The Weekly Recap
News And Updates From Across BU Wheelock SPACE This Week
Welcome to this week’s recap! This week we share new announcements, recent community events and SPACE and faculty engagement, and highlight recently published research relevant to our readers.
New Announcements!
Deaf Research - BU Wheelock doctoral student Betsy Beckert was recently awarded a National Academy of Education/Spencer dissertation fellowship. The award will support her research on how deaf children from hearing families develop their language and literacy practices.Â
Out and About
ESOL Services - Mary Churchill (Interim Dean, BU Wheelock) and Cara Mattaliano (Assist. Director, SPACE) attended an event centered on the need to expand English for Speakers of Other Language (ESOL) services in Massachusetts hosted by MassINC, the UMass Donahue Institute, and English for New Bostonians at the UMass Club in Boston. They engaged with a presentation on the Massachusetts Needs an Actionable Strategy to Expand ESOL Services report and a panel discussion centered on how the Commonwealth’s ESOL delivery system can respond strategically to the growth in immigration, labor market change, and new modes of instruction coming out of the pandemic.
SPACE Engagement
Intern Update - This week, the three PIC summer interns, Mariaelena, Raquel, and Adrian:Â
participated in a tour of the Animal Science Center at BU’s Medical Campus with Natalie Jean (Pathways Programs Specialist, Med Campus) and Valeda Britton (Exec. Director of Community Relations, BU Med Campus),
engaged in a panel with Master’s of Public Health and Medical School students,
interviewed Daniela GarcÃa Estrella (Assist. Director, First-Year Success), Carly Block (Lecturer, Sports Performance Psychology), Raul Fernandez (Sr. Lecturer, Education Leadership and Policy Studies) and Angela Richard (Assist. Director, BU Career Education),
and spoke to a group of middle-school students that were visiting BU from Horizons at Lexington Montessori School.
Faculty Engagement
STEM Identities - Nurten Karacan Özdemir, Chong Park, and Scott Solberg presented their research on Supporting STEM Career Identity of BIPOC youth, women, and people with disabilities at the Scientific Conference 2024: Career Guidance in Schools under European and International Perspectives on June 28.
Sport Psychology - Edson Filho, Piotr Piasecki, and Druv Raman presented their research on performance recovery and optimization wellness at the European Congress of Sport and Exercise Psychology last week.
Future Readiness - Chong Park, Scott Solberg, Nurten Karacan Özdemir, Angela Andrei, and Agnieszka Olechowska provided an exciting symposium on Doors to Hope at the 2024 International Congress of Psychology this week.
Research that Matters
Conceptions of Career Choice and Attainment in Portuguese Preschool and Elementary-school Children (co-published research by Professor Kim Howard)
This study examines the applicability of the Conceptions of Career Choice and Attainment (CCCA) model to Portuguese preschool and elementary-school children. Results indicated that elementary schoolers present significantly higher levels of career choice and attainment reasoning than preschoolers.
Relation of Linguistic Indicators to Civic Engagement in Special Education (co-published research by Assoc. Professor Zachary Rossetti)
This study explores the use of natural language processing (NLP) to examine the relationship between word choices and reported levels of civic engagement among parents of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The study found that two types of word-choice similarities were significant predictors for parent civic and electoral activity and urges researchers and practitioners who are developing civic engagement programs to consider the integration of activities that seek to enhance the consistency in expressing civic engagement ideas for parents of individuals with IDD.