“Work hard on keeping the conversation channels open. Having a trusted and caring adult is critical for every child,” writes Sandra Chafouleas in her new blog on Psychology Today.

Researchers from UConn and the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies have been awarded a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship Program to fund a new program to help train graduate students in risk analysis to build resilient landscapes in the face urbanization and climate change.

In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, unemployment rates in the U.S. rose to their highest level since the Great Depression as of mid-April. In the past week alone, the U.S. Department of Labor reported more than 1.4 million new unemployment claims.

Diandra J. Prescod, associate professor and program coordinator of counselor education and counseling psychology at the Neag School, is working to combat the obstacles faced by those Americans who have lost their jobs or been furloughed as a result of the pandemic. She wants them, first and foremost, to have hope.

“In my work as a researcher,” says LLEP doctoral candidate Pauline Batista ’16 MA, “I come from an understanding where youth do not have a voice unless youth have the educational skill set or the educational apparatus.”

“We have a lot to be worried about as adults, but at the center of what is going on in our heads should be how we are talking about back-to-school with our children,” says Sandra Chafouleas, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and school mental health expert.

Andrew Girard MA ’19 has been preparing for baseball’s opening day since this past September. As the stadium operations manager for the Hartford Yard Goats, Girard oversees the maintenance and facility enhancement projects at Dunkin’ Donuts Park in Hartford, Connecticut. When he learned that the season start date would be delayed due to COVID-19, he and his team began creating systems to ensure that fans would feel comfortable and safe when they were able to return to the park. 

Schools play a critical role in fostering emotional safety for adults and students. In responding to COVID-19, schools planning to reopen must include efforts that define a safe school environment as having not only physical elements such as cleaning practices, ventilation conditions, and physical distancing protocols, but also emotional elements.

“To my surprise, the tweet went viral and led to my writing an op-ed in The New York Times entitled ‘I Refuse to Run a Coronavirus Home School.’ Since then, in addition to trying to keep my sanity, I have appeared on shows from ‘Good Morning America’ to ‘Central Time’ on Wisconsin Public Radio, spreading the message to parents that all we can do right now is our best and that’s enough,” says Jennie Weiner, an associate professor of educational leadership. “That we need to have self-compassion because it’s going to be messy, and to remember that educators, too, need our support and compassion as they attempt to be superhuman so we can feel a bit more human.”

In the wake of the pandemic, schools have pivoted to online learning. Rachael Gabriel, associate professor of literacy education and director of Neag School of Education’s Reading and Language Arts Center, knew she wanted to help the education community amid this major shift.

Polykosmia is a universe dreamed up by students in two classes led this spring by Stephen Slota (he/him, they/them), Neag School assistant professor-in-residence of educational technology. The project, an exercise in both worldbuilding and lesson planning, involved designing everything from mythologies to local governments to individual character arcs. Students also learned how to adapt worldbuilding activities into K–12 classrooms and how to design lesson plans that connected story objectives in a fictional world with learning objectives in the classroom.