnerable population. The overwhelming evidence presented in Putnam’s book shows that we have a lot of hard work to do to reach greatness as a society. Let’s think what we can do in our school and university to improve not just fit and fitness for children who grow up in poverty, but also fairness.

Isaac

Inspire “U” Academy Inspire “U” Academy, a mentoring program in the Department of Teaching and Learning (TAL) that supports Booker T. Washington High School students who are paired with University of Miami undergraduate Gates and Hammond Scholars, is thrilled to receive funding from President Shalala to continue the partnership between TAL, the Office of Academic Enhance-ment’s (OAE) Hammond and Gates Scholars Program, and Booker T. Washington High School. Inspire U Academy was formed in 2012 to provide a developmental mentoring program that offers structured on-campus events, college preparation activities, and student led workshops where high school student participants have the opportunity to develop positive rela-tionships with UM undergraduate student leaders. Inspire U Academy is directed by Dr. Wendy Cavendish. Program coordi-nation and support in 2014-2015 has been provided by Hayden Garriques (TAL doctoral student), Jack Hart (Booker T Washington faculty liaison), Chris Doell and Kristine Stephenson (OAE), Gennet Wright (TAL), and undergraduate student leader, Atara Muhammad (SEHD class of 2016). This year, there are 21 UM student organization leaders and Hammonds/Gates scholars working with 21 Booker T Washing-ton juniors and seniors as well as a UM student leadership team of 6 upperclassmen and graduate students. Inspire U is col-laborating with the College of Engineering, Office of Academic Enhancement, Office of Community and Civic Engagement, and student organizations such as Yellow Rose Society, National Association of Black Accountants, National Association of Black Engineers, Brothers Overcoming Negativity and Destruction, Caribbean Students Association, and the Multicultural Student Association. Inspire U events in 2014-2015 have included attendance at the American Dreamers movie and discussion session, attend-ance at a UM men’s basketball game, and participation in eight workshops with topics ranging from goal setting to exploring the scholarship process.

Farwell... It is with great fondness that we bid adieu to Ms. Christine Gilbert. Chris began her tenure at UM in 1970. 45 YEARS AGO! She has see many Deans, Faculty, Staff, and Students pass through the doors of the Merrick Building and now the Max Orovitz Building. Through it all, she has always had a smile on her face and a kind word to share. Please help us cel-ebrate Chris Gilbert and wish her a Happy Retirement on June 19th from 5:30-7:30PM in the Newman Alumni Center.

Awards and Accolades Dr. Dina Birman, this year’s recipient of the SCRA Ethnic Minority Mentoring Award. SCRA would like to thank Dr. Bir-man for her service and guidance to community psychologists past, present, and future. We look forward to seeing Dr. Bir-man's continued impact and success. Dr. Moataz Eltoukhy received the Provost’s Award for his work on Robot-based Childhood Intervention for Autism & Obesity (rCIAO).

Name Department Action

Birman, Dina Educational & Psych Studies Appointed as Associate Professor with Tenure

Dees, Windy Kinesiology & Sport Sciences Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure

Whisenant, Warren Kinesiology & Sport Sciences Promoted to Professor

deOliveira, Luciana Teaching & Learning Appointed as Associate Professor with Tenure

Diem, Joshua Teaching & Learning Promoted to Clinical Associate Professor of Teaching & Learning

Faculty movers and shakers

TAL Updates… Michele Stoppe received the Outstanding Master’s student in Early Childhood Special Education Spring 2015. She was also nominated for the Graduate Student Exemplar Award.

Sean Driscoll, A.B. ’15, has been offered a 2015 Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) grant to In-donesia. As a Fulbright ETA, Driscoll will assist high school teachers in teaching conversational English to students at public and private schools throughout Indonesia. A history major at UM, Driscoll also completed the Professional Training Option in Teaching in Learning and a minor in international studies. He has been involved in educational outreach programs since high school and has served as a volunteer teacher with the Southridge Partnership program as a UM student. Upon returning to the U.S., Driscoll plans to earn a master’s degree in history or education and bring an international perspective to the classroom as a secondary school teacher.

President Shalala and the Principal of Ponce Middle School, Ms. Martha C. Chang. President Shalala visited Ponce in the Fall during Professional Development workshops. The workshops held were, “Hollywood goes to School: Qualities of Effective Teachers” and “Cooperative Learning: Us-ing Research Based Findings.”

FEA hosted Students from Henry Mack elementary school in Liberty City for a visit to UM on April 17, 2015.

The Ponce de Leon Middle School "Leonettes" dance team cheered at the UM/UNC wom-en's basketball game on Sunday, February 22nd. Dr. Lynn Bryan and Dr. Shawn Post

worked together with the UM dance coach, Beverly Hew, to provide MDCPS students the opportunity to practice and perform at the "U".....

KIN Students… Meng Ni’s article, “ Core muscle function during specific yoga poses” ranked 9th on the Top 25 for Complimentary Therapies in Medicine — April—June 2015. Anoop Balachandran’s article, “ High-Speed Circuit Training vs Hypertrophy Training to Improve Physical Function in Sarcopenic Obese Adults: A Randomized Control Trial”, ranked 9th on the Top 25 for Experimental Gerontology — October—December 2014. Lana Chehabeddine presented her research in a poster presentation at the Undergraduate Re-search, Creativity and Innovation Forum on March 31, 2015 in the SAC. Her research is entitled “Development of the Guardrails Dietary Questionnaire for Assessment and Prediction of Cardio Meta-bolic Risk”. Her faculty mentors are Dr. Arlette Perry, Dr. Wes Smith, and Craig Flanagan. Lana’s re-search will also be highlighted in the next issue of the undergraduate magazine, UMiami Scientifica. The exercise physiology program has been placing an increased emphasis on fostering disease pre-vention through wellness programs as an integrated and complementary approach to conventional health care. The Guardrails Initiative, which integrates our exercise physiology students in doctors’ offices to perform complementary wellness assessments, is an example that manifests this objective. Working for Guardrails, Lana Chehabeddine with help from another undergraduate student, Ka-ren Caraballos-Torres, performed a completely student-run study using the Guardrails Die-tary Questionnaire (GDQ). This questionnaire is one of four sections of the health assess-ment included in the Guardrails Initiative. They added some variations specific to their re-search objectives, and weighted each question based on nutritional science to score patients on their nutritional behavior to find associations with disease risk. Over the course of two years, 224 people were assessed in our kinesiology lab (1 of 5 locations host-ing these assessments in South Florida) and the resulting GDQ scores were compiled and analyzed against cardiometabolic disease biomarkers that were obtained from other parts of the assessment, such as VO2max and resting myocardial oxygen demand. Five out of eight correlations between bi-omarker and scores were significant (this included waist-height ratio, myocardial oxygen demand, body fat percentage, VO2max, and physical activity level score (PAL)). We hope that future research will be able to refine and further develop the GDQ so that it can be employed as a common nutritional assessment to predict the risk chronic disease burden and optimize patient health in the clinical envi-ronment.

Lana Chehabeddine and Craig Flanagan

Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School Partners With the UM for STEM Pilot Program

Monday, March 16, 2015 as posted on www.browardschools.com

Faculty from the University of Miami’s School of Education & Human Development have teamed up with Nova Blanche Forman Elementary to integrate robotics and coding into STEM learning. During the spring of 2015 a pilot project occurred in which UM faculty member Moataz Eltoukhy, Lauren Barth-Cohen, and Ji Shen collaborated with teachers and students at Nova to run a 10-week pilot robotics class for 5th graders. Using the NAO platform, the students are learning to write computer code and how robots work. NAO is an advanced humanoid robotics environment that integrates an easy to use drag and drop environment with sophisticated software for voice recognition, face detection, tactile sensors, and human-like fingers and walking patterns. NAO is made by the French robotics company Aldebaran.

The broad goal of the project is to foster students’ disciplinary engagement and participation within this humanoid robots-programming environment. Programming is a 21st century skill that is nec-essary for careers in computing, STEM fields, and across the 21st century economy. But, students en-counter many challenges when preparing for these careers across the K-16 spectrum. By working with elementary age students, this project is aiming to begin fostering engagement in robotics and computer science with the next generation. Furthermore, this project is aiming to advance our understanding of how to create learning opportunities for elementary students in robotics and computer science that would increase their content knowledge and motivate them for future learning in robotics, computer science, and STEM fields.

The UM researchers have applied for funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and

hope to continue the project in the future and expand to additional schools.

Jen Hollander, FEA president, introduces the student teachers for the panel discussion: L to R - Shellie Lewis, Hannah Peterson, Nicole Swanson, Megan Markowitz, and Elena Dossett.

Dr. Maria Rodriguez, principal of Ruth K. Broad K-8 center, who was our guest speaker for the event, Dr. Miriam Lipsky, and members of FEA.

FEA Banquet...

Class Notes… Glenn A. Ogden, BED '69, recently authored a book "Altamaha Sunset" a Civil War era novel available on Kindle. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Altamaha-Sunset-Glenn-Ogden-ebook/dp/B00TUWHOCG Oscar Ozete, BED '60, recently published his first book ¡Ánimo! Living in Different Worlds. ¡Ánimo! tells the tender stories of a barely seven-year old youngster and his working-class parents who immigrate to the Bronx shortly after W.W.II and overstay their visa for six years. Told in engaging and moving vignettes, the writer recalls his efforts to surmount the hurdles of living in two different and bewildering worlds. He recounts his years at the “U” and the impact his professors had on him. He reveals his thoughts on family, friendship, bullying, education, immigration and service to others. Available on Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/%C2%A1%C3%81nimo-Living-Different-Oscar-Ozete/dp/098636410X/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1423843083&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=%C2%A1%C3%81nimo%21

Ellen Wacher, BED '63, is the Founder and Creative Director of the theatrical production com-pany Pigs Do Fly, which showcases life over 50. Theater patrons enjoy seven hilarious and often inspirational short plays about vital, involved people all portrayed by actors over 50. The next pro-duction begins at Andrews Living Arts Studio in Fort Lauderdale running for three weeks beginning May 7th.

Active Grants... PI Title Dates

Aldarondo, Etiony 2014-2015 IMMIGRANT CHILDREN'S LEGAL AND SERVICE PARTNERSHIP (ICLASP)

8/2014-7/2015

Aldarondo, Etiony KRISTI HOUSE: GA POSITION 9/2014-9/2015

Avalos, Mary WRITING FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WRITING

9/2014-8/2015

Avalos, Mary THE EFFECT OF DEFINITIONS, CONTEXTUAL SUPPORT, AND COGNATE S

7/2015-6/2019

Bessell, Ann IMPROVING OUTCOMES FOR ADULTS IN YOUNG CHILDREN'S SCIENCE EXHIBITIONS-EVALUATION

1/2013-7/2015

Bessell, Ann CEC/PASS STATEWIDE EVALUATION 6/2014-5/2018

Bessell, Ann MOU - STRONG WOMEN, STRONG GIRLS EVALUATION 11/2013-7/2015

Calhoon, Mary Beth READING ACHIEVEMENT MULTI-COMPONENT (RAMP-UP) 12/2014-2/2015

Elbaum, Batya PARENT SURVEY PROJECT 9/2014-8/2015

Elbaum, Batya MEASURING OUTCOMES FOR PRESCHOOL CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES

7/2014-6/2015

Elbaum, Batya MEASURING OUTCOMES FOR PRESCHOOL CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES

7/2014-6/2015

Krawec, Jennifer IES - SOLVE IT! 3/2011-2/2015

Lipsky, Miriam INCLUSIVE COLLABORATIVE LEADERS UNITED FOR DIVERSITY IN EDUCATION (INCLUDE)

10/2010-9/2016

Morrison-Cavendish, Wendy

SECOND CHANCE RE-ENTRY GRANT: BACK TO A FUTURE

2/2014-9/2015

Nicolas, MarieGuerda HAITI'S LEGACY PROJECT: AN EDUCATION PROGRAM FOCUSING OH HAITIAN HISTORY AND ITS GLOBAL IM

6/2013-5/2015

Nicolas, MarieGuerda UM/BREAKING THROUGH MIAMI PARTNERSHIP 5/2013-5/2016

Papazian, Maria FAMILY - CENTER SPECIAL EDUCATORS FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD FAMSEEC

10/2011-12/2015

Santisteban, Daniel CULTURALLY INFORMED FAMILY - BASED TREATMENT OF ADOLESCENTS: A RANDOMIZED TRIAL

4/2014-3/2016

Santisteban, Daniel INTEGRATING SBIRT INTO PRIMARY CARE: A SCHOOL OF NURSING TRAINING PROGRAM

9/2014-8/2015

Secada, Walter REPLICATING THE CGI EXPERIMENT IN DIVERSE ENVIRONMENTS

9/2012-8/2015

SEHD Awards

Pending Grants... Avalos, Mary

THE EFFECT OF DEFINITIONS, CONTEXTUAL SUPPORT, AND COGNATE S

7/2015-6/2019

Krawec, Jennifer VIDEO MODELING TO IMPROVE THE MATH PROBLEM-SOLVING PERFORMAN

8/2015-7/2018

Krawec, Jennifer SOLVE IT! GRADES 5-6: IMPROVING THE PROBLEM-SOLVING PERFORMANCES

7/2015-6/2018

Perry, Arlette TRANSLATIONAL HEALTH IN NUTRITION AND KINESIOLOGY THINK

1/2016-12/2016

Santisteban, Daniel TELE-CULTURALLY INFORMED AND FLEXIBLE FAMILY-BASED TREATMENT

7/2015-6/2020

Santisteban, Daniel UM Adolescent and Family Development Program 7/2015-6/2016

Shen, JI TRANSFORMATIVE ROBOTICS EXPERIENCE FOR ELEMENTARY STUDENTS

7/2015-7/2017

Shen, JI EXP: DEVELOPING ONTOLOGIES FOR COLLABORATION IN A KNOWLEDGE-

7/2015-7/2017

Shen, JI DIGESTING STEM THROUGH FOOD MYTH -BUSTING (PROJECT FOODMYTH)

7/2015-7/2019

Shen, JI SCIENCE FICTION FOR INTEGRATED LEARN-ING -DIGITAL LITERACIES A

7/2015-6/2016

Signorile, Joseph THE COMPARATIVE EFFECTS OF TREADMILL TRAINING VERSUS MULTI-D

7/2015-6/2017

Signorile, Joseph PROJECT YOGO-A NOVEL MODIFIED YOGA PROGRAM FOR PARKINSON'S P

7/2015-6/2018

Villarreal, Pedro RAISING ASPIRATIONS- HOW DOES WORK AFFECT CHANGING BACHELOR

6/2015-5/2016

Zopluoglu, Cengiz A FINITE MIXTURE IRT MODEL FOR CONTINU-OUS RESPONSE OUTCOMES

9/2015-2/2017

SEHD Graduation

Publications… Fowers, B. (2015). The Evolution of Ethics: Human Sociality and the Emergence of Ethical Mindedness (Palgrave Studies in the Theory and History of Psychology). Palgrave Macmil-lan.

Avalos, M. A., Bengochea, A., & Secada, W. G. (2015). Reading mathematics: More than words and clauses; more than numbers and symbols on a page. In K. Santi and D. Reed (Eds.), Improving Comprehension for Middle and High School Students (pp. 49-74). Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. Avalos, M. A., Zisselsberger, M., Langer-Osuna, J., & Secada, W. G. (2015). Building Teacher Knowledge of Academic Literacy and Language Acquisition: A Framework for Cross-Disciplinary Professional Development. In D. Molle, T. Boals, E. Sato, and C. A. Hedgspeth (Eds.), Sociocultural Context of Academic Literacy Development for Adolescent English Language Learners (pp. 255-276). New York: Taylor & Francis/Routledge Publishers. Cavendish, W., Artiles, A., & Harry, B. (2014). Tracking inequality 60 years after Brown: Does policy legitimize the racialization of disability? Multiple Voices for Ethnically Diverse Exceptional Learners, 14(2). 30-40. Cavendish, W., Harry, B., Espinosa, A., Mahotiere, M., Menda, A. (in press). Implementing Response to Inter-vention: Challenges of Diversity and System Change in a High Stakes Environment. Teachers College Record. Kohli, N., Hughes, J., Wang, C., Zopluoglu, C., & Davison, M. (in press). Fitting a linear-linear piecewise growth mix-ture model with unknown knots: A comparison of two common approaches to inference. Psychological Methods. Kohli, N., Harring J.R., & Zopluoglu, C. (in press). A Finite Mixture of Nonlinear Random Coefficient Models for Con-tinuous Repeated Measures Data. Psychometrika. Kohli, N., Sullivan, A., Sadeh, S., & Zopluoglu, C. (2015). Piecewise mixed-effect model of longitudinal mathematics development of students with learning disabilities and their non-disabled peers. Journal of School Psychology, 53(2), 105-120. Myers, N.D., Jin, Y., Ahn, S., Celimli, S., & Zopluoglu, C. (2014). Rotation to a partially specified target matrix in exploratory factor analysis in practice. Behavior Research Methods, published online on June 6, 2014. Doi: 10.3758/s13428-014-0486-7 Myers, N.D., Prilleltensky, I, Jin, Y., Dietz, S., Rubenstein, C. Prilleltensky, O., & McMahon, A. (2014). Empirical contributions of the past in assessing multidimensional well-being. Journal of Community Psychology. 42(7). 789-798. doi: 10.1002/jcop.21653 Prilleltensky, I, Dietz, S., Prilleltensky, O., Myers, N.D., Rubenstein, C., Jin, Y., & McMahon, A. (2015). As-sessing Multidimensional Well-Being: Development and Validation of the I COPPE Scale. Journal of Community Psy-chology, 43(2), 199-226. doi: 10.1002/jcop.21674 Zopluoglu, C., Harring J.R., & Kohli, N. (2014). FitPMM: An R Routine to Fit Finite Mixture of Piecewise Mixed-Effect Models with Unknown Random Knots. Applied Psychological Measurement, 38(7), 583-584. [Computer soft-ware].