LEARNING & COGNITION NEWSLETTER
2020
FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
Dear Learning & Cognition alumni, students, and friends, It has been another exciting and eventful year! Our Educational Psychology program has been ranked 22nd in the nation by U.S. News and World Report! We could not have reached this rank without you. Our fully online master’s program in Learning & Cognition continues to expand and we are now offering GRE waivers to qualifying students through Fall 2021. Additionally, we celebrated Dr. Susan Losh, who retired after 19 years as a faculty member in the L&C program and 46 years at Florida State University. Her retirement has definitely left a hole in our program! Fortunately, she is still only an email away. Along with the rest of the nation, we had the added challenge this year of shifting all events and courses online due to the coronavirus pandemic. Our faculty, students, and staff have shown immense support for one another to ensure a successful spring and summer of teaching, learning, and research. This fall semester is also being conducted online. I am very proud of the commitment of our students and faculty to research and to one another throughout these challenging times. Our students and alumni continue to shine, doing all kinds of amazing things, as you can see in their updates. In particular, the L&C faculty were pleased to award Mike Mesa, Julieth Diaz, and Chena Chen with L&C research funds to support their preliminary and dissertation research studies. As you know, resources for conducting research that makes a difference i n the l ives o f all l earners can b e h ard to come by, so donations to our Learning & Cognition foundation account are extremely helpful. Students have used these funds to buy software programs, provide incentives to participants, and print survey materials. After we have raised $20,000, we will convert this fund to an endowment account that will generate interest that we can use to pay for scholarships. Please, please, please donate to our research fund. You know the importance of obtaining research-support for graduate students’ success. You may contact me (aroehrig@fsu.edu) or Kevin Derryberry (kderryberry@foundation.fsu.edu) to donate to this important fund. See more details about how to give at the end of this newsletter. Every little bit helps! Alumni, we would love your feedback on the L&C program, as you are important members of our community. Please email me (aroehrig@fsu.edu) if you have any comments or suggestions! Through this newsletter, I hope you enjoy reading about what some of your colleagues—including alumni, current students, and faculty—are doing. There are so many interesting projects, areas of study, and inspirational updates! Cheers,
Alysia Alysia Roehrig, PhD L&C Graduate Program Coordinator
FACULTY UPDATES SUSAN LOSH Dr. Susan Carol Losh retired at the end of the Fall 2019 semester. She started her career at FSU as an Assistant Professor of Sociology in 1973. In 2000 she joined our department, where she served as the coordinator of Educational Psychology, and of Learning & Cognition from 2001-2009. We have been lucky to have her as a supportive advocate throughout many changes and reorganizations in our College of Education. She also has represented us in the Faculty Senate and the Faculty Union, which were important ‘behind-the-scenes’ roles that she played for our faculty’s success. Another important service was serving as editor-in-chief of the Bulletin on Science, Technology & Society. Dr. Losh’s research interests included Social Psychology, and a special emphasis on adult civic science literacy. She also specialized in group dynamics and intergroup relations. Dr. Losh taught the Theories of Social Psychology and Group Processes courses, both offered online. Her recent work, funded by the National Science Foundation, involved creating a large database on civic science literacy, ranging from 1979 to 2016. Dr. Losh at her retirement party with her former master’s student July Diaz
BETH PHILLIPS This past year I have been hard at work with my students and with many collaborators at FSU and elsewhere on projects related primarily to early childhood school readiness and elementary school success. I continue to balance experimental intervention studies with longitudinal studies and with professional development projects addressing the needs of preschool teachers serving children in early childhood programs in numerous states. Related to intervention studies, work continues on completing a very large-scale small group intervention project with preschool and kindergarten children (funded by the Institute of Education Sciences [IES]). This project is an outgrowth of the 8 years of intervention design and efficacy evaluations I and many colleagues conducted within the IES-funded Reading for Understanding (RFU) Network Projects. Many papers are underway with the data from the RFU project, including several being led by students like Mike and James (see more on that below). Related to longitudinal studies, students (including Sisi, Chelsea, and Shawna) and I continue to explore questions from the 2006-2011 and 2012-2016 cycles of FSU’s Florida Learning Disabilities Research Center. In the current cycle, I am leading a longitudinal study following the language and literacy development of children from ages two to five. We are focused particularly on children at high risk for reading and language disabilities. I have also recently initiated a very big meta-analysis subproject that explores how very young children’s nonverbal behaviors relate to their language development; many students and other project team members are hard at work on this project now! Another meta-analysis, conducted with support from the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast (REL-SE), has been ongoing for several years—including great contributions from James and Chelsea among others. That project explores 20 years of intervention studies related to early childhood language and literacy and is slated for release this coming year. My other big project, funded by the Spencer Foundation, uses data we collected on 100 preschool (cont.)
FACULTY UPDATES (CONT.) teachers and over 600 children to investigate classroom supports for early language growth in early childhood classrooms, using massive amounts of audio and video recordings to really learn what goes on in these classrooms across the year. With several colleagues at FSU, I am writing a new grant to continue exploring this amazing archive of data on early childhood classrooms. Within this project we developed a new teacher knowledge measure—the first paper with this measure was published recently, and coauthors included Chelsea, plus former graduate students Galiya Tabulda and Felesa Oliver. Many more papers with these data are underway! As noted above, I am leading and collaborating on several big Dr. Phillips and Shirley at graduation professional development initiatives funded by the REL-SE. One of these is a multi-year development project in which we are creating a comprehensive set of materials for a Professional Learning Community on Emergent Literacy for early childhood teachers—plus companion materials for school administrators that Anna Schmitz has been helping us create. We will release these materials for freeuse in 2021! An overlapping team of developers and professional development experts and support personnel, including James and Chelsea, have been delivering trainings to educators across Mississippi for the last two years. This project is about to expand substantially—in summer 2020 we launched a version for Florida early childhood educators that reached over 700 across the state! Within the program, I had the opportunity, and great fun, to teach a seminar again on critical thinking in Fall 2019. A major element in this class is about learning how to use critical thinking skills to support the quality of professional (and even personal) writing. It is such a pleasure to see students’ writing mature across the semester. During the past year, I also have supervised many of the master’s students in our non-thesis MS program. This program continues to grow! Several of my advisees in this program have recently graduated and several more are on track to complete the program this coming year. Congratulations to all! For more on what my students and I have been up to, see the brief student updates below: Pam Burris: Recently defended her dissertation prospectus on home literacy in families of English language learner preschoolers. She is also collaborating with me on an investigation of the factor structure of the home literacy survey in a combined dataset including several thousand families from across the country. Sisi Dong: Defended her prelim proposal with data from the Florida Learning Disabilities Research Center on the relation between home literacy and development of phonological awareness, a key foundational skill for early reading. She is also collaborating on the home literacy structural project with Pam and me. She is working with a recent graduate, Shiyi Chen, and me on a paper related to teacher beliefs and practices for supporting preschooler language development using data from my Spencer Foundation project. Mike Mesa: Defended his dissertation prospectus on work building from his prelim study, which he successfully defended in fall 2019. Both studies explore behavioral management during small-group tier 2 instruction using data from the vast archives of the RFU grant. He is also leading a study on peer-effects within similar small-group instruction in RFU, and is collaborating with Dr. Roehrig, and many other students, on Freedom Schools projects. James Hernandez: Defended his thesis proposal on the cultural aspects of classroom management in the Freedom Schools summer program. He is also collaborating on the RFU peer effects project with Mike and me and on the Mississippi and Florida Professional Development in Language Projects. He is also working on a meta-analysis of effective early language and literacy instruction. (cont.)
FACULTY UPDATES (CONT.) Chelsea Funari: Defended her prelim proposal on a project within the Florida Learning Disabilities Research Center, specifically focusing on teacher demeanor in elementary school classrooms. She is also collaborating on a paper with me and former MS students, Felesa Oliver and Jennifer Berrien, on the links between teacher knowledge and aspects of instruction in preschool classrooms. Chelsea is also collaborating on Mississippi and Florida Professional Development in Language Projects and on Freedom Schools projects with Dr. Roehrig. Jessica Ritchie: Preparing her thesis proposal on the link between special education and anxiety using archival data from an intervention project co-led by me. She is also collaborating with me and a large team, including MS student, Desiree Descartes, and former MS students, Jennifer Berrien and Felesa Oliver, on a meta-analysis related to infant and toddler nonverbal behavior and links to language development.
JEANNINE TURNER Although I graduated two master’s students and one doctoral student, I still am advising a large number of students; 15 doctoral students (one is co-chaired with Dr. Southerland) and one master’s student. We have been very productive over the past year. Together, we conducted 17 conference presentations! In addition to my “regular” graduate students, last year (ended in December) I was a mentor for two master’s-level PURPOSE Fellows (see Dr. Roehrig’s description below) and one PURPOSE Fellow this year. I was pleased that both of my last-year’s Fellows were accepted into doctoral programs! My research continues to focus on issues related to students’ motivation, emotions, selfregulation, and learning. Although my research tends to focus on engineering education or learning a foreign/second language, I work with five students who explore other interesting and unique topics. Holly Hunt recently completed her qualitative Prelim study investigating Veteran students’ decision-making regarding aspects of pursuing their college degrees. She is in the process of extending this research for her Dissertation. Cathryn Lokey is working on her Prelim study that investigates young children’s (10 years-old) experiences with participating in a Mindfulness program. We hope to learn the outcome of that research this fall. Merve Turan is developing her research ideas about peer mentors. Phyllis Pancella is exploring the unique environment of undergraduate applied one-on-one music vocal and piano lessons. Finally, Neil Wang is developing his research on students’ perceptions of peer feedback in online courses. Within the field of engineering education, Min Tang, Jinjushang (Chena) Chen, Laith Jum’ah, and I continue to investigate engineering students’ epistemological beliefs about engineering knowledge and learning. Chena and Laith have interviewed engineering students to help us better understand these complex processes. For example, Laith defended his prelim study this past spring; he found that engineering students tend to have somewhat simple beliefs about knowledge (e.g., knowledge comes from authorities and they do not question the veracity of the knowledge), but this approach allowed them to be more productive. Chena’s prelim study will explore possible explanations for engineering students’ uneven development of epistemic cognitions (their mixed beliefs of simplicity and complexity), using a new theoretical framework of epistemic resources. Also within the field of engineering and STEM education, I recently received a College of Education Dean’s Circle Grant that will fund Min Tang’s and my investigation into engineering students’ motivation and beliefs about feedback-seeking. We plan to conduct a mix-methods approach throughout the year to better understand engineering students’ motivation. Two of my other students are exploring engineering (and STEM) students’ experiences while obtaining their degrees. For her Prelim study, Andria Cole, is interviewing male African American professors who are currently STEM faculty to learn more about how these successful men navigated the educational system in fields where few people look like them. Michelle Peruche is getting ready to (cont.)
FACULTY UPDATES (CONT.) survey FAMU-FSU engineering students for their perceptions/ experiences of discrimination, micro-agressions, and belongingness across FAMU-FSU engineering departments. My other group of students and I have researched students’ motivation and self-regulation for learning a foreign/second language. This group has also been very active. Darcey (Fang Liang) completed her prelim study on Chinese doctoral students’ writing anxiety and their use of coping and self-regulation strategies. Yanyu Pan recently defended her prelim study that analyzed our large Chinese dataset with respect to students’ self-regulation and learning strategies. Juhee Kim used our existing Chinese dataset to complete her Master’s thesis. She Dr. Turner hooding the new Dr. Yanyan Chen conducted a cluster analysis of students’ reasons for learning English (using Deci & Ryan’s framework) and explored differences across student-groups with respect to self-efficacy, anxiety, and achievement goals. Maipeng Wei recently defended her dissertation prospectus on Chinese English learners’ dispositional motives, proximal motivations, and classroom perceptions to explain their classroom engagement and final course grades. Rebecca Turk is completing her dissertation study on CIES students’ motivation and beliefs about English pronunciation and Wenting Song is interested in investigating Chinese heritage language-learners experiences of shame. Juhee is also focusing on shame-experiences of Korean students who are completing degrees in American universities. Finally, my past visiting scholar, Banban Li, Maipeng Wei, and I just completed our revise-and-resubmit manuscript on students’ dispositional motives, achievement goals, speakingefficacy, and willingness to speak in classrooms. We hope to have that manuscript accepted for publication and in print soon! I’d also like to mention accomplishments of two of my former students. Fei Xing’s manuscript, based on her qualitative prelim study that investigated Chinese English teachers’ use of communicative supports, has been accepted for publication. Margareta (Pop) Thomas and I published a study she conducted while she worked at the High Magnetic Laboratory as a graduate student. In addition to my students’ collaborations, I have had a wonderful opportunity to work with Yanxun Zao from Beijing Normal University as a Visiting Scholar. I look forward to continuing our work in the future!
ALYSIA ROEHRIG I am excited to share that I have been awarded a promotion to full professor at Florida State University! I also started this fall as the Associate Chair for the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems. It is still such a joy to be the coordinator of the Learning and Cognition program, seeing all the students studying important things and making such great strides in their learning and careers! Additionally, I am so proud to serve as the Co-Director of Research for the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) Developmental Research School’s Freedom School. Freedom Schools provide children from low-income neighborhoods on Tallahassee’s southside with a free summer camp focused on the power of reading and making a difference in the community. Last year’s Freedom Schools program included a partnership with the Temple Fit program, which supported the wellness of both scholars and teachers. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the Freedom Schools program in Tallahassee did not take place this summer. However, we will continue this great work through research and training to help make next year’s program even better! Many of my current students and other students in the L&C program are involved in this work at Freedom Schools, including Cheyeon Ha (focused on prosocial efficacy) and Makana Craig (focused on culturally relevant pedagogy—see also our APA Division 15 Practice Brief on this topic at https://apadiv15.org/education-practice-briefs), who conducted their prelim studies at Freedom Schools, (cont.)
FACULTY UPDATES (CONT.) Erik Rawls, who plans to do his dissertation on the service learning opportunities of our PURPOSE fellows at Freedom Schools. Others supporting Freedom Schools efforts include Chelsea Funari, Shawna Durtschi, Mike Mesa, and James Hernandez. I am also continuing my role as the Principal Investigator and Director of the Partners United for Research Pathways Oriented to Social Justice in Education (PURPOSE). The goal of PURPOSE is to support the development of research skills in diverse students from FAMU and FSU, especially as it relates to social justice and culturally relevant research (visit www.PURPOSEtraining.org). It is funded by the Research Training Programs in the Education Sciences: Pathways Training Program competition. PURPOSE serves junior and beginning The new Dr. Lynn Turner with Dr. Roehrig at master’s students from education-related majors/minors at FAMU graduation and FSU, providing fellows with financial support during a year-long research training and apprenticeship program, across four cohorts. Fellows participate in mentoring regarding preparing for and applying to doctoral programs related to education to help increase the diversity of the doctorate in education. The program welcomed a third cohort of 13 fellows this year. There is one more year-long cohort to come, and applications are due October 12, 2020 for cohort 4, which starts in January 2021. Dr. Turner and I will also applied for another round of funding for PURPOSE this summer, with the goal of being able to support an additional 4-5 cohorts in years to come! I am particularly proud of the new graduate, Dr. Lynn Turner, featured above at her December 2019 graduation. Her dissertation on the academic resilience of Black males is inspiring! She is teaching student success courses at FAMU starting this fall. Angelina Kuleshova will graduated with her PhD this summer, with her dissertation on teacher learning during lesson study professional development. She continues to work as an associate professor at Tallahassee Community College. With regards to other ongoing research, Guillermo Farfan and Laura Jakiel are making great progress on their dissertation prospectuses on math instructional beliefs and epistemology (Farfan) and an intervention to support the self-regulated writing practices of college students (Jakiel). Candace Norris-Holiwski (self-regulation and conscientiousness of online learners), July Diaz (process of faculty change in the Learning Assistants program), Mira Talpau Joos (second language learning processes), and Shawna Durtschi (predictors of opportunities and resources provided by public libraries) are making excellent progress on their preliminary studies. I also continue to collaborate with colleagues in order to study the work done in both the Freedom Schools and PURPOSE programs. In particular, I am interested in understanding what supports children’s reading gains in Freedom Schools, as well as what supports fellows’ researcher identity development and research efficacy in PURPOSE.
STUDENT PROFILES & UPDATES We enjoy featuring our current students! Takes some time to get to know our students, learn their interests, and hear their updates! WENTING SONG I am a first-year PhD student in the Learning and Cognition program and received my master’s degree from the Foreign and Second Language Education program here at FSU in 2017. During that time, I taught both English and Chinese to students of various ages. Today, I am an instructor of Educational Psychology for FSU undergraduates. I am forever grateful to the students, who have been tremendously supportive in my first year of teaching. I enjoy the entire teaching process! I am interested in heritage language learners’ motivation and emotions, particularly shame. I would like to see how the heritage language learners’ identity influences their shame reaction(s) and how they regulate their emotions when learning their heritage language. I presented at both ACTFL and the SSTESOL conferences last November with Maipeng Wei to share our path analysis on Chinese language learners’ willingness to communicate. I am excited about the future! SHAWNA DURTSCHI I am currently a PhD student after having finished master’s degree in Learning & Cognition in 2017 as well as a master’s degree in Library Science in 2018. I am passionate about collaborations across fields, particularly where libraries can work with school districts and academic institutions to promote students’ literacy engagement. This interest has led me to a position as a reference librarian at the Leon County Public Library while teaching at FSU. I have been fortunate to work at the Florida Center for Reading Research, and last summer I presented research on teachers’ affective demeanor and student engagement with Chelsea Funari at the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading conference in Toronto, Canada. I recently defended my preliminary study prospectus, which focuses on the variation in access to the public library and opportunities the public library provides to children and families across the state of Florida. In the future, I hope to continue fostering collaborative relationships among school districts, academic institutions, and community organizations. Finally, when I’m not working on campus or at the library, I love to spend time with my family and awesome nieces.
JULIETH DIAZ Hola! My name is Julieth Diaz, made in Colombia, and I am starting my third year as a PhD student in the L&C program. I currently work as a Graduate Assistant at the FSU Center for the Advancement of Teaching, and as an Instructional Designer at the Tallahassee Community College. I am currently collecting and analyzing data for my prelim study, which focuses on how the Learning Assistants program at FSU may motivate faculty to change their teaching practices. I just moved to California with my husband, so I look forward to the new chapter in my life!
MAKANA CRAIG Recently, I co-authored an APA Division 15 Practice Brief with Dr. Alysia Roehrig titled “Motivating Diverse Learners Using Culturally Relevant & Responsive Education” (April, 2020). Along with CheYeon He, we presented a talk titled “K-8 Students’ Motivation to Read in a Culturally-relevant, Literacy-focused Summer Camp” at the Literacy Research Association (LRA) conference in December 2019.
STUDENT PROFILES & UPDATES (CONT.) MICHAEL P. MESA I defended my preliminary study, and achieved PhD candidacy! I also recently defended my dissertation prospectus! My dissertation focuses on the relationship between behavior management strategies and self-regulatory development in the context of small-group instruction. Additionally, I began a graduate assistantship with the COE Office of Research, where I assist faculty in finding external grant funding. I also recently presented my research on peer-effects at the Eastern Educational Research Association Conference.
HOLLY HUNT I recently defended my preliminary study on student veteran academic decision-making and am now a PhD candidate. My dissertation will continue the qualitative study of service members exiting the military and enrolling in higher education. More specifically, I will study the ways in which veterans make informed decisions to enroll in higher education, with a particular focus on the resources and tools they use to select an institution and academic major. Currently, I work full-time in higher education as the Associate Director for FSU’s Academic Center for Excellence. I am married with 3-year-old twins and my new baby girl arrived in July!
CHELSEA FUNARI I defended my prelim-study proposal this spring, which aims to identify patterns in elementary teachers’ emotional expressions in classrooms. I was excited to start conducting data analysis this summer! In the fall, I taught the Educational Psychology course for undergraduates and began a writing group for students in the Learning and Cognition program. I am married and an aunt to two wonderful nephews and one newborn niece.
LAURA JAKIEL I defended my prelim study in the fall, so I also became a doctoral candidate! In October, I presented the poster, “Revising the Future Time Perspective Scale: A Study of Reliability and Validity,” at The Scholarly Consortium for Innovative Psychology for Education (SCIPIE) conference located in Savannah, GA.
JAMES HERNANDEZ In November, I co-presented a conference-presentation at FERA, with Dr. Russell Almond, and I presented at EERA with Michael Mesa. In addition, I was spotlighted in two newsletters this past year, the Florida Educational Research Association’s Graduate Student Spotlight and Inside IES Research as an IES Pathways Grant recipient!
FORWARD PROGRESS
Read about our successes over the past year! ONLINE MASTER’S PROGRAM Our Learning and Cognition online master’s program is growing and adapting in order to meet the needs of our students. This year, 7 students graduated from our fully online master’s program. Graduates from this program have used the knowledge gained in our program to further their careers in a variety of contexts (e.g., classroom teaching, employee training, government, private enterprise, nonprofit, etc.). Also, this year, we implemented GRE waivers for qualified students in order to better serve the needs of students who have been working in the field of education. This fall we welcomed our newest and largest cohort of 19 new online students. DEFENSES AND GRADUATIONS (LET’S CELEBRATE!) Doctoral graduates: Shirley Chen, Yanyan Chen, Angelina Kuloshova, Lynn Turner Online master’s program graduates: Ashley Moysaenko, Jacourie Clark, Stanley Linton, Clayton Spencer, Christina Beck, Jennifer Allbright, Nicholas Anthony Hybrid master’s program graduates: Felesa Oliver, Amanda Campos Preliminary exam defenses: Makana Craig, Laura Jakiel, Holly Hunt, Cheyeon He, Laith Jum’ah, Michael Mesa, Yanyu Pan, Fang (Darcey) Liang Thesis defense: Juhee Kim Prelim proposal defenses: July Diaz, Sisi Dong, Shawna Durtschi, Chelsea Funari, Candace Norris-Holiwski Dissertation prospectus defense: Pam Burris, Guillermo Farfan, Micheal Mesa, Maipeng Wei
Dr. Yanyan Chen
Dr. Lynn Turner
STAYING CONNECTED AT CONFERENCES
Conference
Date
Location
Presenters/Attendees
Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR)
July
Toronto, CA
Dr. Phillips, Shawna, Chelsea
Scholarly Consortium for Innovative Psychology in Education (SCIPIE)
October
Savannah, GA
Dr. Turner, Laura, Michelle
Florida Educational Research Association (FERA)
November
St. Petersburg, FL
Dr. Turner, James, Juhee, Makana
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)
November
Washington D.C.
Wenting, Maipeng
Sunshine State Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (SSTESOL)
November
Orlando, FL
Wenting, Maipeng
Literacy Research Association (LRA)
December
Tampa, FL
Cheyeon, Makana
Eastern Educational Research Association (EERA)
February
Orlando, FL
Dr. Turner, Mike, James, Laura, Mira, Juhee, Darcey, YanYan, Chena, Maipeng, Laith, Alumni (Meagan, Shirley, Tim)
American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE)
June
Virtual
Dr. Turner, Min
Laith (EERA)
Juhee (FERA) Shawna and Chelsea (SSSR) Darcey (EERA)
Juhee & Makana (FERA)
Maipeng (EERA)
YanYan, Maipeng, Dr. Turner, Chena, Darcey (EERA)
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHTS MEAGAN ARRASTIA-CHRISHOLM (PH.D. ‘15) There are many new updates from the Arrastia-Chisholm “lab” at Valdosta State University. With students and fellow L&C alumni, I co-authored two articles published this year, with three currently in press. As a solo author, my book chapter, entitled “Just Call Me Dr. A: My Experience with Language Loss,” was published this year, as well. Most recently, I was approved for tenure and promotion to associate professor the same day I welcomed my second child into the world: Thomas Ignacio “Iggy” was born at home in Thomasville, GA on April 16th. I look forward to continuing collaborations focusing on parental involvement/ separation while staying at home with Iggy and his big sister, Ramona.
KIRSTEN HARVEY (M.S. ‘16) I provide research to the Florida Legislature as a Senior Policy Analyst at the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability. I work in the education policy area.
DANIEL FASKO, JR. (PH.D. ‘83) I retired after 35 years in the academe. I am now Professor Emeritus in Educational Foundations, Leadership and Policy at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, OH. I am also co-editor with Frank Fair of Sam Houston State University of Critical Thinking and Reasoning: Theories, Development, Instruction and Assessment, to be published by Brill-Sense publishers this year if the pandemic ever settles down. SHIYI CHEN (PH.D. ‘19) 2019 was a thrill ride for me! I graduated with a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and joined University of Idaho as an Assistant Professor. I moved across the country from sunny FL to mountainous ID. The beautiful Northwest is wonderful for a hiking enthusiast and an aspiring Bigfoot like me. I survived my first winter (3 hours from Canada), made friends, and started new research projects. I owe my achievements to the awesome L&C program, my advisor Dr. Beth Phillips, and friends and colleagues at FSU. My current research project interweaves my previous interests, with a special focus on the role of teacher-child relationships and metacognitive skills in children’s science competency development. I am currently collecting pilot data and excited to see this 5-year plan unfold. Besides my main project, I am working with two teams of researchers on several other projects. I collaborate with my long-term research team to investigate school and home factors associated with students’ science and math achievement using TIMSS data. In response to the current COVID-19 situation, we are launching a new mixed-methods project to explore teachers’ and parents’ perceptions about the home-school education alliance. I am also working with a group of multidisciplinary researchers to examine the effect of a novel intervention device on children’s self-regulation and cognitive performance. This device harnesses the power of machine learning algorithms and human color perception to improve children’s self-regulation and working memory capacity via environment manipulations. As my career progresses, I begin to see my doctoral training paying off. Completing the Ph.D. is a strenuous path and may seem excruciating at times, but the results make the process worthwhile. Being a new Assistant Professor makes me feel like a first-year Ph.D. student again, only this time I am better prepared with the knowledge and strength I have gained from the L&C program at FSU.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHTS (CONT.)
SAMANTHA TACKETT (PH.D. ‘18) In the past year, I moved from Colorado to the Bay Area of California. We bought a home here and I have been working in San Jose, CA with an international consulting firm to develop training for Google employees. I also have been working with the Center for Big Data in Health Sciences (CBD-HS) to develop online mental health training for the University of Texas Public Health Program. I am serving on executive boards for AERA and Southwestern Social Sciences Association. In addition to research presentations at AERA, APA, and SSSA, I have had publications in Peabody Journal of Education, Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, and International Journal of Teacher Education and Professional Development.
TIM PRESSLEY (PH.D. ‘15) Tim Pressley and colleagues’ paper, “Different approaches to classroom environments based on teacher experience and effectiveness” was published in January 2020 in Psychology in Schools. Pressley is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Christopher Newport University. He and his wife also brought a daughter into the world since his last update!
FELESA OLIVER (M.S. ‘19) On February 26th, alumni Felesa Oliver gave life to baby Mari in Tallahassee, FL.
A YEAR IN PHOTOS Second annual Hallowe
Laura, Dr. Roehrig, and Shawna at our second annual Halloween Tea
dinner mes having Ja d n a , a n a November Juhee, Mak ing FERA in d n e tt a r e ft a
en Tea
Chelsea and Shawna representing FSU with their COVID-19 face masks
In February, Phyllis sang mezzo-soprano for Dear Matafele Peinam with the FSU University Symphony Orchestra
FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
MISSION STATEMENT As a graduate-level program, Learning and Cognition’s mission is to provide cutting-edge, individualized training for those who wish to earn graduate degrees focused on theory, research, and application in the areas of cognition, learning, and human development. We serve students who come from many backgrounds to apply Learning and Cognition in research, classroom, government, or organizational settings. Our program is highly flexible, allowing students to select the training that meets their needs. Through close mentorship and apprenticeship, we provide an excellent grounding in research to support evidence-based practice and contribute to the free, open-access of innovative research that informs teaching and learning wherever it happens. CORE VALUES As a program, all aspects of our work (teaching, research, and service) are guided by the following values. We seek to instill these values in our students as well: Ethics—interacting with students and participants, ensuring data security and integrity of data collection, analyses, and reporting of research Community of practice—engaging in respectful collaboration with peers/faculty, and with stakeholders in the applied community Critical thinking & lifelong learning—supporting engagement, mastery learning, and knowledge acquisition Inclusiveness—maintaining an interdisciplinary focus and appreciation for diversity
Juhee, Mira, Laura, and Darcey at EERA
KEEP IN TOUCH PLEASE SHARE YOUR PHOTOS, PERSONAL & PROFESSIONAL UPDATES, AND MORE! Please consider sharing your own update for the next newsletter! By sharing and making connections through information submitted by members of our community, we are better able to help graduates identify career tracks, job openings, research collaborators, and even funding. Send your information to Dr. Alysia Roehrig at aroehrig@fsu.edu. Alumni: Please share your title/current position, major/degree, major professor/year of graduation, contact info, any particular research or professional interests you would like to share/get assistance with, personal news, any opportunities or requests for current students or faculty in terms of collaboration, etc. Current students: Please share your major/degree, major professor, ongoing or future research projects, assistance needed, etc. CONSIDER MENTORING AND/OR COLLABORATING WITH A CURRENT STUDENT Please consider mentoring and/or collaborating with a current student. Our students and alumni do many amazing things, as evidenced by the updates in this newsletter. We can further this work even more by sharing and making connections across faculty, alumni, and current students. Take a look at the research current students are doing to see if you can find a new collaborator. Connecting alumni to current students allows for tremendous networking opportunities for our current students while keeping alumni plugged in and providing an opportunity to support our current students. We look forward to expanding this process and are excited about the opportunities ahead! If interested, please contact Dr. Alysia Roehrig at aroehrig@fsu.edu and she will help connect you. CONSIDER A GIFT TO L&C We are working very hard to build an endowment that can be self-sustaining. With your help, we will be able to accomplish this goal and make it possible to more significantly support an increased number of deserving students. Please consider making a donation to support current and future Learning & Cognition graduate students’ research and conference travel! You can make secure donations online at http://fla.st/2ssRD2I. Checks may be mailed to the College of Education (1114 West Call St.; Tallahassee, FL 32306-4450) or the University Foundation Office (2010 Levy Ave # 300, Tallahassee, FL 32310). You can pay online or by check, just be sure to specify “Learning & Cognition Student Support Fund” or “Fund # F08101” in the memo/tribute line. You can also contact our foundation officer, Kevin Derryberry, at (850) 228-5021 or via email at kderryberry@foundation.fsu.edu.