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Stephen Jacobson, UB Distinguished Professor from the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, has been all over the world teaching courses and participating in many different research projects. “Everyone wants to go visit a country that is excelling in education, but there is more to learn by going to places that are still evolving,” says Jacobson, who was brought to Albania to discuss education from an American perspective, and is involved with a large international research project in India to reduce gender-based violence with the use of prosocial computer games.

There are a number of schools in Western New York and throughout the state that are struggling to meet state education standards. To help address this concern, Corrie Stone-Johnson, associate professor from the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, along with department colleagues Thomas Ramming, Melinda Lemke and Aliza Husain, are developing a university-based micro-credentials program for principals seeking the skills to improve these schools.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded Say Yes Buffalo and its partner institutions — including UB — a 22 month, $2.9 million grant to increase college completion rates for Buffalo Public School (BPS) graduates. Say Yes Buffalo, launched in 2012, is a community collaboration dedicated to increasing high school and postsecondary graduation rates. Say Yes Buffalo is also a college scholarship program for BPS students.

When she was a sophomore at UB, Joanna Saintil was fired from the College Success Center in Buffalo Public Schools' Bennett High School by Nathan Daun-Barnett, associate professor from the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, who hired the work study students for the center through a GEAR UP grant. Saintil, currently a master’s student from the Department of Counseling, School and Educational Psychology (CSEP), often challenged her supervisors to do more to help Bennett students. As her temper became shorter, she began to hurt her relationships in Bennett.

Nationwide, school lessons in personal growth and job skills have taken a backseat to preparation for standardized tests, according to new research led by Jaekyung Lee, PhD, professor of counseling, school and educational psychology in the Graduate School of Education.

Jiayou China! Jiayou Buffalo! Jiayou children artists! The Chinese “jiayou” cheer means “Keep going!” It is the message that GSE PhD student Qinghua Chen first sent to her home country in a video produced soon after news of the pandemic broke. She gave aid of a different kind to her Buffalo-area home last month when she donated 3,600 face masks to the Amherst Police and the Pediatric & Adolescent Urgent Care of WNY. This month she debuted her latest effort: an online exhibit of children’s art she’s collected in the months since the pandemic closed UB’s campus.

Within days of the pandemic shutdown, GSE PhD student Raven Baxter produced an educational rap music video about the virus, posted it to YouTube and it went, well, viral. In the months since, newscasters from New York City to Hawaii broadcast her video and the infectious song and lyrics — “Get some soap, scrub it down and show me how you do it!” — inspired Buffalo’s mayor’s office to ask for her help.