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First-generation college students and those from ethnic groups such as African Americans, Latinx, Native Americans, or Indigenous Peoples in the United States are less likely to pursue STEM-related professions. How might we develop conceptual and methodological approaches to understand instructional differences between various undergraduate STEM programs that contribute to racial and social class disparities in psychological indicators of academic success such as learning orientations and engagement? Within social psychology, research has focused mainly on student-level mechanisms surrounding threat, motivation, and identity. A largely parallel literature in sociology, meanwhile, has taken a more institutional and critical approach to inequalities in STEM education, pointing to the macro level historical, cultural, and structural roots of those inequalities. In this paper, we bridge these two perspectives by focusing on critical faculty and peer instructor development as targets for inclusive STEM education. These practices, especially when deployed together, have the potential to disrupt the unseen but powerful historical forces that perpetuate STEM inequalities, while also positively affecting student-level proximate factors, especially for historically marginalized students.

Although college enrollment and completion rates have increased over the past 30 years, access to higher education has not been uniform across racial groups. In addition to racial gaps, differences in tertiary education outcomes exist by gender. Gender gaps in college enrollment are larger in the Latinx community than in other racial or ethnic groups. In this paper, we use the October Current Population Survey (CPS) supplements for the years 1984–1992 and state and federal drug laws to measure the impact of the passage of the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act on the likelihood of college enrollment for young Latino men. Following the passage of the federal law, some states changed their drug laws around marijuana and cocaine possession and distribution. We use this variation in state law in order to explore whether states that have more lenient marijuana and cocaine laws also have a higher likelihood of college enrollment. We find that there was a four percentage point decline in both the likelihood of high school completion and that of college enrollment for Latinx men after the passage of the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act. Findings have implications for modifications to state drug laws and addressing the ways in which these laws impact educational attainment for students underrepresented in higher education.

Metabolic syndrome is a leading public health concern with over 50 million Americans being affected and at increased risk for other chronic diseases including cardiovascular disease, obesity and type II diabetes. Xanthohumol, a prenylated flavonoid from hops (Humulus lupulus), was tested for efficacy on biomarkers of metabolic syndrome in 4 week old Zucker obese fa/fa rats. Rats received daily oral doses of xanthohumol at 0, 1.86, 5.69, and 16.9 mg/kg BW for 6 weeks. All rats were maintained on a high fat (60% kcal) AIN 93G diet for 3 weeks to induce severe obesity followed by a normal AIN‐93G (15% kcal fat) diet for the last 3 weeks of the study. Weekly food intake and body weight were recorded. Plasma cholesterol, glucose, insulin, and triglyceride levels were assessed using commercial assay kits. There was a dose‐dependent effect on body weight and plasma glucose levels. The highest dose group (n=6) had significantly lower plasma glucose levels compared to the control group (n=6) in male but not female rats. There was also a significant decrease in body weight for male rats in the highest dose group compared to rats that received no xanthohumol which was also not seen for female rats. Plasma cholesterol, insulin and triglycerides as well as food intake were not affected by treatment. Findings suggest that xanthohumol has beneficial effects on markers of metabolic syndrome but may induce gender‐specific responses.Grant Funding Source : National Institutes of Health and USANA Health Sciences