Principal Investigator: Tracy Larson
Department: Office of Child Development
Project Title: Healthy CHILD/Various Sites
Agency Name: Pittsburgh Public Schools
Award Dates: 7/1/19 – 8/31/20
Amount: $296,706
The HealthyCHILD team will apply the “lessons learned” from the Mellon-funded and evidence-based HealthyInfantsmodel of tiered supports and the 5 innovations focusing on caregiver-child interactions (both child care provider and parent); this “morphing” of the HealthyInfants model elements into the PPS HS Program will enhance the quality of care provided via a prevention-to-intervention model of graduated supports which promotes the use of developmentally-appropriate practices centering on positive caregiver-infant/toddler attachment relationships.
The HealthyCHILD program service model is based on a framework of three dimensions or approaches of early childhood practices supported by both Head Start Standards and Early Childhood Best Practices (National Association for Education of Young Children-NAEYC and Division for Early Childhood of the Council for Exceptional Children). The three primary and overarching dimensions include:
1. Recognition and response to intervention for involving graduated prevention to individualized interventions for children and teachers and parents;
2. Positive behavior approach with a strong emphasis on prevention and family support;
3. The Teaching Pyramid, a model for supporting social competence and prevention of challenging behavior in young children (CSEFEL); and Mentoring model to nurture responsive caregiving interactions
Principal Investigator: Tracy Larson
Department: Office of Child Development
Project Title: COTRAIC EHS 19-24
Agency Name: Council of Three Rivers American Indian Center
Award Dates: 8/1/19 – 8/31/20
Amount: $176,835
The HealthyCHILD team will apply the “lessons learned” from the Mellon-funded and evidence-based HealthyInfantsmodel of tiered supports and the 5 innovations focusing on caregiver-child interactions (both child care provider and parent); this “morphing” of the HealthyInfants model elements into the COTRAIC EHS Program will enhance the quality of care provided via a prevention-to-intervention model of graduated supports which promotes the use of developmentally-appropriate practices centering on positive caregiver-infant/toddler attachment relationships.
Principal Investigator: Tracy Larson
Department: Office of Child Development
Project Title: COTRAIC EHS Expansion
Agency Name: Council of Three Rivers American Indian Center
Award Dates: 9/1/19 – 8/31/24
Amount: $827,952
The HealthyCHILD team will apply the “lessons learned” from the Mellon-funded and evidence-based HealthyInfantsmodel of tiered supports and the 5 innovations focusing on caregiver-child interactions (both child care provider and parent); this “morphing” of the HealthyInfants model elements into the COTRAIC EHS Program will enhance the quality of care provided via a prevention-to-intervention model of graduated supports which promotes the use of developmentally-appropriate practices centering on positive caregiver-infant/toddler attachment relationships.
Principal Investigator: Jennifer Iriti
Department: Learning Research and Development Center
Project Title: NSF INCLUDES Alliance: Strengthening Precollege Programs as a Mechanism to Promote Equitable Access to Universities
Agency Name: National Science Foundation
Award Dates: 9/1/19 – 8/31/24
Amount: $2,333,693
Overview: The Bio+ Alliance vision is to transform K-20 STEM pathways into the biotechnology, bioengineering, and biomaterials workforce (bio-workforce), particularly for underrepresented minorities (URMs), through a functional and scalable Networked Improvement Community (NIC). The aim is to comprehensively study the effectiveness of the Bio+ Alliance NIC as well as leverage the NIC in broadening participation (BP) efforts that will eliminate barriers that have impeded URMs from entering the bio-workforce. To address these goals, we will target the K-20 continuum, integrate a public-private regional (then national) network, and leverage best practices from many existing, federally-funded BP programs that the Bio+ Alliance has direct access to, thus positively impacting URM-participation metrics for the bio-workforce.
Principal Investigator: Caitlin Spear
Department: Office of Child Development
Project Title: Thrive 18 Evaluation
Agency Name: Project Destiny
Award Dates: 7/15/19 – 12/31/20
Amount: $45,000
The University of Pittsburgh Office of Child Development (OCD) Evaluation and Research Team (ERT) will serve as an external evaluator for the Thrive18 program under the proposed evaluation plan. OCD will partner with Thrive18 to conduct an independent, comprehensive evaluation of the Thrive18 program.
ERT will conduct a comprehensive evaluation of Thrive18using a customizable, multi-phasemixed method process evaluationthatis composed of three unique phases. We have designed these phases to build upon each other, yet offer flexibility to decide on next steps based on lessons learned from previous phases. Overall, this process evaluation will provide information about the ways in which Thrive18 processes align and promote Thrive18 outcomes.
Principal Investigator: Caitlin Spear
Department: Office of Child Development
Project Title: Healthy Start Evaluation
Agency Name: Healthy Start Inc.
Award Dates: 9/1/19 – 3/31/24
Amount: $112,500
The University of Pittsburgh Office of Child Development (OCD) Evaluation and Research Team (ERT) will serve as external evaluator for the Healthy Start Pittsburgh (HSPgh) program. OCD will partner with Healthy Start Pittsburgh to conduct an independent, comprehensive evaluation of the Healthy Start Pittsburgh program.
ERT will conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the HSPgh program using a multi-phase mixed method participatory evaluation design, which will include process,outcome, and impact evaluation components. This evaluation will include five unique phasesthat build upon each other, yet offer flexibility to decide on next steps based on lessons learned from previous phases. Overall, this evaluation will provide information about the process, outcomes, and impact of the HSPgh program.
Principal Investigator: Elizabeth Birr Moje; co-PIs: Emily C. Rainey, Tim McKay, Kendra Hearn, Shari Saunders, & Angela Calabrese Barton
Department: Instruction and Learning
Project Title: Improving STEM undergraduate teacher education and developing the STEM teaching profession through institutional transformation
Agency Name: National Science Foundation
Award Dates: 9/1/19 – 8/31/24
Amount: $186,878
In this research and development project, we seek to transform how undergraduates are prepared to be STEM teachers by building a new system that would support them from their freshmen STEM coursework at the University of Michigan through their first three years of full-time teaching in Detroit Public Schools--a full 7-year span. At the core of this project is a “Teaching School” concept, which draws upon the design and structures of the teaching hospital used to prepare novice physicians for skilled and contextually sensitive professional practice. Like a teaching hospital, the Teaching School will be a space in which faculty attendings, residents, and interns engage together in research-based professional practice (the teaching of adolescents) and coordinated professional learning (the preparation of early career teachers). We will employ design-based research methods and process evaluation across iterative cycles of work to examine 1) how undergraduates' learning is supported within this system; 2) how teachers prepared in this system contribute to adolescents' STEM learning; and 3) the sustainability and practical value of the Teaching School model. Our analysis will enable us to improve our model while also establishing a proof of concept that could be further developed by other institutions.
Principal Investigator: John Jakicic
Department: Health and Physical Activity
Project Title: Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC) Ancillary Study of Physical Activity Sedentary Behavior
Agency Name: National Institutes for Health
Award Dates: 12/1/19 – 11/30/20
Amount: $699,942
This project is an ancillary study to the multi-center MoTrPAC Study that has been awarded to the University of Pittsburgh (Principal Investigator: John M. Jakicic, PhD; Co-Investigators: Renee J. Rogers, PhD; Lindsay Page, PhD; Anne Newman, MD; Daniel Forman, MD; Erin Kershaw, MD; Bradley Nindl, PhD). The focus of this ancillary study is to leverage and enhance the value of the actigraphy data to characterize free-living physical activity and sedentary behavior, and to harmonize the exercise heart rate data that are being collected at the clinical centers in MoTrPAC. These data will provide important phenotypic data to characterize the study participants that can contribute to the understanding of variability in response to exercise training. This ancillary study will also add measurement using an activPAL device to the existing wrist-worn accelerometry to enhance the measurement of physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep.
Principal Investigator: Laura Roop
Department: Instruction and Learning
Project Title: What might we learn, practice, and inspire when we combine improvisation and creative writing?
Agency Name: Heinz Endowments
Award Dates: 4/16/19 – 5/31/20
Amount: $20,000
Improv+Writing=Playful, Joyful Learning for All
This pilot project, a collaboration between the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project and Steel City Improv Theater funded by Heinz Endowments, aims toexplore an improvisational approach to creative writingthrough community engagement programming where children, ages 5-10, families, and educators learn alongside each other. Our central question is, “What might we learn, practice, and inspire when we combine improvisation and creative writing?” Through improv games using our bodies as well as our pencils on a page, we will play, fail, try new ways, laugh, listen, connect, and learn together. Whole-body, interdisciplinary, and playful learning approaches allow allchildren to engage deeply with their internalized dispositions for learning.Observation during programming and feedback from participants will inform the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project in the future as we craft relevant programming for University of Pittsburgh’s Community Engagement Centers and other contexts. Pilot locations includeGreater Valley Community Services, Camp WOW!(Braddock); Pittsburgh Faison preK-5, Faison Freedom Summer School (Homewood); Carnegie Library Hazelwood (Hazelwood); and Pittsburgh Urban Christian School (Wilkinsburg). WPWP co-director Melissa Butler, who also directs the Children’s Innovation Project, is leading this effort with support from the Writing Project.
Principal Investigator: Shannon Wanless
Department: Office of Child Development
Project Title: Early Head Start
Agency Name: National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development
Award Dates: 7/1/19 – 6/30/20
Amount: $21,689
This grant is a subaward through a Nursing NICHD grant)…to study lifestyle behaviors to decrease obesity with Parent-Preschool Child Dyads using event history calendars.
Principal Investigator: Kevin Crowley/Karen Knutson
Department: Learning Research and Development Center
Project Title: Supporting the Informal Learning Initiative, Phase II
Agency Name: William Penn Foundation
Award Dates: 8/1/19 – 12/30/22
Amount: $624,000
This grant is to study and support the expansion of the Informal Learning Initiative in Philadelphia. This Initiative supports literacy rich, community-based informal learning experiences for low-income families with young children across Philadelphia. These experiences are developed by a network of partnerships between informal learning institutions and community-based organizations. Each partnership focuses on a specific geographic and/or cultural community in Philadelphia, and develops engaging programming to support family learning through a playful exploration of topics such as science, art, creativity, nature, and healthy eating.
Principal Investigator: Kevin Crowley
Department: Learning Research and Development Center
Project Title: Climate Rural Systems Partnership (CRSP)
Agency Name: National Science Foundation
Award Dates: 7/15/19 – 6/30/21
Amount: $794,923
This grant to Pitt is part of our ongoing research practice partnership with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, who received separate funding from NSF for their part of the partnership. Working with networks of local organizations, our partnership will (1) support rural Western PA communities to have science-based discussions about human-caused climate change; (2) build regional capacity for information exchange among the museum, rural organizations, and individuals in Western PA to support greater community engagement when addressing the impacts of human-caused climate change; and (3) improve methodologies and practices for organizations to effectively address climate change issues with audiences across rural and urban communities.
Principal Investigator: Lori DeLale-O’Connor
Department: Dean’s Office
Project Title: NSF INCLUDES Alliance: Strengthening Precollege Programs as a Mechanism to Promote Equitable Access to University Admissions and Persistence in STEM
Agency Name: National Science Foundation
Award Dates: 9/1/19 – 8/31/24
Amount: $264,909
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $10 million INCLUDES Alliance grant to the team that makes up Pitt’s Broadening Equity in STEM (BE STEM) Center and SLECoP, a national ecosystem of STEM programs and partners, to create a network of precollege programs with accreditation standards to boost college enrollment for underrepresented students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math. The five-year award makes Pitt the home base for the STEM Pathways for Underrepresented Students to HigherEd (STEM PUSH) Network through the collaboration of seven Pitt schools, centers and departments, including the Center for Urban Education. The network is a national collaborative of precollege programs, STEM educators, college admissions professionals and others committed to increasing racial and ethnic diversity in STEM. Dr. Lori Delale-O’Connor from the Center for Urban Education will serve as Senior Personnel and lead CUE’s role in the work on the grant, which focuses on supporting the precollege programs and admissions departments in developing equity-focused, culturally sustaining recruitment practices and programming. Dr. Delale-O’Connor also served as co-PI on the 2017-2019 NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot Grant on which this project builds.
Principal Investigator: Heather Bachman
Department: Psychology in Education
Project Title: Early Emergence of Socioeconomic Disparities in Mathematical Understanding
Agency Name: National Science Foundation
Award Dates: 9/1/19 – 8/31/22
Amount: $153,633
Gaps in math skills related to socioeconomic status (SES) have grown in recent years, as the math skills of children from high income families have grown faster than those of children from middle- or low-income families. These disparities emerge in preschool and are large by the start of kindergarten. As children progress through school, math skills gaps persist or even widen. Importantly, SES-related disparities in math skills have implications for long-term academic achievement and educational attainment, as well as access to STEM education and professions in adulthood. Thus, there is an urgent need to identify the factors shaping early math development before children start formal schooling. This investigation will provide foundational knowledge about the activities and interactions in the home environment that drive the early emergence of math skills disparities related to SES. Findings from this work have the potential to inform home visitation programs and early care and education curricula aimed at strengthening the early math skills of economically disadvantaged children. In doing so, the knowledge generated by this study has the potential to enhance equity in access to STEM education and professions for children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families.