Native Americans historically have the lowest high school and college graduation rates in the United States. Current research points to historical trauma stemming from Indian boarding schools which have stripped indigenous youth of their culture and language, resulting in generations of lost identity, lowered self-esteem, and challenges forming healthy relationships. Intergenerational poverty, poor health outcomes, and low academic achievement have followed, compared to the general population. Social and emotional learning (SEL) research utilizing school gardens in conjunction with self-determination theory (SDT) has shown improvements in self-reported motivation to learn, prosocial behavior, and improved academic outcomes among school-aged children. Addressing the research gap on school gardens and SDT among Native American college students will enable autonomy by providing indigenous students with a choice of culturally based instruction to complement textbook instruction and written examinations, facilitate competence through motivation to learn about their culture and language, and promote relatedness by learning alongside their Native American peers that best understand their struggles. This exploratory school garden study will quantitatively measure self-determined behaviors of 60 indigenous college students at the University of Arizona enrolled in a Navajo language course at the beginning and end of the academic year, using the Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction and Frustration Scale (BPNSFS). Garden-based activities will utilize Navajo terminology and culturally based instruction from mentors fluent in the language and traditional stories passed through the generations, with the goal of improved SDT measures and grade point averages to increase graduation rates in Native American students.

This quantitative study investigates the effectiveness of the Tuned in to Strive Out Program, a career wellness intervention, for underrepresented college students. The Tuned in to Strive Out program is a 5-week workshop series intended to guide students to preserve a stronger sense of wellness and self-determination in their vocational development (Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions, 2023). The intervention is grounded in career development theories and a Radical Healing framework. The Radical Healing framework consists of five anchors: cultural authenticity and self-knowledge, critical consciousness, radical hope, collectivism, and strength and resistance (French et al., 2020; Tuned In Labs, 2023). This study will use a pre-and post-survey test design to assess the differences in critical consciousness of student participants after the completion of the intervention. Students will complete a pre-and post-survey test, which includes demographic questions and a scale on critical consciousness. The study hypothesizes that completing the intervention will increase students' critical consciousness, which is supported by previous literature (Diemer, 2016; Cadenas, 2019, 2022; French et. al, 2020; Uriostegui et al., 2020). We will use repeated measures analyses of variance to determine pre-and post-intervention differences. The literature review and rationale for the study comprise this presentation, as data collection will begin in Fall 2023.

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns about college students’ mental health and feelings of connectedness. Educators believe that social isolation increased due to sheltering-in-place guidelines and campus closures. Still, little research has yet been published comparing students’ social and academic expectations about college from pre- to post-COVID. The present study investigated the following research question: how did incoming UC Davis undergraduate students’ thoughts and feelings about starting college change from before COVID compared to two years into the pandemic? Each summer from 2018 to 2022, we assessed incoming UC Davis students’ thoughts and feelings about starting college (N = ~25,000). Specifically, we assessed (1) academic and social expectations in the first year and the end of the second year and (2) perceived difficulty transitioning to a 4-year institution. Surprisingly, students had better expectations of belonging at UC Davis and lower stress and anxiety levels about starting college between 2020 and 2021 than in 2019. We found no differences in thoughts and feelings about starting college between 2020 and 2021. The analysis will include variations in this pattern among demographic groups, such as those with low-income or first-generation students, and group differences.

Children with developmental language disorder have trouble acquiring language. From previous studies of typical language development, age, and maternal education have a positive relationship with language outcomes. The current study examines the relationship between these variables and expressive language in children with typically developing language and children with language disorders. The study included a total of 184 preschoolers, 99 had typically developed language (TD), and 85 had developmental language disorders (DLD). The Structured Photographic Expressive Test-Preschool second edition (SPELT-P2) was administered to each participant as a standardized measure of expressive language ability. The groups were equal in age; however, the maternal education and SPELT-P2 raw scores were significantly higher in the TD group. There was a significant positive correlation between age and SPELT-P2 for both groups of participants. There was a significant positive correlation between maternal education and SPELT-P2 in the TD group; however, maternal education was not correlated with SPELT-P2 in the DLD group. As expected, as age increases, expressive language abilities increase for children with typical and impaired language. In maternal education, we discovered a difference between the groups versus DLD, which demonstrates that. A variable associated with language in children with TD did not extend to children with DLD as maternal education was not related to their language. This study indicates that it is important to be cautious in the field of speech-language pathology when using information taking information from children with TD and applying it to the population of children with DLD.