FEMALE-MALEGAPS

Females Face High Student Debt at Technical Schools

By Kirsten Baird
The Razorback Reporter

Female students who graduate from Bryan University, a technical school in Rogers, have an average of about $18,000 in student loans. This is $9,375 more than male graduates accrue, according to U.S. Department of Education student loan data from 2016-17.

Bryan has the largest gender gap in student loans in Arkansas, according to the College Scorecard, an Education Department database. An official at Bryan declined to comment.

Furthermore, the data shows that this gap is almost $3,000 more than Lyon College, a private school with the second largest gender debt gap.

In contrast to technical schools, larger public universities such as the University of Arkansas have a gender debt gap of about $900, according to the College Scorecard student loan data.

The nature of technical schools differs from that of public universities in the sense that there are often fewer core classes and more hands-on experience related specifically to career training, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

When comparing the percentage of males to females for Bryan and UofA, there is a difference in the cost and disbursement of money.

According to the 2016-17 U.S. News & World Report for Education, Bryan University is about 30% female and 70% male. The average scholarship awarded at Bryan is $5,145, according to the U.S. News, which is significantly less than the average amount of tuition per year.

The UA Enrollment report shows that the University of Arkansas is 52% female and 48% male.

Interviews with female students at the U of A show the range of experiences in financing college. Mallorie Spielmaker, 19, from Fayetteville, Arkansas is a second-year special education major at the University of Arkansas. She said she has the Arkansas Academic Challenge scholarship and a leadership scholarship offered through the university.

“This year it was $4,000 for the whole year,” Spielmaker said. “The leadership is $1,000 per semester.”

After one and a half years in school, Spielmaker has had to borrow $15,000 in student loans. “By the time I graduate, it will probably be closer to $25,000,” Spielmaker said.

Another UA student, senior Chloe Shreve, 22, is a political science major who has had to borrow money to pay for school even though she received federal grants. Shreve had a scholarship in her freshman year called the Freshman Success scholarship, granted to students whose parents didn’t attend college.

Mallorie Spielmaker, UofA sophomore, has over $15,000 in student debt. Photo by Kirsten Baird

Even with the scholarship money, Shreve said she still had to borrow in order to pay for school.

“I am pretty sure I am going to be graduating with around $10,000, because I get a lot from FAFSA,” Shreve said. The total Shreve receives in Federal Pell Grants from the university is about $3,500 per year, she said.

Additionally, the length of time in school could have an impact on the amount of student loan debt that a student accrues.

At Bryan, the program that most female students choose is the Business Administration and Management with an emphasis in spa management, which is one of the longest programs at the school, according to the Bryan University academic report. The length of time attending school can tend to lead to higher student borrowing. Generally speaking, females are enrolled in school for a longer period of time, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

November 26, 2019November 26, 2019

Book of Math Terms Provides Help for Students, Professionals

By Kirsten Baird
The Razorback Reporter

An interdisciplinary team of four UA professors have published a book that features a list of mathematical terms that will guide beginners and experts through their academic studies, a professor in Curriculum and Instruction said.

The Language of Mathematics: An Expanded Glossary of Key Terms and Concepts in Mathematics Teaching and Learning offers resources for students and educators who wish to deepen their understanding of math terms, the authors said.

“This book around the country will be useful for people pursuing a doctorate in mathematics education, because it is a very technical document in the sense that it explains and provides the background of the people who came up with these terms,” said Laura Kent, a UA mathematics education professor and co-author of the book.

Each term in the book is unique to mathematics teaching and learning and has a definition, description, and a list of references, Kent said.

As one who has enjoyed Googling the meaning of words, Kim McComas, one of the co-authors, said this book would be a place for her to be able to not only find what a term means, but also look at the background and find other references.

Through a rigorous process of synthesizing definitions, researching terms, and summarizing three to six articles of mathematical literature, each of the authors worked to chisel each term into a one-page overview, McComas said.

The hope for this book is that it provides resources for both new and experienced mathematicians, said Shannon Dingman, mathematics professor and co-author.

“I think anyone in any field has been new to that field at some point,” Dingman said. “And I think that when you’re new to a field, oftentimes, there is so much that you’re trying to absorb at one particular moment that a lot of times the easiest place to start is ‘what are we talking about?’”

The intent of the book is to enable students and math educators to fully understand the key terms used within mathematics to ensure that they can then help educate others fully, Kent said.

“My emphasis and my passion now, is to develop others to become math teachers. I love that part of it,” said Kent. “I teach the methods, go out and observe them learning how to teach in the schools. So, this book is really targeting more of that audience, more on the education side.”

Because this was an interdisciplinary project between the College of Education and Fulbright College, it provided a well-rounded perspective to reach both students and educators.

“I think that there are terms that we slightly use differently in the two different realms. So, it’s nice to come to an agreement, or at least some discussion about how a specific term might be used differently depending upon the context in which you work,” Dingman said.

“This is the second book in what we hope is a series of books,” Dingman said. “We want to provide these types of resources to whatever beginning grad student, whatever field that they’re looking at; English education, social studies education, music education.”

November 14, 2019December 3, 2019

Gender_Inequities

Women Face Higher Student Loan Debt, Workplace Challenges

By Kirsten Baird, Coleman Bonner, Abby Zimmardi
The Razorback Reporter

The average female student loan debt in Arkansas is $10,051, which is about $1,250 more than the average male student debt in 2016-17, according to a College Scorecard study, a U.S. Department of Education database.

Juliet Sittler, a UofA junior majoring in accounting, has around $19,000 in student loans from her first three years of college, she said. She intends on taking out more loans for graduate school and hopes to pay them off in less than five years.

Sittler, 20, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, said she’s entering a field dominated by men. “I would say that I’m not the only female, but there are way more guys than girls in all my classes,” Sittler said. Enrollment in the Walton College of Business in 2017 was 64% male and 35% female, according to the UofA Student Degree, Enrollment and Demographics.

On top of the gender disparity in student loans, some female students are entering professions with a significant gender imbalance, and they may not be paid as much as their male counterparts.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the top male-dominated fields are civil engineering, which is 14% female; chemical engineering, 18% female; and electrical engineering, 9% female. In each of these fields, women earn only about 89% of what men do, according to a study by the Department of Labor.

Summer Smith, a junior biomedical engineering student, said she is aware of her place as a minority within her field, yet she feels it could be used as an advantage.

“I think it’s kind of cool because you get a lot of different opportunities that women that are in a female-dominated field don’t have,” Smith, 20, from St. Louis said. “Since people are looking for women engineers, I think it really makes me stand out.” According to the UA Office of the Registrar, the engineering student body is 76% male and 24% female.

UA senior Katharine Jovicich, 23, from Dallas, who is majoring in chemical engineering, said she has acquired over $100,000 in student loan debt. Jovicich will be paying off her loans with no help from her family, besides living at home rent free, she said.

“My goal is three years, but I think I could pay the minimum payment and it goes maybe 10-20 years,” Jovicich said. “But I just want to be out of it and so I will live very simply and still at home and get all of that paid off.”

The gender imbalance in engineering is obvious even to the men. “In school, engineering is definitely male-dominated. I’d say at least 80% male, and in certain disciplines it was even more so,” said Jeremey Porterfield, 32, from Bryant, Arkansas. “You feel it in the culture of the company.”

Portfield graduated from the UofA with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and was awarded about $4,000 in scholarships during his time on the Fayetteville campus. He currently works as a project manager for Garver Engineers, but is still paying off his $40,000 in student loans.

November 13, 2019November 13, 2019

Early Intervention Key to Help Find Autistic Children in the Arkansas Delta

On-going research by a UA associate professor is helping provide resources to families with autistic children in rural Arkansas.

By Kirsten Baird
The Razorback Reporter

To open avenues to greater resources for rural areas, training is given to individuals who provide support to the families of autistic children living in the Arkansas Delta, said an associate professor in the UA College of Education and Health Professions.

“My research area is in the area of autism spectrum disorders,” said UA associate professor Peggy Schaefer-Whitby, who was recently elected vice president of the Council of Exceptional Children Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities, a national organization. “I really look at educational strategies to help teach and ameliorate some of the problems that people with autism have to face.”

Because autism is a spectrum disorder, meaning that conditions may vary, there are certain strengths and challenges that vary among individuals. There are different levels of learning, problem-solving, and thinking, based on where an individual is on the spectrum, said Schaefer-Whitby, who was honored by the Arkansas Alumni Association for her work in the Delta..

“Autism, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication,” according to the Autism Speaks organization.

The Arkansas Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Program, managed through UAMS, received a four-year grant of $2.17 million, which enables researchers to conduct a statewide study.

The program looks “at all 8-year-olds in the state to see how many kids have autism, and they look at every county in the state,” Schaefer-Whitby said.

About one in 77 children in Arkansas are diagnosed as having autism, according to a report by the disabilities monitoring program.

With that data, Schaefer-Whitby and her team recognized that in southern Arkansas, far fewer children were diagnosed as having autism. Specifically, she said that fewer African-American children were diagnosed as having autism spectrum disorders.

“About 50-75% of kids on the autism spectrum, with good intervention, have really good outcomes,” Schaefer-Whitby said. “There is about another 25% of kids that we don’t really understand why. But, if we don’t diagnose these kids, and we don’t get these kids into interventions and these families the services they need, we are going to have long-term care for these kids, and the societal cost is greater.”

Deciding that it was time to figure out the reason behind the discrepancies in the data, Schaefer-Whitby followed the pathway of her research, rented an apartment in Helena, Arkansas, and lived there for one year. She needed to become part of the community before she could have an impact on that community, she said.

“I worked with UAMS East, Kids for the Future, Partners for Inclusive Communities, and Arkansas Autism Outreach Center,” Schafer-Whitby said. “We started going down to the Delta and set up an advisory board, and we would meet monthly with them to determine kind of what we need to focus on services down here.”

Another research project Schaefer-Whitby is conducting has to do with the factors other than the lack of resources that contribute to autism.

“I’ve been working on a qualitative study where I’m really looking at, and talking with families about their lived experiences of having a child with autism,” Schaefer-Whitby said.

Although research confirms that factors such as low socio-economic status impacts the ability to access service providers and resources, there are also other factors to consider that may have an impact on autism diagnosis, Schaefer-Whtiby said.

“I do believe there are some cultural variables that impact access to services and whether or not a family will step up to access those services,” Schaefer-Whitby said. Most of the families that have been validated through interventions are confirmed to be white, upper class, wealthy families.

“One of the strategies that I promote is that we need to look at family systems and family routines and adapt our behavioral interventions to meet their family context and the routines within their family system,” Schaefer-Whitby said.

Schaefer-Whitby is working toward finding each of the variables that attribute to families in rural areas hesitating to access services for their children.

“The other thing that I find when I meet with these families is that really we’re more alike than different, that we all want to do what’s best for our children, and we want the best outcome for our children” Schaefer-Whitby said.

Perspective is another big aspect that Schaefer-Whitby attributes to the differences in culture within the Delta.

“When we start looking at quality of life and stress related to these families, it’s perspective,” Schaefer-Whitby said. “Many of these families really look at the disability, or the impact of the disability on the family system, a little differently.”

Because of the different perspectives, Schaefer-Whitby has found that families are sometimes better able to cope with the impact that the disability has on their family structure.

In addition to cultural differences between urban and rural areas, there is also the matter of access to resources that is difficult for families to receive.

During her time in the Delta, Schafer-Whitby first identified three individuals who aspired to become behavior analysts. For each of those individuals to complete the 1,500 clinical hours required, she provided supervision for free.

Shannon Crozier and Jessica Love, founders of Behavior University, an online training platform specializing in therapy based on the science of learning and behavior, partnered with Schaefer-Whitby in her project.

“When we learned about the new project in the Delta, we were thrilled to see

what she was doing,” Crozier said. “As the project grew, we realized that there might be a way for us to help and so we contacted her to offer support.”

Behavior University offered to provide free Registered Behavior Technician training to 10 individuals who had been identified within the Delta. The training process includes a 40-hour online training and an observation from a behavior analyst. Schaefer-Whitby was the one to observe and certify that each of the trainees did indeed have the required skills.

“In the next several months, we’re hoping that we are going to have one behavior analyst down there and that we’ll have about 8-10 registered behavior technicians that can start working with the kids,” Schaefer-Whitby said.

“Families in rural areas lack access to many of the resources they need,” Crozier said. “Relying on people and resources in more urban centers is difficult and unreliable.”

Schaefer-Whitby hopes that through this project, there will be greater support and resources available for families living in the delta with a child in need of autism intervention, she said.

November 1, 2019November 7, 2019

Enrollment Rates Continue to Climb in COEHP

Despite recent slower enrollment rates, the numbers in COEHP have remained the highest out of all colleges. Certain changes within the college and upcoming changes through all departments play a role in enrollment.

By Kirsten Baird
The Razorback Reporter

The College of Education and Health Professions is located in the Graduate Education Building. Photo by Kirsten Baird.

Despite recent slower UA enrollment rates, the College of Education and Health Professions has the highest increase among all colleges for the 2019-2020 academic year, said a research assistant from the Office of Education Policy.

The college offers 50 degree programs through six academic departments, said Ketevan Mamiseishvili, associate dean for academic and student affairs. Across the six departments, 5,277 students were enrolled in fall 2018. The numbers have only gone up from there, research assistant Charlene Reid said.

“Our college is very diverse with respect to the range of degrees and certifications offered and those options have continually increased over time,” Reid said. “The interconnection between health and education is becoming more complex, making it more difficult to simply separate the two fields of study.”

Thus, any funding to one college must be dispersed throughout all departments.

The money that was given to the college includes a $10 million gift from the Walton Family Foundation, which helped in establishing the Arkansas Academy for Educational Equity, according to the annual report for the college.

The U.S. Department of Education awarded the college a five-year grant totaling $35.7 million to create the Arkansas PROMISE Model Demonstration project, according to the annual report. Many departments have a goal of getting programs accredited, “which will provide students with greater opportunities to enroll in programs that are more in line with their field of interest,” Reid said.

The U.S. Department of Education awarded the college a five-year grant totaling $35.7 million to create the Arkansas PROMISE Model Demonstration project, according to the annual report.

The education department within the College of Education received a favorable review from the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, according to the annual report. In addition to the changes in the education department, there are also a lot of positive elements within the Eleanor Mann School of Nursing, former clinical adjunct instructor Jessica Newcomb said.

One of the things Newcomb said attracted her most was that the nursing department hired “quality people.”

“The best thing you can bring to students is your experience,” Newcomb said, “and the instructors did that.”

The school of nursing also provides a bridge program, which enables students who are registered nurses, or RNs, to earn a Bachelor of Science in Nursing in one year rather than four, Newcomb said.

“This was a big draw because it was affordable and accredited,” Newcomb said.

Within the Occupational Therapy department, completing the Occupational Therapy House and launching the graduate Occupational Therapy program in January 2020 also will increase enrollment, program director Sherry Muir said.