NC State College of Education Awarded $2.5 Million in Research Funding From October 2021 Through March 2022

Faculty and researchers at the NC State College of Education, including the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research and the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, were awarded $2,503,821 to support 10 projects from Oct. 1, 2021, through March 31 2022. 

As of March 31, the college has spent $11,918,375 on research expenditures during the 2021-22 academic year so far. 

Postsecondary CTE Research Fellows at NC State University

This four-year, $1,354,331 project, funded by the ECMC Foundation, will enable the Belk Center to continue efforts to strengthen postsecondary career and technical education (CTE) at universities across the nation through the Postsecondary CTE Research Fellows Program at the NC State College of Education. Associate Professor James Bartlett is the project’s principal investigator. Associate Teaching Professor Michelle Bartlett and W. Dallas Herring Professor and Belk Center Executive Director Audrey Jaeger are co-principal investigators. 

Building Educator Capacity to Support Students with Learning Differences

This three-year, $693,183 project, funded by the Oak Foundation, will allow the Friday Institute to continue to offer professional learning experiences that focus on learning differences, social and emotional learning and learner agency as well as conduct research to discover evidence-based lessons learned in the field. Friday Institute Research Scholar Patricia Hilliard is the project’s principal investigator. Callie Womble Edwards, associate director of Program Evaluation and Education Research at the Friday Institute, and Friday Institute Research Associate Brittany Miller are co-principal investigators. 

When Summer Learning Succeeds: Context, Conditions, and Strategies that Maximize Impact

This $120,000 project, funded by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, will allow the Friday Institute to conduct an evaluation that will provide actionable information to the Office of Learning Recovery and Acceleration and the larger North Carolina education community to assess the implementation and impact of summer programs designed to support student reengagement and academic recovery. Assistant Teaching Professor and Friday Institute Research and Evaluation Team Director Shaun Kellogg is the project’s principal investigator.  

The Development of a Multidimensional STEM Identity Measure to Increase the Retention and Success of African American Students at an HBCU

This three-year grant, for which the College of Education will receive $108,565 of a total of $349,893 in funding from the National Science Foundation, aims to develop the first quantitative tool to specifically measure the STEM identity of African American students while accounting for their racial identity. Associate Professor Christy Byrd is the project’s principal investigator. 

Enhancing Pre-K-3rd Grade Principal Practice in North Carolina

This one-year, $75,000 project, funded by the Belk Foundation, will facilitate the surveying of elementary school principals across the state to capture the extent to which current practices are aligned with new standards for effective Pre-K through third grade leadership. Assistant Professor Michael Little is the project’s principal investigator while Assistant Professor Tim Drake serves as the co-principal investigator.

African American Teachers and Pedagogies of Freedom: A Historical Examination of Black Teaching in Professional Networks: 1925-1954

This $74,986 project, funded by the Spencer Foundation, will use an analysis of the publicly available archival collections of Jane Dabney Shackelford and Julia Davis—African American teachers who spent their careers in segregated Black schools prior to the Brown decision—to provide an in-depth portrait of “Pedagogies of Freedom,” a concept that encompasses several teaching styles that Black educators adopted to encourage their students’ self-determination during the Jim Crow era. Assistant Professor Amato Nocera is the project’s principal investigator.

Digital Learning Initiative (DLI)

This $29,491 grant, funded by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, will facilitate the development of a rubric that will be used to review and assess the professional development modules submitted to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction by the North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities and UNC Work Groups. Friday Institute Research Associate Erin Huggins is the project’s principal investigator and Friday Institute Research and Evaluation Team Director Shaun Kellogg is the co-principal investigator. 

TEXplore-Summer Enrichment and Summer Academy Program

This $178,132 grant, of which the College of Education received $23,265 in funding from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, will help a Friday Institute research team and NC State’s Wilson College of Textiles address the decline of students’ learning abilities during the summer months and will provide summer enrichment that will help build a recruitment pipeline from rural North Carolina counties that have a thriving textile industry. College of Textiles Associate Director of Student Services for Recruitment and Diversity Delisha Hinton is the project’s principal investigator and Braska Williams, director of the NC-MSEN Pre-College Program at the Friday Institute, is the co-principal investigator. Callie Edwards, Ph.D., associate director of the Program Evaluation and Education Research (PEER) Group, designed and will execute the program’s evaluation plan.

NC PreK-12 Literacy and Equity Summit

This $15,000 grant from the Mebane Charitable Foundation facilitated the creation of the Friday Institute co-sponsored NC PreK-12 Literacy and Equity Summit, where cross-sector stakeholders built on existing statewide literacy policy and initiatives to explore how North Carolina schools and communities can reimagine reading instruction to meet the needs of every student. Associate Dean and Executive Director for the Friday Institute Hiller Spires is the project’s principal investigator.

NCSIP Partnership 
This $10,000 grant from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction will allow faculty in the College of Education’s Department of Teacher Education and Learning Sciences to continue to embed evidence-based practices into Department of Public Instruction reading and math concentration courses for pre-service and in-service teachers. Assistant Professor Jamie Pearson is the project’s principal investigator.