CURA is pleased to announce the recipients of this year′s Faculty Interactive Research Program grants: 

• Ryan Allen (Urban and Regional Planning, Humphrey School of Public Affairs) The USDA Section 515 Program and the Challenge of Preserving Affordable Housing in Greater Minnesota
• Lizbeth H. Finestack (Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, College of Liberal Arts) Identifying Language Impairment in Students with Diverse Home Languages
• Lindsey Weiler (Family Social Science, College of Education and Human Development) …

In the coming decades, Minnesota is poised to lose nearly 10,000 units of rental housing in the United States Department of Agriculture's Section 515 Program. This housing currently exists in nearly every county in Greater Minnesota, and comprises a substantial proportion of rental housing for very low-income households. In partnership with Minnesota Housing Partnership (MHP), a nonprofit organization based in St. Paul that supports the work of affordable housing and community development organizations, I propose a mixed-method research project focused on the Section 515 Program in Minnesota. Through analysis of secondary data maintained by USDA and primary data collected from interviews…

This project aims to better serve students in Minneapolis Public Schools who speak a minority language, which is currently 32% of district students. As is true of monolingual English-speaking students, a subset of these bilingual students experience significant language impairment. This negatively impacts their social and academic success. Because most standardized assessments used to identify students with language impairment are English-based, alternative approaches are needed to assess the language skills of students whose home language is not English. Thus, the current study will develop a new assessment approach that uses a test-teach-retest dynamic assessment format to assess…

Representing one of the highest rates in the country, one in every 42 children in Minnesota is identified with autism spectrum disorder. Without intervention, adolescents risk a sharp decline in social support, stalled neurological progress, and a marked increase in depression and anxiety. Often shut off from educational and social supports that were available in childhood, adolescents experience significant roadblocks as they strive for independence. Similarly, young adults with autism can feel isolated and undervalued as members of our community. This project seeks to shift the status quo by pairing teens and adults with autism in one-to-one mentoring relationships as part of a…