Fam­i­ly Access Cen­ter of Excel­lence and the Boone Coun­ty School Men­tal Health Coali­tion merged into a cen­ter in 2021

Family Access Center of Excellence (FACE)

FACE is a cen­ter, fund­ed by the Boone Coun­ty Children’s Ser­vices Fund, pro­vid­ing free access to men­tal health ser­vices for fam­i­lies with chil­dren from 0–19 years old resid­ing in of Boone Coun­ty. The over­all goal is to enhance the qual­i­ty of social, emo­tion­al, and behav­ioral health ser­vices for youth and their imme­di­ate fam­i­ly. FACE imple­ments qual­i­ty assess­ments, non-con­flict case man­age­ment, and com­mu­ni­ty-based refer­rals to iden­ti­fy and meet the needs of families.

Web­site Link: https://faceofboonecounty.org/

Email Con­tact: Dr. Aaron Thomp­son thompsonaa@missouri.edu 

The Boone County Schools Mental Health Coalition (BCSMHC)

BCSMHC is a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary col­lab­o­ra­tive study, fund­ed by the Boone Coun­ty Children’s Ser­vices Fund. It is con­duct­ed among Boone County’s six inde­pen­dent school dis­tricts, sev­er­al pri­vate schools, and the Mis­souri Pre­ven­tion Sci­ence Insti­tute (MPSI) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri. Fund­ed by Boone Coun­ty tax, BCSMHC pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive sys­tem for school-based men­tal health ser­vices includ­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, pre­ven­tion, and intervention. 

BSCMHC’s Overall Goal:

The imple­men­ta­tion of a coun­ty-wide assess­ment sys­tem to gath­er data on risk fac­tors that are pre­dic­tive of poor school, men­tal health, and life out­comes, and using these data to guide the imple­men­ta­tion of evi­dence-based pre­ven­tion and inter­ven­tion efforts. In addi­tion to this, BCSMHC pro­vides pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment to school per­son­nel in prac­tices that are shown to improve school cli­mate and stu­dent outcomes.

Web­site Link: http://bcschoolsmh.org/

Email Con­tact: Dr. Wendy Reinke reinkew@missouri.edu

The Nation­al Cen­ter for Rur­al School Men­tal Health (NCRSMH) is an Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion Sci­ences (IES) fund­ed project that includes the states of Mis­souri, Vir­ginia, and Mon­tana and the over­all aim of the study is to iden­ti­fy, pre­vent, and inter­vene in rur­al youth men­tal health con­cerns. Due to the scarci­ty of resources and geo­graph­ic iso­la­tion of rur­al areas, it is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant to address the men­tal health for these youth and their families.

NCRSMH’s Purpose:

IDENTIFY. PREVENT. INTERVENE.

In part­ner­ship with rur­al schools, NCRSMH will devel­op a com­pre­hen­sive set of teacher and stu­dent sur­veys, tools, inter­ven­tions, and pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment mate­ri­als to help iden­ti­fy, pre­vent, and inter­vene in men­tal health con­cerns among students.

In par­tic­u­lar, the NCRSMH project will val­i­date and enhance the Ear­ly Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (EIS) which includes:

• an online youth men­tal health risk screen­ing tool
• a dash­board sys­tem for schools to review and use the data to select evi­dence-based inter­ven­tions (EBIs) matched to each prob­lem area iden­ti­fied by the screener
• out­come and fideli­ty mon­i­tor­ing tools

Web­site Link: https://www.ruralsmh.com/

Email Con­tact: Dr. Wendy Reinke reinkew@missouri.edu

Eval­u­a­tion of a Web-based Class­room Man­age­ment Pro­gram to Pro­mote Effec­tive Class­room Man­age­ment Prac­tices among Ear­ly Career Teach­ers (2020–2025). This study is an Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion Sci­ences (IES) fund­ed effi­ca­cy tri­al.  The Class­room Check-Up (CCU) is a web-based teacher train­ing and coach­ing pro­gram to pro­mote effec­tive teacher class­room man­age­ment skills.  The effi­ca­cy of the CCU will be eval­u­at­ed with a rig­or­ous ran­dom­ized tri­al com­par­ing 58 ele­men­tary class­rooms of ear­ly career teach­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing in an induc­tion pro­gram receiv­ing the CCU pro­gram with 58 ele­men­tary (K‑5) class­rooms of ear­ly career teach­ers also in an induc­tion pro­gram who do not receive the CCU (i.e., com­par­i­son class­rooms). The pri­ma­ry inno­va­tions offered by this pro­pos­al include the (a) imple­men­ta­tion of a web-based mod­el­ing pro­gram focused on teacher class­room behav­ior man­age­ment skills with ear­ly career teach­ers with teacher men­tors act­ing as the CCU coach; and (b) the first ran­dom­ized con­trolled eval­u­a­tion of the CCU effects on teacher class­room man­age­ment behav­iors, child school behav­iors, and teacher and child outcomes.

Email Con­tact: Dr. Wendy Reinke, reinkew@missouri.edu

The Dis­ci­pline in the Sec­ondary Class­room (DiS­CO) project is an Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion Sci­ences (IES) fund­ed ran­dom­ized con­trolled tri­al eval­u­at­ing the effi­ca­cy of Dis­ci­pline in the Sec­ondary Class­room (DSC).  DSC is a class­room man­age­ment pro­gram that pro­vides tools and strate­gies to help high school teachers: 

• Estab­lish proac­tive non­puni­tive dis­ci­pline policies
• Man­age stu­dent behavior
• Fos­ter stu­dent motivation
• Cre­ate a pos­i­tive and pro­duc­tive classroom

The study takes place in Mis­souri and Cal­i­for­nia schools in part­ner­ship with col­leagues at SRI Inter­na­tion­al.  Data are col­lect­ed from both teach­ers and stu­dents three times a year through sur­veys, stan­dard­ized test­ing, and direct class­room observations.

Email Con­tact: Dr. Kei­th Her­man, hermanke@missouri.edu

Researchers from the Mis­souri Pre­ven­tion Sci­ence Insti­tute (MPSI) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri (MU) in part­ner­ship and rur­al school dis­tricts through­out Mis­souri will con­duct an Impact, repli­ca­tion study of CHAMPS, a mid­dle school teacher train­ing pro­gram designed to pro­mote effec­tive class­room man­age­ment skills. A pri­or effi­ca­cy tri­al in urban mid­dle schools found that CHAMPS sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved teacher class­room man­age­ment prac­tices and stu­dent behav­iors and aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment. The effi­ca­cy of CHAMPS deliv­ered vir­tu­al­ly will be deter­mined with a RCT com­par­ing 55 rur­al mid­dle school class­rooms (6–8^th grade) imple­ment­ing the CHAMPS pro­gram with 55 con­trol class­rooms.

Email Con­tact: Dr. Kei­th Her­man, hermanke@missouri.edu  

The pur­pose of this project is to extend, refine, and align mea­sure­ment sys­tem to assess cul­tur­al­ly- and racial equi­ty-sus­tain­ing (CARES) prac­tices in the class­room, lever­ag­ing the mod­el we have devel­oped with the same acronym to high­light its 5 rel­e­vant domains: Con­nec­tions to cur­ricu­lum, Authen­tic rela­tion­ships, Reflec­tive think­ing, Effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and Sen­si­tiv­i­ty to stu­dent cul­tur­al and racial iden­ti­ty. The CARES class­room assess­ment sys­tem is designed to sup­port teach­ers in ele­men­tary and mid­dle schools to improve their CARES instruc­tion and dis­ci­pline.  This study address­es impor­tant and time­ly issues relat­ed to cul­tur­al­ly-respon­sive prac­tices and equi­ty in edu­ca­tion; it also address­es con­sid­er­able gaps relat­ed to the lack of valid, reli­able, and effi­cient meth­ods for assess­ing, which in turn can help to improve the social and behav­ioral con­text for aca­d­e­m­ic learn­ing and reduce a range of dis­parate edu­ca­tion­al out­comes (e.g., dis­ci­pline, aca­d­e­m­ic) for stu­dents of col­or.

Email Con­tact, Dr. Kei­th Her­man hermanke@missouri.edu  

Explor­ing Cul­tur­al­ly Respon­sive Prac­tices (ECP) is an Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion Sci­ences (IES) fund­ed, mul­ti­level project study­ing the indi­ca­tors of cul­tur­al­ly respon­sive prac­tices (CRPs) in class­rooms with­in school dis­tricts in Mis­souri and Mary­land. The glob­al objec­tive of this study is to use explorato­ry, the­o­ry-dri­ven data to address edu­ca­tion­al dis­par­i­ties among stu­dents of mar­gin­al­ized cul­tur­al, racial, or eth­nic backgrounds. 

The ECP project aims to con­firm and refine indi­ca­tors of CRPs via:

• focus groups
• teacher and stu­dent surveys
• direct obser­va­tion tools

The over­all goal of the ECP project is to devel­op, refine, and eval­u­ate a the­o­ry of change link­ing these mal­leable indi­ca­tors of CRPs with stu­dent aca­d­e­m­ic and behav­ioral outcomes.

Email Con­tact: Dr. David Aguayo aguayod@missouri.edu

In this repli­ca­tion impact study, the researchers will test an online adap­ta­tion of Dou­ble Check, a coach­ing mod­el for sup­port­ing teach­ers use of cul­tur­al­ly respon­sive stu­dent engage­ment prac­tices to reduce dis­pro­por­tion­al­i­ty in exclu­sion­ary dis­ci­pline.  This project will result in evi­dence of the effi­ca­cy of an online ver­sion of Dou­ble Check, a pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment and coach­ing pro­gram to sup­port cul­tur­al­ly respon­sive prac­tices, for mid­dle schools and infor­ma­tion about the costs of imple­ment­ing Dou­ble Check online and the poten­tial cost ben­e­fits of the online deliv­ery com­pared to in per­son train­ing and coaching.

Email Con­tact: Dr. Kei­th Her­man, hermanke@missouri.edu  

This project (2021–2025) will estab­lish a frame­work that inte­grates, and trans­lates between, the clas­si­cal, Bayesian, and infor­ma­tion-the­o­ret­ic per­spec­tives on sta­tis­ti­cal mod­el eval­u­a­tion. Our main goal is to use this frame­work to cre­ate sev­er­al prod­ucts that will empow­er applied edu­ca­tion researchers to eas­i­ly sup­ple­ment tra­di­tion­al good­ness-of-fit assess­ment with insight­ful eval­u­a­tions of mod­el gen­er­al­iz­abil­i­ty and com­plex­i­ty. To achieve this goal, the cen­tral inno­va­tions com­prise (a) advances in syn­thet­ic data gen­er­a­tion meth­ods for eval­u­at­ing mod­el com­plex­i­ty; (b) nov­el appli­ca­tions of Bayesian mod­el check­ing and infor­ma­tion-the­o­ret­ic analy­sis of edu­ca­tion data; and © a set of easy-to-use sta­tis­ti­cal soft­ware tools that incor­po­rate the diverse sta­tis­ti­cal per­spec­tives and tech­niques that are con­tained with­in the framework.

Email Con­tact, Dr. Wes Boni­fay bonifayw@missouri.edu  

The Look Around Boone (LAB) cam­paign is a com­mu­ni­ty-wide par­tic­i­pa­to­ry effort to cre­ate a social mes­sag­ing brand with the goal of reduc­ing stig­ma and increas­ing aware­ness and help-seek­ing for men­tal health-relat­ed con­cerns among Boone Coun­ty youth and fam­i­lies.  Based on a com­mu­ni­ty health assess­ment devel­oped uti­liz­ing the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Prevention’s Mobi­liz­ing for Action through Plan­ning and Part­ner­ships Mod­el, the county’s 2014–2018 com­mu­ni­ty health improve­ment plan iden­ti­fied youth behav­ioral health as a top pri­or­i­ty and the LAB cam­paign emerged as a key strategy.

The LAB cam­paign con­tent was devel­oped in part­ner­ship with lead­ers from schools, com­mu­ni­ty men­tal health providers, pub­lic health offi­cials, researchers, and col­lege stu­dents. Lat­er, as the con­tent was rolled into the com­mu­ni­ty, the LAB mes­sag­ing was pro­mot­ed through school-based pro­grams and com­mu­ni­ty efforts.

School-Based:

• posters
• art con­tests
• coun­sel­ing curricula
• writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tions with edu­ca­tors and parents/caregivers

Com­mu­ni­ty Efforts:

• social media
• movie the­ater previews

Web­site Link: https://www.lookaroundboone.org/

Email Con­tact: Dr. Aaron Thomp­son thompsonaa@missouri.edu

Self-Mon­i­tor­ing Train­ing and Reg­u­la­tion Strat­e­gy (STARS) is an Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion­al Sci­ences (IES) fund­ed study inves­ti­gat­ing the STARS inter­ven­tion with fifth grade stu­dents who exhib­it dis­rup­tive class­room behav­iors. Stu­dents in this inter­ven­tion com­plete a nine-les­son cur­ricu­lum with the school guid­ance coun­selor and take part in a peri­od of self-mon­i­tor­ing tar­get­ing spe­cif­ic dis­rup­tive behav­iors. The goal of this study is to see whether this inter­ven­tion can improve stu­dent behav­ior, social and emo­tion­al learn­ing skills, and aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance. The pro­gram tar­gets stu­dents’ social-aware­ness, self-aware­ness, self-man­age­ment, rela­tion­ship, and prob­lem-solv­ing skills. Tak­ing place in Colum­bia Pub­lic Schools, STARS is mea­sured against an exist­ing suc­cess­ful behav­ior inter­ven­tion called Check In Check Out.

An exten­sion to this study was fund­ed in 2019 fol­low­ing-up on the stu­dents who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the STARS inter­ven­tion who are now in sev­enth or ninth grades. The pri­ma­ry goal of this exten­sion is to exam­ine the long-term impact of the STARS inter­ven­tion on stu­dent social, emo­tion­al, and behav­ioral func­tion­ing. By con­duct­ing inter­views and behav­ioral obser­va­tions, this goal is fur­thered by exam­in­ing dif­fer­ences in all orig­i­nal study out­comes — for instance, aca­d­e­mics, changes in auton­o­my, and engage­ment. Addi­tion­al­ly, this fol­low-up includes oth­er devel­op­men­tal risk fac­tor ques­tions that are of con­cern as youth grow into ado­les­cents and teens, such as vio­lence and aggres­sion, use of alco­hol, tobac­co, and oth­er drugs.

Email Con­tact: Tanya Weigand tww79b@mail.missouri.edu

This project is fund­ed by the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion and involves a sys­tem­at­ic review and meta-analy­sis of the extant lit­er­a­ture assess­ing the effects of fam­i­ly engage­ment inter­ven­tions on school stu­dents’ STEM achieve­ment and moti­va­tion. Rel­e­vant stud­ies to be includ­ed in the meta-analy­sis will be locat­ed through a com­pre­hen­sive search­ing and screen­ing process. All includ­ed stud­ies will then be cod­ed for rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion and ana­lyzed to deter­mine the over­all effects of fam­i­ly engage­ment inter­ven­tions on stu­dent STEM out­comes. Fur­ther, the study will deter­mine which spe­cif­ic fam­i­ly engage­ment prac­tices and com­po­nents pro­mote stu­dent STEM out­comes and eval­u­ate if the effects of fam­i­ly engage­ment inter­ven­tions vary based on cer­tain child, fam­i­ly, school, and com­mu­ni­ty char­ac­ter­is­tics. 

Email Con­tact: Dr. Tyler Smith, smithtyle@missouri.edu

Sup­port­ing Teach­ers in Engag­ing Par­ents in Mid­dle School (Mid-STEP) is fund­ed by the Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion Sci­ences and aims to improve the fam­i­ly engage­ment prac­tices of mid­dle school teach­ers to sup­port com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion between teach­ers and par­ents. The Mid-STEP mod­el includes a brief teacher train­ing cur­ricu­lum and coach­ing process that helps mid­dle school teach­ers eval­u­ate cur­rent fam­i­ly engage­ment prac­tices, work with a coach to devel­op a fam­i­ly engage­ment inter­ven­tion tai­lored to their classroom/families and assess the progress of their fam­i­ly engage­ment inter­ven­tion. Through this project, the Mid-STEP mod­el will be devel­oped, refined, and test­ed using an iter­a­tive process with the help of mid­dle school teach­ers, par­ents, stu­dents, school admin­is­tra­tors, and research experts. This process will include a series of focus groups and inter­views, fol­lowed by pilot test­ing Mid-STEP in mid­dle school set­tings.          

Email Con­tact: Dr. Tyler Smith, smithtyle@missouri.edu 

Sup­port­ing Teach­ers in Engag­ing Par­ents (STEP) is a project fund­ed by the Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion Sci­ences (IES) that aims to improve teach­ers’ abil­i­ties to work with fam­i­lies. The STEP mod­el involves a brief teacher train­ing cur­ricu­lum and coach­ing ses­sions focused on prepar­ing teach­ers to effec­tive­ly engage and col­lab­o­rate with fam­i­lies. The pur­pose of this project is to devel­op, refine, and test the STEP mod­el using an iter­a­tive process. This will be done via focus groups and inter­views with par­ents, teach­ers, and researchers, fol­lowed by pilot test­ing of the STEP mod­el in ele­men­tary schools.

Email Con­tact: Dr. Tyler Smith smithtyle@missouri.edu

The Eval­u­a­tion of a Stress Man­age­ment Train­ing for Teach­ers Study exam­ines the effects of an indi­vid­ual cop­ing skills pro­gram for teach­ers. The inter­ven­tion con­sists of one group train­ing and three online train­ings and the project effi­ca­cy is eval­u­at­ed through pre-post self-report sur­veys and class­room obser­va­tions. In addi­tion to sup­port­ing indi­vid­ual cop­ing, the Mis­souri Pre­ven­tion Sci­ence Insti­tute (MPSI) team com­plet­ed inter­views with teach­ers who par­tic­i­pat­ed in a state-wide walk­out. The study exam­ines per­cep­tions of sources of stress, sup­port, and the expe­ri­ence of walk­outs. A team of grad­u­ate stu­dents is cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a qual­i­ta­tive analy­sis to sum­ma­rize the main themes and findings.

Email Con­tact: Dr. Kei­th Her­man hermanke@missouri.edu

The Devel­op­ment and Pilot Test of the Uni­ver­si­ty Fideli­ty and Imple­men­ta­tion Tools (UFIT) is a study fund­ed through a Soci­ety for the Study of School Psy­chol­o­gy ear­ly research award (PI: Shan­non Holmes, Men­tor: Wendy Reinke). The study tar­gets a major bar­ri­er to the effec­tive use of inter­ven­tions through the fur­ther devel­op­ment, refine­ment, and pilot test­ing of the UFIT, a fideli­ty assess­ment and imple­men­ta­tion feed­back sys­tem. Using mul­ti­ple meth­ods, the aims of this study are to refine the UFIT sys­tem with feed­back from edu­ca­tors, explore the reli­a­bil­i­ty and valid­i­ty of the UFIT assess­ment scores, and eval­u­ate the promise of a feed­back sys­tem on school personnel’s imple­men­ta­tion practices.

Email Con­tact: Dr. Shan­non Holmes holmessr@missouri.edu 

Empir­i­cal bench­marks for inter­pret­ing effect size and design para­me­ters for plan­ning mul­ti­level ran­dom­ized tri­als on social & behav­ioral out­comes (2019–2022). This project is fund­ed by a Sta­tis­ti­cal and Research Method­ol­o­gy in Edu­ca­tion grant through the Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion Sci­ences (IES).  Social and behav­ioral mea­sures are com­mon­ly used in edu­ca­tion­al and social sci­ence research as pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary out­comes of inter­est, and are close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the stu­dent aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment. The pur­pose of the study is three­fold: (1) to pro­vide empir­i­cal bench­marks for researchers and pol­i­cy mak­ers to inter­pret the mag­ni­tude of the inter­ven­tion effects on social and behav­ioral out­comes, (2) to pro­vide ref­er­ence val­ues of the design para­me­ters (effect sizes, effect size vari­abil­i­ty, ICCs, and R2) on social and behav­ioral out­comes for researchers to con­duct pow­er analy­sis of clus­ter ran­dom­ized tri­als and mul­ti­site ran­dom­ized tri­als, and (3) to incor­po­rate these ref­er­ence val­ues into PowerUp! soft­ware for pow­er analysis.

Email Con­tact: Dr. Wendy Reinke reinkew@missouri.edu 

We will place 42 Master’s lev­el grad­u­ate stu­dents from diverse back­grounds or com­mu­ni­ties into high-needs schools for the pur­pose of com­plet­ing required field work, cred­it hours, intern­ships, or relat­ed train­ing nec­es­sary to com­plete their degrees or obtain a cre­den­tial as a school-based men­tal health provider. Upon grad­u­a­tion, these pro­fes­sion­als will enter the work­force as qual­i­fied school men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als (SMH­Ps) in school psy­chol­o­gy, school coun­sel­ing, and school social work.

Email Con­tact: Dr. Wendy Reinke, reinkew@missouri.edu  

We will pre­pare 10 Mas­ters lev­el prac­ti­tion­ers to be high­ly qual­i­fied school prac­ti­tion­ers in the area of sup­port­ing stu­dents with seri­ous emo­tion­al and behav­ior dis­or­ders (EBD) with inten­sive needs. The pro­gram is strate­gi­cal­ly designed to pre­pare a diverse group of school-based school psy­chol­o­gy and school social work prac­ti­tion­ers to (a) lead the imple­men­ta­tion of indi­vid­u­al­ized and dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed inter­ven­tions sup­port sys­tems to pro­mote high expec­ta­tions for stu­dents with EBD; (b) col­lab­o­rate with a vari­ety of stake­hold­ers lead­ing inter­dis­ci­pli­nary efforts in edu­ca­tion set­tings; © uti­lize evi­dence-based assess­ment data with­in school-based teams; and (d) imple­ment evi­dence-based, and stu­dent-cen­tered/­fam­i­ly-focused inten­sive ther­a­peu­tic case man­age­ment ser­vices for youth with inten­sive social, emo­tion­al, and behav­ioral health needs.

Email Con­tact: Dr. Wendy Reinke, reinkew@missouri.edu 

This mul­ti-site study will use a school-lev­el ran­dom­ized con­trolled tri­al (RCT) to rig­or­ous­ly test the effi­ca­cy of the Exten­sion for Com­mu­ni­ty Health­care Out­comes (ECHO) mod­el, when com­bined with a men­tal health screen­er, as an imple­men­ta­tion sup­port for improv­ing mid­dle school stu­dent men­tal health dur­ing the COVID-19 recov­ery peri­od. This study will address the men­tal health needs of mid­dle-school age ado­les­cents by using tech­nol­o­gy to increase school staff capac­i­ty to pro­mote men­tal and behav­ioral health. This study will expand the research base on ECHO and the Ear­ly Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem, and its com­bined impact on staff’s capac­i­ty to sup­port men­tal and behav­ioral health and ado­les­cent men­tal health.

Email Con­tact: Dr. Kei­th Her­man, hermanke@missouri.edu 

As part of the Nation­al Cen­ter for Rur­al School Men­tal Health, MPSI will val­i­date and enhance the Ear­ly Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (EIS) which includes an online youth men­tal health risk screen­ing tool; a dash­board sys­tem for schools to review and use the data to select evi­dence-based inter­ven­tions (EBIs) matched to each prob­lem area iden­ti­fied by the screen­er; and out­come and fideli­ty mon­i­tor­ing tools. Addi­tion­al­ly, the NCRSMH is con­duct­ing an RCT with 100 schools to deter­mine the impact of the EIS on youth men­tal health. 

Email Con­tact, Dr. Wendy Reinke reinkew@missouri.edu

Through the pro­posed 36-month project, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Missouri’s Mis­souri Pre­ven­tion Sci­ence Insti­tute (MPSI) will build capac­i­ty in (26) rur­al dis­tricts serv­ing (60) schools, (13,000+) stu­dents across Mis­souri by cre­at­ing school-based threat assess­ment teams, imple­ment­ing proac­tive threat iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy tar­get­ing the vul­ner­a­ble ‘dig­i­tal anonymi­ty’ of the school-pro­vid­ed com­put­er, train and sup­port to imple­ment com­ple­men­tary evi­dence-sup­port­ed pro­grams col­lec­tive­ly respond­ing to poten­tial threats of vio­lence, self-harm and harm to oth­ers.

Email Con­tact: Dr. Kei­th Her­man, hermanke@missouri.edu 

Through the pro­posed 36-month project, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri will build capac­i­ty in four bor­der dis­tricts serv­ing 30 schools (15,000+ stu­dents) across Texas by (1) cre­at­ing school-based threat assess­ment teams; (2) imple­ment­ing proac­tive threat iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy tar­get­ing the vul­ner­a­ble ‘dig­i­tal anonymi­ty’ of the school-pro­vid­ed com­put­er; (3) sup­port­ing imple­men­ta­tion of com­ple­men­tary evi­dence-sup­port­ed pro­grams col­lec­tive­ly respond­ing to poten­tial threats of vio­lence, self-harm and harm to oth­ers; and (4) using a stu­dent men­tal health screen­ing and sup­port system.

Email Con­tact: Dr. Kei­th Her­man, hermanke@missouri.edu

Through the pro­posed 36-month project, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Missouri’s Mis­souri Pre­ven­tion Sci­ence Insti­tute (MPSI) will build capac­i­ty in four urban dis­tricts serv­ing (52) schools, (30,000+) stu­dents across Mis­souri by (1) cre­at­ing school-based threat assess­ment teams; (2) imple­ment­ing proac­tive threat iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy tar­get­ing the vul­ner­a­ble ‘dig­i­tal anonymi­ty’ of the school-pro­vid­ed com­put­er; (3) sup­port­ing imple­men­ta­tion of com­ple­men­tary evi­dence-sup­port­ed pro­grams col­lec­tive­ly respond­ing to poten­tial threats of vio­lence, self-harm and harm to oth­ers; and (4) using a stu­dent men­tal health screen­ing and sup­port system.

Email Con­tact: Dr. Kei­th Her­man, hermanke@missouri.edu

Giv­en the need for the devel­op­ment and eval­u­a­tion of an equi­ty-focused Social-Emo­tion­al Learn­ing (SEL) cur­ricu­lum, the goal of this project was to devel­op the Build Aware­ness and Advo­ca­cy in Schools for Equi­ty (BAASE). This new­ly devel­oped cur­ricu­lum expands the reach and gen­er­al­iz­abil­i­ty of SEL cur­ricu­lums by teach­ing SEL skills in lessons that address soci­etal inequity while teach­ing stu­dents to cope with the stress and trau­ma that is asso­ci­at­ed with dis­crim­i­na­tion.  The BAASE Social-Emo­tion­al Learn­ing Cur­ricu­lum will con­crete­ly teach stu­dents how to apply SEL skills (e.g., empa­thy, per­spec­tive-tak­ing) in the con­text of equi­table behav­ior and help stu­dents to iden­ti­fy ways they can change their behav­iors to mit­i­gate dis­crim­i­na­tion, as well as ways they can help oth­ers to change their behav­iors. The pri­ma­ry aims of this study were to 1)  devel­op, through an iter­a­tive process, the BAASE cur­ricu­lum that address­es inequities in the con­text of SEL for third through fifth grade stu­dents;  2) exam­ine the fea­si­bil­i­ty and social accept­abil­i­ty of the BAASE SEL cur­ricu­lum; and 3) eval­u­ate the promise of the BAASE cur­ricu­lum on third through fifth grade stu­dents’ social and emo­tion­al skills and abil­i­ties, anti-prej­u­dice behav­iors and the over­all class­room environment.

This project aimed to devel­op an online sys­tem for school-based per­son­nel to sup­port teach­ers in effec­tive class­room man­age­ment prac­tices in ele­men­tary schools based on Dr. Reinke’s teacher con­sul­ta­tion mod­el, the Class­room Check-Up. An effi­ca­cy tri­al was imple­ment­ed dur­ing the 2016–2017 school year. 

The MPSI CHAMPS project was a five-year long effi­ca­cy study of CHAMPS, a teacher train­ing pro­gram designed to pro­mote effec­tive class­room man­age­ment skills in mid­dle school teach­ers. Data for this project was col­lect­ed through direct class­room obser­va­tions as well as indi­vid­ual stu­dent assess­ments and was imple­ment­ed from 2013–2018.

This project con­duct­ed a small tri­al to assess the fea­si­bil­i­ty of a fam­i­ly-cen­tered inter­ven­tion for child depres­sion and eval­u­ate its effects in a mul­ti­ple base­line study. The project was sup­port­ed by a grant award­ed by the MU Research Council.

We imple­ment­ed Fam­i­ly Resource Cen­ters in local schools using funds award­ed by the MU Research Coun­cil. We also con­duct­ed a fea­si­bil­i­ty study and pilot test of the effec­tive­ness of spe­cif­ic com­po­nents of the Cen­ters includ­ing a tool called the Fam­i­ly Check-Up.

In the fall of 2009, the Mis­souri Pre­ven­tion Cen­ter pro­vid­ed care­givers and chil­dren in Head Start with train­ing in evi­dence-based par­ent­ing and child social skills pro­grams called the Incred­i­ble Years (IY). IY is a video­taped mod­el­ing par­ent­ing pro­gram for tod­dlers and school-age chil­dren at risk for or exhibit­ing con­duct prob­lems. Grad­u­ate stu­dents from MPC par­tic­i­pat­ed in imple­ment­ing the par­ent and child groups, and fac­ul­ty mem­bers from MPC also co-facil­i­tat­ed the groups. This ser­vice project was sup­port­ed by a grant from the Children’s Trust Fund.

This project, fund­ed by the Mis­souri Part­ner­ship for Edu­ca­tion­al Renew­al, con­sist­ed of two phas­es to help school dis­tricts make informed deci­sions about the men­tal health ser­vices they pro­vide for their stu­dents. In the first phase, we sur­veyed staff mem­bers in par­tic­i­pat­ing schools to assess their use of evi­dence-based prac­tices and fac­tors that make the use of these prac­tices more or less like­ly. Then, we worked close­ly with dis­trict lead­ers to devel­op a web-based tool that school dis­tricts can use to improve their pre­ven­tion and ear­ly inter­ven­tion men­tal health ser­vices for children.

The LEAP to Achieve research team com­plet­ed col­lect­ing data for this four-year long effi­ca­cy study of the Incred­i­ble Years Teacher Train­ing pro­gram, fund­ed by the Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion Sci­ences (IES).  Drs. Reinke, Her­man and New­com­er shared ini­tial find­ings from this project a num­ber of con­fer­ences in the past year and plan to share more as the data con­tin­ues to be analyzed.

This study was an Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion Sci­ences (IES) fund­ed inno­va­tion and devel­op­ment project. The project has involved four years of research activ­i­ties to devel­op a train­ing plat­form, called Moti­va­tion­al Inter­view­ing Skills for Coach­es (MISC), to equip instruc­tion­al sup­port per­son­nel who coach serve as coach­es with skills nec­es­sary to engage teach­ers more effec­tive­ly in the coach­ing process, improve teacher imple­men­ta­tion of evi­dence-based instruc­tion­al engage­ment prac­tices and influ­ence stu­dent out­comes. In the final year of the project, the train­ing plat­form was eval­u­at­ed via an under­pow­ered ran­dom­ized tri­al com­par­ing skills of instruc­tion­al per­son­nel who were trained to use a coach­ing best prac­tice pro­ce­dure to per­son­nel who were trained to use a coach­ing best prac­tice pro­ce­dure and trained in the use of moti­va­tion­al inter­view­ing skills.

Respon­si­ble Use of Moti­va­tion­al Inter­view­ing in Schools (RUMIS)

The SCSL project was an Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion Sci­ences (IES) fund­ed study eval­u­at­ing the Safe and Civ­il Schools Lead­er­ship (SCSL) pro­gram in par­tic­i­pat­ing schools in the state of Mis­souri. The SCSL pro­gram focused on devel­op­ing lead­er­ship skills for pro­mot­ing school safe­ty and cli­mate. Specif­i­cal­ly, this pro­gram empha­sized train­ing school prin­ci­pals using prac­ti­cal data-dri­ven deci­sion-mak­ing tools. The goal of this project was to eval­u­ate the effi­ca­cy of the SCSL pro­gram to see if it leads to improved lead­er­ship skills, school cli­mate, and school safe­ty as evi­denced through prin­ci­pal skills train­ing, anony­mous sur­veys col­lect­ed from teach­ers and stu­dents, as well as direct obser­va­tions of school over­all climate.

The Prin­ci­pal and School Cli­mate project was a Nation­al Insti­tute of Jus­tice (NIJ) fund­ed study in par­tic­i­pat­ing schools across the state of Okla­homa inves­ti­gat­ing the effi­ca­cy of Safe and Civ­il School Lead­er­ship (SCSL) with an addi­tion­al pro­gram called START on Time. START on Time was a train­ing pro­gram for school prin­ci­pals teach­ing them skills to fos­ter a safe and pos­i­tive learn­ing envi­ron­ment for stu­dents. This train­ing pro­gram con­sist­ed of stu­dent sup­port as well as resources for prin­ci­pals to use effi­ca­cious and data-dri­ven dis­ci­pline with stu­dents. Although first devel­oped over a decade ago, there have been no evi­dence-based stud­ies inves­ti­gat­ing the cen­tral role prin­ci­pals play with­in school environments.