Where Undergraduates Publish Their Research

As my son starts his senior year in high school and Austin returns to traffic as usual with the return of UT students, I’m reminded that many students have just wrapped up their summer research projects. Colleges and universities are rich with work needing a place to be published. 

While browsing the internet recently, I found a resource on the website of Duquesne University for students looking to publish their research. It's an annotated bibliography under "Journals for Undergraduates – View a list of journals," a pdf that anyone can download. The list includes publications from the sciences to the humanities, from sustainability to creativity, from neurology to ethnography. The list is comprehensive and might help some students find an unexpected outlet for their work.

In my own backyard, a client cued me to UT Austin's own list of places where undergraduates can publish the research. That list includes places to publish that are internal to UT, some external resources, and ways to find still others.

Take a look and please let me know if any of your students publish in one of these journals.

Our Political Divide Reflected in High School Communities

With the Democratic Presidential debates coming up, in my household we’ve been thinking even more about the growing political division in the U.S. and the influence it has on our communities. It is striking to see the reflection in high schools.

John Rogers and his team at UCLA recently published a report discussing the influence of our political divide on students in high schools. Rogers surveyed high school principals around the U.S. and found that 89% of principals reported that students in their school are civil to one another in this political climate. They described “contentious classroom environments, hostile exchanges outside of class, and demeaning or hateful remarks over political views.” Much of the hostility that students expressed was about racial groups and immigrants. Principals were twice as likely to promote tolerance of immigrant youth if most were students of color than if most of the students were white.

How do you see the current the political climate reflected in your classroom, on your campus? Is there a need to address the climate on campus? If so, what strategies do you use?

What Influences the Environmental Identity of College Students?

When my daughter and her best friend reunited after their first year of college, there were some shifts – it’s a time of change. Her friend, always passionate about recycling and caring for the environment, is now vegan and looking for ways to cut her use of plastic. She brings her own containers to the grocery store and buys in bulk as much as she can. She got me thinking, not just about conservation, but about where her drive came from. Was it from the classes she was taking or from passion she’s had forever?

Recently, I came across an article on the environmental identity of college students in France no less. The study found that students' spending time in nature, having a social group interested in the environment, as well as childhood experiences in rural settings were contributing factors to a young adult's identity as an environmentalist. All of these factors were more important than were their decision to take environmental science classes or to major in it. Really, as far as my daughter's friend is concerned, we know she logged lots of time outdoors for play and vacation and adamant environmentalists make up family and friends, past and present. This study concurs with our experience; her friend was an environmentalists long before college, which means education alone is not the key to becoming an environmentalist.

The article uses assessments of students' sense of interdependence with the natural world and of their "sense of belonging" to nature. It's an interesting article, especially considering the cultural context of French post-secondary students. Take a look and let me know what you think.