A study by Jennifer M. Grossman, Ph.D., explored how extended families support teens’ sexual health.
Women have never held more than 27 percent of leadership positions in nonprofit U.S. theaters, according to a WCW study.
This article references a 2015 study by WCW on the lack of gender and racial diversity in theater leadership.
Ineke Ceder and Dr. Sumru Erkut discuss gathering the right data on workplace climate to become more diverse and inclusive.
August 22, 2018
Researchers at WCW investigate and eliminate cultural biases in assessment tool to ensure that results accurately indicate the quality level of youth afterschool educational programs.
April 24, 2018
The newest issue of Afterschool Matters, the national, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to promoting professionalism, scholarship, and consciousness in the field of afterschool education, reflects on the field’s commitment to the value of the life of every student, in school and out—a timely focus as youth and young adults rally for safety and equity nationwide and educators strive to provide the highest quality environments that encourage learning and growth.
April 23, 2018
Most research about family sexuality communication has focused on teens and their parents, but Dr. Jennifer Grossman is including conversations with extended family members to understand how they can help teens make smarter decisions about dating, sex, and relationships.
The inaugural two-day Berkshire Leadership Summit was established as a direct response to the WCW report, Women’s Leadership in Resident Theaters.
Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development awarded Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D, research associate at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW), a $100,000 pilot grant to study parent and peer influences on social media use in early adolescence as well as the implications for psychosocial and behavioral health. Working with co-principal investigator Megan Moreno, M.D., M.P.H., academic division chief in General Pediatrics/Adolescent Medicine, and vice chair of Digital Health at the Children’s Hospital at University of Wisconsin, Madison, Charmaraman will collect data from middle school youth and their parents in the Greater Boston area. The primary objectives of this one-year study are to: (1) investigate the developmental processes of social media use during the pubertal transition to adolescence, highlighting factors that are likely to have explanatory power in understanding the relationships between social media use, social context, and psychosocial and behavioral health; (2) use multiple reporters on adolescent social media use in a mixed-method design utilizing matched parent-to-student survey and student social media site data; and (3) build theory on mechanisms for how, when, and why early initiation into social technologies co-occurs with behavioral health outcomes, moderated by peer and family influences.
Talking About Sex: Extended Family As Educators and Allies
Jennifer Grossman, Ph.D., is currently principal investigator of an R21 award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)—Adolescent Communication with Family and Reproductive Health, which includes the first comprehensive assessment of teens’ sexuality communication with extended family and its associations with sexual behavior as well as an exploration of extended family approaches to talking with teens about sex. Grossman is also principal investigator of an R03 award from NICHD—Risk Behaviors Among Offspring of Teen Parents: Effects of Parenting on the Next Generation, which addresses the potential of maternal and paternal parenting to reduce the high risk of early sex and teen pregnancy for offspring of teen parents. (The R21 grant mechanism is intended to encourage exploratory/developmental research by providing support for the early and conceptual stages of project development. The R03 grant mechanism supports small research projects that can be carried out in a short period of time with limited resources.)
The vast majority of our society’s leaders are men— every president of the United States and very likely, many of our past bosses. This is also still the case in regional theater even though many in the field can easily think of a few female leaders at those larger regional theaters, like Diane Paulus, Lynn Meadow, and Molly Smith. There are as many women as men who graduate with advanced degrees in theater arts or theater management, and there are plenty of women employed in all ranks but the highest. Moreover, the majority of theater tickets are bought by women. But, for decades, women have held only about 25 percent of leadership positions in nonprofit regional theaters.
Out-of-School Time Programming & Quality
Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., Allison Tracy, Ph.D., Ineke Ceder, and Amanda Richer authored “Measuring Program Quality: Evidence of the scientific validity of the Assessment of Program Practices Tool (APT),” which will be published in an upcoming issue of Afterschool Matters. Funded by the William T. Grant Foundation and Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation in two phases, they describe APT’s strengths as an evaluation and program quality measure for out-of-school (OST) programs, a tool that is critical for program directors and policymakers who need to identify where to improve and how to support those improvements within OST programs. In addition, the online, video-based training developed in the second phase to increase reliability of APT raters showed promise, such that the most high priority APT quality areas were found to be the most improved (i.e., most accurate) scores post training.
Research Informing Practice & Policy
Sumru Erkut, Ph.D. and Ineke Ceder are presenting findings from the “Women in Theater Leadership Project” in Washington, D.C., during the National Conference of the Theatre Communications Group in late June. In 2013, the leadership of the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco, CA, and Sumru Erkut and Ineke Ceder, at the Wellesley Centers for Women, partnered to study gender equity in League of Resident Theatres (LORT) leadership. Women have not held more than 21 percent of artistic leadership and 38 percent of executive leadership in these theaters. After examining what is needed in a career profile to become a candidate for these positions and looking at the experiences of those aspiring to the positions, Erkut and Ceder, joined by ACT’s Associate Producer Erin Washington, will share research findings and recommendations on how to level the field for leadership in large theaters in the U.S., both along gender and racial backgrounds
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