At its inception in 1946, the United States’ National School Lunch Program (NSLP) was promoted as a success story; a boon for families navigating poverty, a means of buoying food prices by absorbing farm surplus, and a treatment for hunger in some of our country’s most vulnerable populations. Government subsidies...
Solar energy systems purchased in the United States have increased tenfold since 2010. As solar photovoltaics (PV) markets expand, solar energy becomes more affordable. In the last five years, the price of solar has decreased by 40 percent. Despite solar PV becoming more affordable and rising consumer demand, between 50...
The benefits of electrification are widely discussed in energy and development literature, but little research to date has studied the impacts of household electricity access on women in particular. Women make up the majority of the world’s poor and are also disproportionately affected by energy poverty because of their social...
Marine programs, particularly those related to marine conservation, utilize a suite of tools to offset the negative consequences of human activities on marine environments. However, among others, limited funding can represent a challenge for these programs in terms of achieving their desired outcomes. Using systems and organizational theory, this study...
In recent decades, the concept of transnational higher education has flourished and international branch campuses (IBCs) have proliferated. Some countries have gone as far as designating areas as education hubs and have attracted foreign universities to operate branch campuses on their soils. While researchers have studied what motivates universities to...
A commitment to diversity is now quite common in the missions of colleges and universities. One of the primary barriers to hiring a diverse faculty is the role that implicit bias, or the case of identifying flawed ideas as reliable choices systematically, plays in the search and selection process. At...
The biggest obstacle to a 100% renewable energy utility portfolio is the ability to produce enough electricity to meet peak demand windows, which typically occur in the late afternoon to evening period from 3 pm to 9 pm. A popular policy option to reduce peak demand is time-of-use (TOU) electricity...
The interdependences among water, energy and food, are diverse and multidimensional and are referred to as the food-water-energy (FWE) nexus. This nexus approach seeks to understand the complex interactions among these sectors, in order to identify synergies and trade-offs that could serve as the basis for developing effective planning and...
Persistence, the ability for institutions to help students matriculate from their first year to completion, has been a major concern for underrepresented racial minorities (URMs). Among URMs, Black and Hispanic students are the least likely to be retained, graduating at 38 percent and 45.8 percent respectively (Shapiro et al., 2017)....
In 2011 the California State University (CSU) system’s overall four-year graduation rate was 16 percent, which is far below the national rate of 26 percent among similar institutions. In response to the low graduation rate, the California legislature passed 2 statutory bills meant to further expand access, while improving college...
Food, water, and energy have strong interdependencies; actions in one sector inadvertently affect actions in another sector. Recent literature supports a “nexus” approach, whereby policies related to food, water, and energy are integrated and used in tandem rather than in isolation. Developing a better understanding of the trade-offs between food,...
Persistent racial residential and educational segregation in the United States are major sources of institutional racism and inequality. In this essay I focus on the housing search stage, an intermediary between where people say they want to live and where they ultimately end up living. Past research has explored preferences...
There are currently 43 countries which have adopted some kind of carbon pricing policy – either adopted a carbon tax or entered a cap–and–trade, while the remaining countries have not. This has created significant diversity in the world with regard to climate change mitigation. There is thus a need to...
Definitions of child poverty and measurement approaches are directly linked to poverty reduction strategies. The definition determines the measure and the measure, in turn, informs policies, which can subsequently reshape measurement approaches. Applying human rights approach and using method of document analysis, this research explores how the conceptualization and measurement...
South Louisiana has a major coastal erosion problem, exposing coastal communities to storm surge. The state is spending billions of dollars on projects that are not expected to last beyond 20 years. Research indicates that predominate stories influence problem definitions and solutions. Colten (2017) identified a shift in Louisiana's coastal...
In this essay I investigate the effect of United States March 2018 steel tariffs on producers’ capital. I use intertemporal event study methodology to appraise the effect of announcement of the tariffs on March 01, 2018 on the stock returns of major US steel companies listed at New York Stock...
The increasing complexity and connectedness of energy networks has opened pathways for new forms of collaboration with energy consumers. Despite the emergence of the smart grid an array of policy options like demand-side management (DSM), many families continue to disregard daily household energy consumption, particularly during peak-use times of day....
The overall reduced funding from public education in the United States has sparked a backlash across the country. Citing inadequate resources, low pay, and an inability to control the direction of their classroom, teachers in seven states (West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina, and Washington) halted instruction time...
Persistence, the ability for institutions to help students matriculate from their first year to completion, has been a major concern for underrepresented racial minorities (URMs). Among URMs, Black and Hispanic students are the least likely to be retained, graduating at 38 percent and 45.8 percent respectively (Shapiro et al., 2017)....
The last decade has seen a drastic interest in microgrids throughout the world. Even though this trend might seem to be just another technological solution in the energy sector, it is a part of a greater transition from a centralized energy system to a more decentralized one. However, unlike most...