Students who speak English as a foreign language (EFLs) are pushed within U.S. academic settings to strive for “standard” English—an academic English heralding grammar “correctness” and adherence to rules. EFL curriculum prioritizes for “standard” English, but ignores the ways that terms like “standard” are exclusive, and rarely addresses how an EFL writer may use language in more inventive ways. How do we re-imagine the teaching of writing in ways that can not only help EFL writers in formal high-stakes writing, but also open the door to other creative uses of writing which need not adhere to such strict and increasingly hackneyed standards? My research will draw from many of the conversations focused on second-language acquisition and bilingual education, including work from scholars such as David Freeman and Sara Alvarez, to understand the most recent and effective approaches to teaching English as a second language, as well as discover what approaches to teaching creative writing hold untapped potential for EFL students to acquire new language skills. I will use The Chicago Manual of Style as a contemporary example of a style guide which prescribes “standard” grammar convention. Using an assortment of the grammar topics selected from Chicago for comparison, I will discuss examples of deviations from grammar conventions by writers from various linguistic backgrounds, including Safiya Sinclair, Ocean Vuong, and Mohsin Hamid. By investigating who makes English “standards,” how EFLs best learn, and how these standards have been broken for the better, I aim to create a subversive style guide for EFL writers which is useful for both formal and creative writing.

Many communities of color have been disenfranchised as a result of interactions with the criminal legal system. While many studies have shown that access to higher education reduces recidivism and encourages upward mobility, a very small percentage of this impacted population are actually able to access institutions of higher education. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to address the disparate representation of system-impacted individuals in higher education. This project aims to answer and begin to respond to the following questions: 1) What are the challenges and outright barriers for system-impacted students who wish to continue their education at UW? 2) What can UW do to make it a feasible destination for students who are system-impacted? This research project includes: the collection and analysis of existing data on system-impacted individuals and access to higher education; interviews with UW administrative offices that may play a role in the access to higher education for system-impacted individuals. Thereafter, a working group consisting of: system-impacted individuals; system-impacted students; students interested in criminal justice reform; and UW faculty interested in criminal justice reform; will form and implement strategies on how to lower institutional barriers and create clearer pathways to the UW for system impacted-individuals. By building partnering strategies with the UW community, the goal of the Pathways to UW project is to develop more clearer and transparent pathways for individuals who have been system-impacted to enroll on UW campuses. I want to ultimately build a community and a working network on campus that supports access and welcomes individuals impacted by the criminal and immigration system. Currently, there is no system in place on campus that supports such a marginalized population. To have such a system in place would address many racial and class disparities among the marginalized communities these impacted individuals traditionally come from.

While the cross-cultural learning experience may be perceived as stimulating and intellectual, international students may unfamiliar with their host culture and can be especially vulnerable to building their level of self-efficacy in social interactional tasks. Due to the little research has been down to address in what ways we could improve international students’ cultural adaptation, the main purpose of this study is to raise awareness of the potential challenges faced by international students on campus and to promote an inclusive space for them by proposing a potential strategy to aid their acculturation. Acknowledging the need to support international students, I postulate that the peer mentorship, which is considered as a relationship between a student and someone in a similar age who has volunteered to support their transit through the various experiences in college, can promote a better college transition. Through conducting an online questionnaire to make a comparison study, I am attempting to explore the correlation between peer mentorship, acculturation, and self-efficacy. 

Universities are increasingly expected to integrate sustainability practices throughout their mission, strategic planning, operations and academics. Achieving institutional sustainability requires a comprehensive strategic plan which coordinates the efforts and resources of administration, facilities, faculty, and students by making progress toward measurable goals. How can universities use sustainability benchmarking standards to develop a comprehensive strategic plan that achieves institutional goals, while making progress toward global sustainability reporting standards? This project outlines a model for universities to develop a strategic sustainability plan utilizing the Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARS) as a foundation, to align institutional planning with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). The plan is comprised of seventeen sections or modules that aligns the categories of STARS, the GRI and the UN SDGs into a framework for benchmarking data of key performance indicators (KPIs). The data is visualized using Tableau software to create a campus sustainability map and data dashboard to track annual progress on the KPIs. The goal of this project is the creation of a generalizable and replicable model for aligning a university's strategic sustainability planning with global sustainability metrics. This model facilitates more efficient data driven decision making and resource allocation, while supporting globally focused sustainability research and funding.

A challenge Universities face is placing students in math classes that match their level of preparedness. SAT scores have shown that a placement test is unreliable because of biases towards women and underrepresented minorities in the field of mathematics. To examine these potential biases in the current math placement exam at the University of Washington – Bothell, this research was focused on variables such as placement exam score, SAT score, grade in math classes in addition to gender and ethnicity. To test if there is a linear correlation between placement score and grades, a one-sided t test was performed to test the null hypothesis of slope, β = 0 versus an alternative that β > 0 . The data suggests little correlation between the placement tests and grades in the respective math classes. A two sample test for a difference in proportions was used to test that a higher number of women and underrepresented minorities were placed in lower division remedial courses, which can potentially add significant amounts of time taking classes that are not necessary and therefore costing student achievement towards a degree.

 In higher education, diversity has become a widespread initiative; taking the form of diversity councils, required diversity courses and campus-wide diversity statements. The aim is to be more than a physical grouping of all people, but have an inclusion of all perspectives. However, who bears the burden of these diversity initiatives? Instructors and professional staff provide resources and serve as outlets to students who are in need of space to share personal experience and themselves go through additional emotional labor. Emotional labor is the process of managing feelings/emotions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job and often is not talked about. Research has shown that instructors teaching diversity courses experience a large amount of emotional labor, and a high demand for support from students. This project complements the existing research by understanding the emotional labor of non-teaching professionals who work directly in diversity offices, serving underrepresented groups of students. The primary research question is: how do non-teaching professionals working with underrepresented populations experience and understand emotional labor in higher education? Through interviews with non-teaching professionals working with underrepresented groups of students, this research sheds light on the behind-the-scenes work they do to support students and the personal costs and benefits of the emotional labor they provide. These findings help us more accurately assess the necessary investment institutions of higher education need to make in order to foster a truly diverse environment. This study will open up the conversation around diversity initiatives by examining how exclusionary institutions of higher education achieve inclusivity and show who is bearing the additional work to create an equitable, inclusive community for all.