Students Partnering with Faculty (SpF)

Application Submission: November 1, 2020 – January 31, 2021

University-wide Committee Review: February 8, 2021 – February 26, 2021

Committee meets March 1, 2021

Report to President: March 8, 2021

Awards announced in March

Social Commerce and Young Consumers: the Role of Impulse Buying
Min Chung Han, School of Management and Marketing

"As a relatively new phenomenon, social commerce has rapidly transformed social media from an online community platform to an online commerce platform.  A noteworthy example is Instagram, one of the most popular social media apps among young consumers, which launched an online shopping feature in 2019 allowing users to purchase products by clicking on posts. This ‘checkout’ feature allows online consumers to find new products, examine items via multiple photos and videos, and purchase items without leaving the Instagram app. The instant mobile shopping feature has proven itself as a promising concept, insofar as about 11% of Instagram users have already purchased products through the platform (emarketer, 2019). Social commerce is a subset of e-commerce, defined in a broad sense as any social media initiated or mediated online commerce (Curty & Zhang, 2011; Kim & Park, 2013).  It is also more narrowly defined as e-commerce within social media sites, engineered so that customers do not need to leave the site to purchase products (Han & Kim, 2017).  The new Instagram checkout feature falls under the latter definition.  Social media commerce provides a convenient way for online consumers to purchase items as they look through social media posts and offers small business owners opportunities to reach new markets and potentially increase sales. Some business owners have reported huge increases in sales and traffic since utilizing this strategy (Wallace, 2019; Zhou, Zhang, & Zimmermann, 2013).  To harness the power of social commerce, it is important to understand users’ psychological mechanism and behavior, since creating favorable user reactions is a critical factor for success in new technology (Venkatesh, 1999).  Although we are witnessing an increase in the study of social
commerce, one area that has yet to be well researched is the role of consumers’ impulsive buying behavior. Impulsive buying accounts for up to 80% of all purchases in certain product categories (Abrahams, 1997; Smith, 1996), and it has been suggested that purchases of new products result more from impulse purchasing than from prior planning (Sfiligoj, 1996).  As social commerce expects to be a new norm in e-commerce for the Z-generation, this study sets out to investigate what attracts Z-generation consumers to social commerce rather than traditional ecommerce platforms, and whether impulsive buying behavior plays a role. This study will employ the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework (Jacoby, 2002) as a theoretical base to support the research model. This research aims to provide theoretical evidence and introduces a new perspective for social commerce consumer behavior. "

Nantucket Historical Association Research Collaborative Proposal
Rose Gonnella, Robert Busch School of Design

"The overarching mission of this project is to empower Robert Busch School of Design students with the opportunity to collaborate on innovative design research with the Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) and strengthen the potential for future partnerships. This project aligns with Kean’s mission in its (1) dedication to student learning, (2) creation of collaborative opportunities with educational and community organizations for continuous learning, and (3) establishment of educational opportunities in national arenas.
This NHA Research Collaborative will support student learning by involving students in collaborative research, scholarship, creative work, and innovative uses of technology while simultaneously enhancing students' skills in professional areas. Within the design disciplines, students need to have the opportunity to create products for real clients in order to be optimally prepared for the professional world. 
Within the context of Dr. Toney’s directive to faculty to engage students in research and creative work projects, we are developing a partnership with the Nantucket Historical Association in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Established in 1894, the Nantucket Historical Association preserves and interprets the history of Nantucket through its programs, collections, and properties, in order to promote the historic significance of the island and its people and foster an appreciation of it among all audiences.

 This partnership will provide design students with an opportunity to research, create, and execute digital visual communication products for the NHA. We were invited to Nantucket by James Russell, the director of the NHA, in December 2019 in order to meet with him and his staff as well as members of their Board of Trustees. With that initial meeting, we met Mr. Russell and his staff in person and gained further insights to determine a prioritized list of projects and discuss support for student internships for on-site research. We visited the NHA museum and its historic properties to gain direct familiarity with the sites involved. The NHA has many house museums and other properties and structures as well as a world-class museum. There is some similarity to Liberty Hall. In fact, the success of our past design projects involving Liberty Hall and our students validated our experience and solidified the partnership with the NHA.
These SpF students would have the opportunity to work on special projects with us on campus in Kean USA involving interactive experience design projects while supporting the efforts of on-site interns at the NHA over the summer. By shaping this relationship with the NHA, we are opening the opportunity of connecting with sister organizations for additional student research opportunities, including but not limited to the Nantucket Preservation Trust, Center for Coastal Studies, Maria Mitchel Association, and University of Massachusetts Field Station on the island.
The three main goals of this proposed project are the following: 
1.) Rooftop Harbor Visualization: Create a 3D/360-degree animated visualization that would play in a virtual reality device similar to a binocular viewer, which enables museumgoers to see what the Nantucket harbor looked like at two different times, ca. 1800 and ca. 1900, on the rooftop terrace of the NHA Whaling Museum.
2.) Whale Rescue Immersive Experience: Create a prototype of an immersive experience of a diver rescuing a whale from entanglement with refuse in the ocean and enable museumgoers to interact with the simulated rescue.
3.) Interactive Mapping: Create prototypes for interactive map-based experiences of information about the various NHA buildings and structures.    Thank you for your consideration of our proposal. We believe that this partnership has the potential to grow and result in very special experiences for our students and our institution."

Biochar: Fighting the Climate Change and Soil Contamination using Recycled Waste Materials
Juyoung Ha, School of Environmental and Sustainability Sciences

Biochar is a carbon rich charcoal-like solid made from a specialized process called a pyrolysis in which waste biomass, such as rice rusk and animal manure, are treated at high temperature under oxygen-free conditions. Most interestingly and advantageously to our society, creating biochar actually reduces CO2 in the atmosphere because the process takes a theoretically carbon-neutral process of naturally decaying organic matter and turns it carbon-negative. For example, greenhouse gas emission is reduced by the conversion of biomass to biochar as this process locks up the carbon from the biomass into the biochar and thereby delaying the release of this carbon in the form of CO2 back to the atmosphere. If biochar is buried into the soil for carbon credits and crop enhancement, the whole process can achieve a global scale of carbon negative state. Studies have demonstrated that biochar remains stable against chemical and biological degradation, when applied to soils, makes it a pioneer means of mitigating climate change (Lehmann, 2007). Therefore, if potential revenue from C emissions trading alone can justify the application of biochar, this will change the entire industry of biochar production as biochar can be applied to a wide range of practices including agriculture and remediation approach.

World of Data: A Multi-User Virtual Reality Distributed Data Environment
David Joiner, NJ Center for Science, Technology and Mathematics

"World of Data is software designed to help students, teachers, and researchers view data in a virtual reality environment. The goal of the project is to develop a 3D world that users can log into, communicate in, and upload and view data sets in 3 dimensions. Users in World of Data will be able to visualize and analyze multi-dimensional data in a unique interface that makes use of modern virtual reality hardware such as the Oculus Rift and Gear VR headsets, as well as Kean’s CAVE environment, but that also runs on standard PCs, Macs, tablets, and smartphones. World of Data is built using the Unity3D Game Engine, one of the leading development environments for virtual reality software. Scientific Visualization is a rich field with many tools to choose from, however the focus of the tools currently existing is on high resolution camera ready still images for publication. Real-time visualization has largely taken a back seat, particularly with regards to screen refresh rate. This has slowed the adoption of VR hardware in science visualization, as there is a disconnect between the high refresh rate required of modern VR hardware and the high resolution expected of professional science visualization tools. VR has largely been a poorly supported add-on in the scientific visualization community, and the recently released low-cost headset based solutions have gone unadopted by most science visualization software projects. VR tools, on the other hand, have largely focused on game development and other entertainment projects, and there is a lack of ready-made science and math software components to plug into existing VR projects. World of Data bridges this gap by taking a VR-first approach to scientific visualization, creating the code to visualize scientific data from the ground up within the Unity3D environment, along with any efficiencyimproving algorithms, custom shaders, or data constructs required to not only render visualizations of
data, but do so at frame rates required for an interactive VR experience. Development for World of Data began as part of a Research First Initiative project in Fall 2016, during which time the software tools needed to create standard 2D and 3D science visuals as well as data constructs for storing and manipulating data were created. Additionally, we have had SpF support in the summers of 2017 and 2018. World of Data supports unstructured data sets as well as arbitrary dimensional gridded data sets, and can display scatter and line plots in 2 and 3D, surface plots in 3D, vector glyph renderings in 3D, isocontours of functions of 3 variables, GIS Maps, bar maps of geolocated data, 3D threshold plots for both gridded and ungridded data, and chemical structures. We have released the libraries behind World of Data, the Unity Visualization Toolkit (UVT), as an open source product available on github (https://github.com/joinerda/unity-visualization-toolkit). Throughout summer 2018, we added to the UVT with SpF funding additional tools, including a 3D volumetric renderer, and a 2D surface plot/heatmap tool that allows for irregularly spaced datasets. We continued testing on Gear VR, Oculus Rift, and CAVE platforms. Additionally, we greatly simplified the creation of scenes using the UVT by building an abstraction layer over our visualization and data objects, as well as editor tools so that scene creation is much more “drag and drop” and requires substantially less coding. In summer 2019, GSSRP students developed a curved drawing surface that could be applied on top of a globe for global data visualizations of gridded data cross latitude and longitude. Students in the 2018-2019 RFI program have worked to develop a stacked image viewer for confocal microscope data. The students on this SpF project will advance the project forward in two key ways. Xyler Ferraris, who was on last year’s RFI team for the project, will develop a 3D groundwater hydrology model, based on an existing 2D model. This model will generate challenges for 3D visualization, as end users will need to be able to visualize fluid flow through ground surface. The data generated by this groundwater model will generate a rich set for testing the capabilities of the UVT, and will allow us to focus on integrating UVT elements directly into models built in Unity. Charlie Sergeant will develop image analysis tools. His initial project will focus on flat images of pollen grains from the pollen counting station on campus, and will allow us to develop image recognition tools based on methods to detect point sources and characterize images using neural networks. While this will focus on 2D images initially, the stacked image reader in development for the UVT will benefit from these image recognition features as we move to 3D objects built from stacks of 2D images."

A Path for Enhancing the Recruitment and Retention of Minorities in the Workplace: Does Distributive Justice Help Shatter the Glass Ceiling?
Ipek Kocoglu, School of Management and Marketing

"The realization that occupational minorities in corporate America, defined as white women and men and women of color(Cook & Glass, 2014), continue to experience considerable barriers on career growth – a glass ceiling (Glass Ceiling Commission, 1995) –demands insights into the mechanisms that can help overcome minority-based differences in pay and promotion practices (Carter & Silva, 2010; Ibarra, Carter, & Silva, 2010; Joshi, Son, & Roh, 2015; Oakley, 2000; O’Neil, Hopkins, & Bilimoria, 2008). Academic research has responded to this challenge by offering suggestions such as the equivalence of performance appraisals to minimize the possibility of women and racial and ethnic minorities being paid less than their male and white counterparts (Hill, Upadhyay, & Beekun, 2015; Lyness & Heilman, 2006), regulatory enforcement to increase the representation of minorities in leadership positions (Catalyst, 2016; Dickens, 2006; Goodall & Osterloh, 2017), and by encouraging minority inclusion at the level of the board to set an example for the lower levels (Campbell & Mínguez-Vera, 2008; Terjesen & Singh, 2008). By emphasizing the expectation of equality in outcomes, these ideas have reinforced the model of distributive justice that suggests identical efforts should be associated with identical economic outcomes regardless of the employee’s gender, race, or ethnicity (Cook & Glass, 2014; Virtanen & Elovainio, 2018). The indefensibly slow progress in the minority representation and the odds of promotion to top positions at the workplace, however, increasingly shifts the focus towards procedural justice (Cohen Charash & Spector, 2001; Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001; Cook & Glass, 2014). It has led to the introduction of policies and procedures that focus on improving the conditions of employment that primarily target minorities, for example, through the assignment of competitive roles and responsibilities (Heimovics & Herman, 1988; Valentine, Godkin, & Turner, 2002), greater networking opportunities (Bierema, 2005; Ibarra, 1992, 1997), and provision of behavioral mechanisms that make it easier for minorities and to contribute to strategic decisions (Piderit & Ashford, 2003; Wyatt & Silvester, 2015). This shift corresponds to the findings that it is often the procedural justice – the perceived equality of procedures - than the distributive justice –  the actual distribution of rewards that shape employee beliefs regarding organizational justice (Colquitt et al., 2001; Sweeney & McFarlin, 1997; Welbourne, Balkin, & Gomez-Mejia, 1995).  
Despite this attention, however, career outcomes have remained unfavorable for minorities (Goodall & Osterloh, 2017; Hekman, Johnson, Foo, & Yang, 2017). As Joshi et al. (2015) identify, minority discrimination continues to persist, and its alleviation demands a structural change in organizational procedures. Focusing on gender discrimination in the workplace, they suggests that minorities “receive significantly lower pay in comparable jobs, and are under-represented at the highest levels in organizations. . . . [there is a] need to take a structural perspective to reverse gender discrimination in the workplace. Such an approach would involve going beyond the barriers framing that has dominated the field to an in-depth appraisal of how ostensibly gender-neutral practices, mechanisms, and processes at the job, work group, and organizational levels of analysis could jointly be harnessed as avenues to positively impact women and men’s working lives and to promote gender inclusion (p. 1459, 1471).
 
In this study, we follow Joshi et al. (2015) to conceptualize and test a structural approach to address the occupational minority gap in the workplace and in leadership positions. But rather than pursuing a ‘minority-neutral’ approach, we argue for a minority-adjusted approach to organizational justice. We posit that the lack of sufficient progress with regards to minority parity is partly a result of our taking the relationship between procedural and distributive justice farther than warranted. Procedural justice complements but it does not replace distributive justice (McFarlin & Sweeney, 1992; Törnblom & Vermunt, 2016). Thus, across the minority divide, an absence of distributive justice cannot be replaced by a disproportionate emphasis on procedural justice (Lee & Farh, 1999; Lee, Pillutla, & Law, 2000; also see Parker, Baltes, & Christiansen, 1997). On the contrary, we claim that if procedural justice is completely in place and organizations are blind to employee’s gender, ethnicity and race, minorities will be penalized even harshly. This is because a white male dominated workforce has shaped the link between procedural and
distributive justice (Caleo, 2016; Dickens, 2006; Kim, Kim, & Lee, 2015). It has led to behavioral interpretations that are at odds with challenges experienced by minorities in the workplace. So when procedural justice is ensured, rather than encouraging, it discourages distributive justice across the minority divide. Without accounting for minority-specific challenges, a minority-neutral approach to procedural justice leads to minority-specific distributive injustice. We propose that as the distributive justice policies in a firm increase, the recruitment of minorities in that firm will increase. We also suggest that as the distributive justice policies in a firm increase, the attrition of minorities in that firm will decrease. Further we propose that as the distributive justice policies in a firm increase, the advancement of minorities to leadership positions in that firm will increase. By examining the Fortune 500 firms’ human resources policies that confirm to distributive and procedural justice we aim to explain the effect of distributively just policies on the minority recruitment, attrition, and advancement to leadership."

Investigating deep learning for predicting multi-linguistic conversations of a chatter bot
Juan Jenny Li, School of Computer Science and Technology

"The very exciting and promising approach of Deep Learning (DL) has been repeatedly demonstrated to be very useful on large, real-world data sets. DL with multiple convolutional or recurrent layers are currently the two mainstream techniques for AI machine learning because they are extremely successful in performing many machine-learning tasks, such as image recognition, speech interpretation, and language translation. However, the approach remains limited usage due to the lacking of design principles and the trained professionals to create appropriate DL neural networks. In this project, we will investigate the underlying principles of DL NN, an open unsolved research problem, and train students to design optimal DL neural networks (NN) through applying DL NN to predict multi-linguistic conversations of a chatter bot. This research will tackle the wellknown open problem of optimal NN design, based on its mathematical interpretations. If successful, it will bring a significant breakthrough to the field of machine learning.
 
This is also a fertile area for students to do both experimental computational and theoretical
formulated research to propose, validate and invalidate existing research hypotheses and identify research questions.  Beyond solving an open problem and training students in designing DL NN, the funding we are requesting will enable us to continue our award-winning chatter bot research with enhanced feature of adding deep learning to predict content and translation accuracy of conversations. The collected research outcomes will help move forward the field of Machine Learning. Furthermore, this project will cultivate the recruitment and retention of students at Kean and prepare them for meaningful careers in machine learning.
 
Specifically, through this project, we are ready to begin ramping up student research in the area of deep learning. For this, we need support such as faculty and student summer stipends for undergraduate research, regional research collaborations (in this case, partnership with Rutgers), costs for students to present their research and workshops to prepare them for graduate schools and REU applications.  
 
Overall, our research will contribute to the field of Machine Learning through identifying optimal NN design and use it to enhance a chatter bot that allows people to communicate and understand each other smoothly, even in different natural languages."

Synthesis of Novel TarO Inhibitors to Overcome Antibiotic Resistance
James Merritt, NJ Center for Science, Technology and Mathematics

"Declining efficacy of β-lactam antibiotics due to development of antibiotic resistance has led to an urgent need for new therapeutics.  In the US, blood stream infections due to Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are the second leading cause of death due to drug-resistant bacterial pathogens.  Alteration or inactivation of wall teichoic acid (WTA) can overcome β-lactam resistance in MRSA.  Researchers at Merck found that interference with WTA genes such as TarO can interfere with WTA synthesis and transport.  Specifically, small molecule inhibitors of TarO were identified, found to inhibit WTA synthesis, and when combined with a β-lactam antibiotic, stopped the growth of β-lactam resistant bacteria in vitro.  With further structural optimization, this class of compounds could eventually provide a drug that could be co-adminstered with existing antibiotics to synergistically overcome antibiotic resistance in patients.  The Merck researchers who discovered TarO inhibitors formed their own company, Prokaryotics, to further explore this approach.  Prokaryotics has an incubator lab on the 5th floor of the STEM building at Kean University.  Dr. Merritt and four of his undergraduate researchers began a collaboration with Prokaryotics this past semester.  Dr. Merritt and his students have been given access to Prokaryotics structures and data and are working to design and synthesize new molecules in one of the TarO inhibitor chemical series.  Alyssa Ramierez, Student #2 on this application, has already synthesized one of the most potent TarO inhibitors to date.  There is still much optimization work to be done as any future drug must be potent and also bioavailable.   

The primary goal for our work would be to optimize a back-up compound series for Prokaryotics.  This series is unlikely to progress to a drug, but information gained will inform the leading compound series.  Students will be expected to synthesize at least one compound per week during the summer months using strucutural activity relationships and medicinal chemistry strategies that they have learned from Prokaryotics and Dr. Merritt.  The summer objective would be to identify a potent, metabolically stable compound with acceptable in vitro indications of bioavailability (biological testing will be performed by Prokaryotics at their expense).  The compounds will be novel and publishable subject to Prokaryotics permission.  Prokaryotics has agreed to publication/presentation of the student work provided that the back-up series is not pursued by the company.  SpF funding would enable Dr. Merritt and three of his student researchers to work with Prokaryotics full time through the summer months.  Prokaryotics has NIH funding to support their own employees and all required biological studies but is not able to fund student interns at this time.  The Prokaryotics researchers are experienced chemists and biologists and our students will benefit greatly from their training.  Prokaryotics will benefit from Dr. Merritt’s medicinal chemistry expertice and having extra lab workers to make more compounds."

Analysis of germ granule composition in connection to reproductive health
Matthew Niepielko, NJ Center for Science, Technology and Mathematics

The development and maintenance of the germline, the set of highly specialized cells responsible for passing on genetic material to the following generation, requires the packaging of a specific set of mRNAs into highly conserved ribonucleoprotein (RNP) granules called germ granules. Throughout the animal kingdom, germ granules play essential roles in germline proliferation, differentiation, and maintenance through posttranscriptional gene regulation. However, the connection between quantitative changes in germ granule mRNA content and reproductive health remains unknown. The goal of this proposal is to determine how quantitative changes in germ granule mRNA content influence reproductive health using Drosophila germ granules as a model system. In Drosophila, mRNAs accumulate in germ granules by forming homotypic clusters, distinct RNPs containing multiple copies of a specific mRNA type. The importance of homotypic clustering is highlighted by germline deformities that are observed in experiments where the homotypic clusters of nanos (nos), a highly conserved germ granule mRNA, are reduced. Homotypic clusters are generated through a stochastic seeding and self-recruitment process that relies primarily on the cis-regulatory sequences found in the 3′UTR of germ granule mRNAs called “clustering elements.” We reason that clustering elements may be susceptible to mutations, resulting in aberrant quantities of mRNAs within germ granules, leading to poor reproductive health. Preliminary results demonstrate that different species of Drosophila display a remarkable variation in fecundity (egg laying) as well as sequence diversity in the nos clustering element. Our central hypothesis is that this sequence diversity is responsible for altering the nos content in germ granules, yielding differences in germline development and fecundity (Fig. 1). The following two aims are designed to test our hypotheses by exploring the relationship between fecundity, homotypic clustering, and clustering elements. Given the highly conserved nature of germ granules and germ granule mRNAs, completion of this study may reveal new mechanisms underlying diseases such as infertility and sterility while broadening the field’s current knowledge surrounding reproductive health. This project will also have a broader impact on undergraduate students at Kean University. Students that will be working on the above aims will learn desirable skills in the biotechnology industry such as 1) smFISH, 2) microscopy, 3) Computational analysis and 4) Applied biostatistics. Students will learn how to integrate computational skills with biological experiments, which is a highly sought after trait for graduate programs and industry jobs. We expect that the completion of the two aims will lead to multiple student publications in high impact journals, which will greatly enhance the professional growth of Kean’s students.

Investigating nature's therapeutic characteristics in promoting mental health
Feng Qi, School of Environmental and Sustainability Sciences

"Stress is a physiological and cognitive/affective state that may trigger or worsen more serious conditions including depression and anxiety and is estimated to affect 75–90% people including young adults in colleges and universities. Much research has demonstrated that nature and especially green space promote stress reduction, lower the risk of stress-related diseases, and improve general well-being. While mechanisms of the therapeutic functions of nature have been proposed, many questions remain unanswered. For example, little is known about the roles that specific characteristics of nature play in promoting health benefits and how such relationships are moderated by factors such as sociocultural backgrounds and individuals’ dispositions and ways of relating to emotional experiences. This study proposes to investigate (1) the objective characteristics of therapeutic natural settings and (2) the subjective perceptions of such settings among college students with various sociocultural backgrounds and personal traits. Through the characterization of critical properties in nature that help foster stress relief, our goal is to provide guidelines for landscape design and the development of targeted therapy programs.
Previous studies had limitations in addressing these issues because there was not sufficient data available. This project proposes to collect data through mobile sensing on two types of campuses. The two campuses are Kean Skylands and Kean Union, respectively. Kean Skylands represents a typical green campus with the most abundant natural elements while Kean Union a suburban campus with only a moderate supply of natural elements. An interactive app will be used to collect data on the participants’ perceptions of their surrounding environment and related psychological measures through ecological momentary assessment (EMA). The app will also
utilize built-in A-GPS functions on smartphones to identify the locations related to the responses. Paired with aerial and eye-level imageries, the spatial data will be used to construct a virtual realization of the objective environment. The dataset will be analyzed to identify key properties of the objective environment that lead to specific environmental perceptions and relate to stress and its management. Hypotheses will be generated regarding relations between stress and aspects of the environment, as well as how these are moderated by individual differences.
This proposed project combines the strengths of environmental science and experimental psychology, as well as modern computational science. It provides an innovative interdisciplinary method to collect data for examining mechanisms of nature’s therapeutic functions, making contributions to the related sciences and delivering practical outcomes for targeted nature therapy and urban environmental design that promote mental health. "

Exploring Suicide Prevention Programming for Elementary-Aged Youth: Determining Strengths and Needs in New Jersey
Katherine Shirley, Counselor Education

"On Sunday night, January 26, 2020, a 14-year-old high school freshman from northern New Jersey died by suicide.  Research shows that she is but one of the 517 ten- to fourteen-year-olds in the United States who will die by suicide this year.  The CDC (2019) reports that suicide is the second leading cause of death for this age group (second only to accidents), and that the suicide rate - now 2.5 per 100,000 - has increased by 278% in the last decade.  Still, not even a week before the death of this student, on January 21, 2020, New Jersey Governor, Phil Murphy, vetoed a bill (S2835) that would have mandated yearly depression screenings for 7th through 12th graders in all New Jersey public schools.  While aiming to maintain the girl’s anonymity and not reporting on the particular school, this researcher did find materials on the school’s website that describes a potential link to suicide prevention training aimed at 8th and 9th grade students in her district.  However, peers from the district have reported that they did not receive any education related to suicide while enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade.  And, it was suspected that the girl who died had engaged in multiple suicidal gestures and attempts prior to her recent completion.  It is indisputable that current practices in suicide prevention are too little, and too late.  
Suicide prevention efforts need to be implemented througout a child’s education, beginning in elementary school or even earlier.  In a grounded theory research study, this researcher previously found that children as young as 3 (with allusions to those even younger) experience the full spectrum of suicidality, which includes ideation, behavior, attempts, and completed suicide (Shirley, 2020).  In addition, mental health counseling researchers have proposed that actual figures of childhood suicidality under age 10 are significantly greater than publicly acknowledged (Davis, 2004; Shamoo & Patros, 1997).  It’s time for us to do better, and this research project is intended to serve as a foundation for change.

School Counselors’ Perceptions of Trauma Informed Practices: An Exploratory Study
Jane Webber, Counselor Education

Columbine and Sandy Hook are school tragedies that are indelibly imprinted in our memories. Since September 11, our feelings of safety and security have been shattered. The proliferation of shootings in schools, universities, houses of worship, and theaters have changed the way we live. Media coverage of terrorist attacks and events of mass violence, and public response have heightened awareness about individual trauma, as well.  The Adverse Childhood Experiences study (Felliti, et al. 1998) dramatically changed our knowledge of immediate and long term negative effects of violence and maltreatment that include psychological problems and physical illness.  This landmark study, along with rapid advances in the understanding of neurobiological development, has transformed the way school counselors view the impact of trauma on children’s development and behavior, and increased their understanding of  the importance of prevention and early intervention. Recognizing that most individuals have experienced one or more traumas (some have had multiple violent and traumatic events) mental health agencies and hospitals have rapidly moved toward trauma informed practices that are safe and supportive. As a corollary to trauma informed mental health practice, trauma informed schools , particularly elementary schools, is a growing initiative with the increasing recognition of the prevalence of trauma and multiple adverse childhood experiences and their deleterious effects in children.       The mission of the Kean University Master’s in Counseling program is “developing compassionate trauma informed counselors.” Trauma-informed practices begin in the orientation course and are infused throughout the program. Even with this trauma foundation, in a culture of school shootings and mass violence, students express their need for more training especially with children and adolescents who have trauma histories. It is timely to explore school counselors’ perceived awareness, knowledge, use of trauma informed practices, and their needs to develop trauma informed schools. Participants will be drawn from a convenience sample in some of the districts that the MA in Counseling program serves. To our knowledge after an exploratory literature review, there is no study with the goals to  assess school counselor perceptions, awareness, and knowledge about trauma informed schools and practices; to identify knowledge and use of adverse childhood experiences, and to disseminate trauma informed practices to schools, school counselors, the university, and the public. Distinctive to this study is the component of concurrent training and practice in methods for the student team members,  as the students may have different levels of research skills. This cooperative research and training approach will increase our skills, provide an additional venue for advancing our research skills on the job, and enhance our team work and collaboration skills with our faculty team members.     Detailed goals are: (a) to Identify school counselors’ perceptions of trauma informed schools and  practices in school counselors in selected New Jersey schools served by Kean University’s Counselor  Education Program; (b) to assess the use of trauma informed practices by school counselors; (c) to assess knowledge and use of Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire in schools; (d) to identify needs of school counselors in developing trauma informed school programs and factors or obstacles affecting the  implementation of  trauma informed school practices; (d) to provide a rationale for increasing the integration of trauma informed schools principles and  practices in the Kean University CED curriculum for  the MA in  Counseling, Option in School Counseling; and (e) Increase awareness of the principles and  practices of  trauma informed schools by disseminating research results and recommendations to school counselors and professionals.