Current Awards

The "Teacher Leader Development Series" is a comprehensive professional development program designed to empower educators in Seminole County Public Schools to become influential leaders within their classrooms and school communities. The series emphasizes the pivotal role teachers play in driving student achievement, with research indicating that teachers have the greatest influence on student learning outcomes. Hattie’s (2009) work shows that teacher quality accounts for approximately 30% of student achievement, highlighting the impact teachers have on student success. Additionally, the Wallace Foundation (2013) emphasizes the importance of teacher leadership in shaping school culture and improving student success. The program integrates the Continuous Improvement Model (Bryk et al., 2015) to foster a culture of ongoing growth and reflection. Teachers will learn leadership strategies to influence school-wide decision-making, enhance student outcomes, and cultivate a collaborative school environment. By equipping teachers with skills to lead professional learning communities (PLCs), mentor peers, and drive school initiatives, the series will help educators lead with confidence and inspire a culture of collective growth. Ultimately, the teacher leader development series aims to retain top talent, reignite passion for the profession, and attract exceptional educators to the district.

 Co-Investigators:  Professor Andrew Olson, Dumarie Rodriguez-Dillard, Professor John Antmann & Dawn Bontz.

The “Pathways to Justice Youth Advocacy Academy” is an empowering, year-long educational pipeline program for high school students that focuses on interactive civic learning and youth advocacy engagement and mentoring, particularly at a time when civic learning and engagement continue to face concerning reductions in secondary education throughout Florida and nationwide. Our research will explore the importance of civic learning to further connect youth to their educational experiences and goals, their communities, their sense of identity and well-being, and their familiarity with local democratic structures as current and future leaders. Initially launched in 2021 as the “Youth Civic Engagement Program”, the Youth Advocacy Academy has completed three successful summers (week-long) programs and is growing in momentum and interest within Florida’s education and advocacy communities. In February 2024, the program was featured in a statewide online webinar hosted by Florida Civic Advance, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to civic excellence and education in Florida through collaboration and civic action. Also, in January 2023, Community Tampa Bay (CTB), a local nonprofit education program that collaborates with local school districts, acknowledged our efforts and reached out to explore partnership opportunities with their esteemed youth program that launched in 2016. We are elated to begin our partnership with CTB in May 2024 to make this a year-long experience and impact.

Young Sound Seekers began in 2020 as a five-year partnership between the National Park Service, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Stetson University. As we approach the end of our original agreement in May 2025, we have been working toward a new phase called "Listen & Learn" aimed at sharing our innovative curriculum more widely. A major component of this work is a set of six lesson plans that cover important concepts about sound in natural settings and outdoor contexts. Our goal is to provide a toolkit for National Park Service rangers and other outdoor educators who want to provide public programming about sound, but may lack expertise to author their own lessons. We are close to publication of six written lesson plans in a free digital download format. This proposal seeks support to supplement those written materials with videos that would teach the teacher how to implement each activity.

Primary Investigator:  Professor Nathan Wolek

Project Goals

Specifically focused on elevating equity in our community, this project builds on the mission of the Nina B. Hollis Institute by creating educational opportunities for middle through high school students through applied partnerships. Through a town and gown collaboration between Stetson University and Sisters Build Network for Girls, inc., and Man Up Mentoring, inc., we are working with students in the Spring Hill Community and greater West Volusia for two objectives. The first is to demonstrate to students, through an interactive project, the value of historical knowledge work—work that requires thoughtful collection and presentation of information—as self-affirming and remunerative labor. The second is to elevate the contributions of local equity and justice leaders (Local Legends) through the production of public history media. Through this project middle through high school participants will develop skills in intergenerational collaboration and writing with revision, and further, they will come to understand knowledge work as a potential career trajectory. The artifacts of their work will appear on the Local Legends online dashboard (hosted by the Department of Environmental Science) and support their professional development as they emerge from secondary, and perhaps post-secondary, education. 

Professor Rajni Shankar-Brown (formerly - Professor Tony Abbott, Kevin Winchell), Co-Investigator:  Professor Primrose Cameron

In January 2023, my colleague at The Ohio State University, Paul Granello, and I formed a collaborative research consortium that we call the Stress Management and Resiliency Training (SMART) Labs. Our SMART Labs utilize the HeartMath Institute™ curriculum to educate people along a wide spectrum of age ranges about how to understand what stress is, where it comes from, how it affects people, and how to either prevent it or reduce it to develop resilience. In alignment with the Hollis Institutes mission to promote lifelong learning, education, and personal growth, the purpose of the SMART Lab is to educate members of the Stetson and Volusia County community to be more aware and better equipped to address the stressors they have to work through on a routine basis, or, help others (e.g., mental health clients) to be more resilient. Between our two labs, we have successfully conduced over 450 stress management sessions, primarily with undergraduate students (i.e., emerging adults).

Educating the public and providing practical resources to address stress is timely for many reasons. For the last 10 years, The Volusia County Health Department has published a Community Health Needs Assessment. For almost 10 consecutive years, mental health has ranked as the top public health need cutting across all age groups, from youth to retirees in the county. This closely matches the national trends, where anxiety, depression, and suicide risk remain as record levels across multiple age groups. In 2023, in a historic move, the Surgeon General of the United States issued the first Health Advisory that named the top public health problem to be one of mental health. In that advisory, called “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” the Surgeon General noted that the stress inducing effects of isolation is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Primary Investigator:  Professor Jesse Fox

The purpose of the Language Development Through Focused Play grant is to develop a more natural approach to speech and language therapy by using a focused play approach.  This grant is designed to train speech and language therapists as well as preschool teachers who primarily work with children with language disorders, have been identified as developmentally delayed, or are on the autism spectrum in the use of focused play.  Jean Piaget said, "Play is the work of children."  Through play, children can learn many useful language skills.  Children develop best within the context of caring relationships.  Using baby dolls provides the opportunity for young children to experience being the nurturer by interacting with their baby dolls in the same way we as caring adults might interact with them.  As the children play with their dolls, they relive and strengthen the attachment and connection that they have with their caregivers and parents.  The caregivers of many of the children we work with do not have the language or parenting skills for optimal learning.  Utilizing baby dolls in language therapy is a way to ensure that children experience the attachment, attunement, and social play required for optimal brain development, thus helping close the achievement gap.

Co-Investigators:  Professor Kathy Piechura-Couture, Kelli Eaton