Fixing the Student Debt Disparity
The Washington Post reported last Friday on the vast disparity between Black and white borrowers in education loans, citing research from SoHE’s Lorna Jorgenson Wendt Professor in Money, Relationships, and Equality Dr. Fenaba Addo. She had presented as part of a panel earlier this month at the Varying Degrees conference on education policy, sponsored by Washington, DC, think tank New America. TheGrio also covered the discussion, as did The Defender Network.
New Edition of Handbook on Children with Incarcerated Parents
Dr. Julie Poehlmann-Tynan, the Dorothy A. O’Brien Professor in Human Ecology and faculty affiliate of the Center for Healthy Minds and Institute for Research on Poverty, has published with coauthor Dr. J. Mark Eddy the much anticipated second edition of Handbook on Children with Incarcerated Parents, now available in hardcover and eBook from Springer. In a time of exceptionally high adult incarceration rates in the U.S. and with a growing incarceration crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border, the book is a welcome update to an important conversation from its original release in 2011. Read the full press release about the book here.
There Is Such a Thing as a Free (School) Lunch
Last week, SoHE assistant professor of civil society and community studies Dr. Jennifer Gaddis joined the Mother Jones Bite podcast to discuss her book, The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools. Listen to the full conversation here. Read more, too, in a separate column about why student lunches are a feminist issue.
Can Virtual Reality Help Solve Crimes?
Shows like the popular CSI series are often criticized for their unrealistic portrayal of forensic work, specifically for representing it as much faster and more technologically advanced than in fact it is. Well, just last week, SoHE professor of design studies Dr. Kevin Ponto published a paper that may help some real-world CSI units advance their practices into just such futuristic-seeming fictions. Read his “Cost-Benefit Analysis of 3D Scanning Technology for Crime Scene Investigation” in Forensic Science International.
Moving from Tech to TEK in Global Food Solutions
What will it take to feed the world in 2050? In 2100? Beyond? Dr. Mariaelena Huambachano, one of SoHE’s five new faculty starting this fall, has a new paper out describing how Indigenous “foodways” derived from Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) could inform long-term food security solutions, rather than just technological industrial agriculture solutions that have predominated in global policy considerations. She is also just back from a pair of conferences in Europe, where she met scholar and activist Vandana Shiva at the Human Development and Capability Association conference in London and collaborated with fellow scholars and global leaders at the Unesco World Food Summit in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Day of the Dead altar boxes now available for community
SoHE’s annual Día de los Muertos community altar project is underway! Every year, Carolyn Kallenborn, the Jane Rafferty Thiele Professor in Human Ecology, organizes this special event. Learn more, including how to participate, here.
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