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This paper evaluates Passport Toward Success (PTS). PTS rotates children whose military parent has recently returned from deployment through three interactive stations, where they practice skills related to coping with stress, problem-solving, and discussing feelings along with similar-age peers. Pre-and post-program measures were gathered at 10 PTS events; researchers observed and rated program fidelity at eight events. Results revealed that many children were experiencing difficulties associated with their parent's deployment and reunion, children who reported the most difficulties evaluated PTS programming most favorably, and problems occurred with fidelity of program implementation for the youngest children. Discussion centers on implications of these findings for ''Phase 2'' of PTS and for understanding how communication skills can promote resiliency for coping with repeated military deployments.

Many people use religious belief and practice as a resource for coping with distress. However, the influence of religious content in comforting messages has yet to be examined. The current study was designed to examine how comforting messages that vary in person centeredness and incorporate different kinds of religious content are evaluated by people who vary in intrinsic religiosity and styles of religious coping. College students ( N = 312) were asked to imagine that a grandparent had died and to evaluate the perceived quality of comforting messages representing different levels of person centeredness and types of religious content. They also completed measures of intrinsic religiosity and religious coping style. Results indicate not only a preference for messages with deferring religious content (in which God is described as responsible for helping the individual cope with the loss) but also variation in evaluation as a function of intrinsic religiosity and religious coping style.

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The call to increase student participation in high-impact practices (HIPs) to improve student learning, satisfaction, and retention is being answered in a multitude of ways. Faculty and staff involved in undergraduate research see this as validation of their efforts, which it is. However, Kuh & O’Donnell’s (2013) work challenges research mentors to reevaluate their efforts in order to intentionally provide an even richer and more engaging research experience. Making undergraduate research a high-impact practice requires thinking inclusively about how the research experience can be scaled across the curriculum, adjusted to increase student engagement, and adapted to student preparation and desired learning outcomes. This article presents the work of a statewide multi-disciplinary faculty team that developed a scalable taxonomy for incorporating high-impact practices into student learning experiences and to serve as a roadmap for designing and assessing undergraduate research experiences. The authors offer a layered taxonomy, with milestones of increasing engagement, that establishes what sets a HIP undergraduate research experience apart from other HIP experiences and what distinguishes good practices from high-impact teaching. Aligning undergraduate research experiences with best practices across disciplines, types of research opportunities, and student achievement level was a key goal in the taxonomy development. We present cases where the taxonomy was applied to research opportunities embedded in general education courses across disciplines and different modalities. In these vignettes, the utility of the taxonomy as a tool for assessing course design and teaching effectiveness is examined and common challenges in development, implementation, and assessment of student learning experiences are also explored.