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Tag: University of Illinois Chicago

  • Early childhood teachers struggle with workload, study finds

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    Educators of any grade have a heavy load to bear when teaching children. One group whose load we tend not to consider heavy is early childhood teachers, teaching children three through five. A new study from the University of Georgia reveals that only 10 percent of early childhood teachers have enough time to finish their work. The study shares how early childhood teachers tend to do tasks like lesson planning and documenting children’s progress during the evenings and weekends. This trend has led to teacher burnout and people leaving the field. Professor Erin Hamel co-authored the study and discusses why teacher planning time is essential. Her research illuminates the larger consequences of no planning time and why we must take this matter seriously.

    “To take care of children, we must take care of teachers. When teachers reported not having enough time to do their work tasks, they did their work during their personal time. Over half of them were using their personal breaks and lunch to do their work. 41% were coming in early and staying late. All of these methods they’re trying to use to meet their job expectations encroach on their personal time, and they can eventually lead to burnout and stress,” said Erin Hamel, Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Georgia.

    The University of Georgia released a report about the study in July, which was conducted in 2021. Hamel co-authored the study with Rachel Schachter, a University of Illinois Chicago professor. Together, they surveyed 106 teachers and 104 directors of early childhood centers about how much planning time teachers are scheduled and how much they get. According to the results, teachers have reported receiving 37 minutes less than what they are scheduled for. The amount of work they have to do takes away from their time. Early childhood teachers have to teach multiple subjects to a batch of students in a sensitive period of brain development. Prof Hamel explains what could be on the plate of an early childhood teacher that would make anyone reach their limit. 

    “Early childhood teachers are responsible for all aspects of the curriculum, they’re also working with children who developmentally need more assistance with daily living. The younger the child, the more involved the teacher needs to be. That includes diapering, feeding, and comforting a child when separating from a parent,” said Hamel.

    Early childhood center directors are aware that teachers take the work home. Unfortunately, there is no wiggle room in the system to change that. The report explains that every state requires a specific child-to-teacher ratio. The safety of the children is impacted if there are not enough teachers present, which leaves early childhood centers vulnerable to legal issues. The pandemic played a factor in recent years. Many early childhood centers had to close due to COVID, leaving several early childhood professionals out of work. When the restrictions were lifted and centers reopened, most professionals did not return to the field.

    “We saw an Exodus, especially after the pandemic, of teachers who left because centers were closed or didn’t have enough children to support the number of teachers that were in the classroom. Centers had to downsize their staff,” said Maisa Williams-Foote, President of the Georgia Association for the Education of Young Children.

    “The teacher shortage is real, and centers do not have enough qualified teachers. Some states have lessened the requirements for teachers. Previously, a teacher may have been required to get a Child Development Associate credential or even an associate’s degree. Now, some states are reducing that to a high school diploma,” said Williams-Foote. 

    Professor Hamel recommends retention programs for early childhood teachers to address this growing problem. The UGA professor mentioned that the Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL) offered a tuition assistance program that paid a portion of child care costs for Early childhood teachers. She also recommends that parents who are available to volunteer. A few hours a week can make a huge difference. 

    Early childhood teachers need the proper support to do their job. Their planning period is critical to their performance and children’s outcomes. Morehouse College Sociology Professor Dr. Keon Berry expressed how the shortcomings in preparation affect everyone. 

    “We need to take it so seriously because our children’s future depends on it, but most importantly, the world depends on it. Planning time is connected to preparation, and preparation is connected to performance. With less planning time, imagine the impact on performance. I am happy Prof. Hamel shed light on what’s happening in the classroom,” said Dr Berry.

    This article is part of a series of articles supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for Word In Black, a collaboration of 10 Black-owned media outlets nationwide.

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  • With $13M, UIC scientists will study lung inflammation mechanisms

    With $13M, UIC scientists will study lung inflammation mechanisms

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    Newswise — Researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago hope to learn more about how the human immune system is regulated by the endothelium in lung tissue, thanks to a $13 million, multi-project Program Project Grant award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

    The researchers hope that the projects will lead to new avenues for research and treatments to help patients who suffer from conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, pulmonary fibrosis and acute respiratory distress disorder, a common and serious complication of COVID-19.

    Conditions like these are known to be exacerbated by the body’s own immune response, such as when the inflammation meant to fight infections or heal injuries spirals out of control and winds up inflicting harm.

    The researchers think that these inflammatory conditions may be common in the lungs because of unique endothelial cells, which line blood vessels and shield the lungs from trauma and bacterial or viral infections.

    “Targeted therapies remain an urgent unmet need. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the lung endothelium is a complex monolayer, an organ itself,” said Dolly Mehta, UIC professor and interim head of the Department of Pharmacology and Regenerative Medicine at the College of Medicine and the program director for the grant.  

    “Studying this enigmatic immune regulatory function of lung endothelium is crucial for understanding how endothelial cells control immunity and defensive function of the lungs,” she said.

    The research team consists of six investigators who will lead three separate project grants and three separate cores.

    Mehta is also the principal investigator for one of the projects, for $2.2 million, which supports research on a protein receptor in endothelial cells that promotes lung integrity.

    Asrar Malik, professor of pharmacology and regenerative medicine, and Dr. Jalees Rehman, professor and head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, will lead the other two project grants.

    Malik’s lab will look at an enzyme called E3 ligase that influences the integrity of the lining of the blood vessels and the genes that activate the enzyme. Rehman’s lab will look at how mitochondria in endothelial cells can be leveraged to prevent out-of-control inflammation. The awards are $1.8 million and $2.2 million, respectively.

    “We know that in tissues like those found in the lung, heart and brain, the blood vessels present a unique and complicated immune environment, and we know that there is an interconnectedness between all the many cellular processes. The idea of this multi-project grant is to help create an infrastructure for collaboration among researchers looking at these various mechanisms,” Mehta said.

    Konstantinos Chronis, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics, will lead the project’s epigenetics and transcriptomics core. Gary Mo, assistant professor of pharmacology and regenerative medicine, will lead the cellular imaging core. Yoshikazu Tsukasaki, a research assistant professor also from the department of pharmacology and regenerative medicine, will lead the intravital imaging and physiology core.

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    University of Illinois Chicago

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  • Cultural historian, writer named director of UIC’s Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

    Cultural historian, writer named director of UIC’s Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

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    Newswise — The College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts at the University of Illinois Chicago has announced that Liesl Olson has accepted the position of director of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, effective March 1, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

    Olson is a respected scholar, cultural leader and social justice advocate who most recently built and directed the Chicago Studies program at the Newberry Library. This innovative series of public events, institutes for teachers, workshops and seminars leveraged the library’s unique archival collection to bring Chicago’s rich and complex history to life. It is distinguished by its many partnerships and far reach and has focused on such historical subjects as the neighborhood of Hull-House, the legacy of protest and riots in Chicago, the Great Migration, and the history of artists, writers and performers in Chicago and the Midwest.

    Rebecca Rugg, dean of UIC’s College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts, hailed Olson’s appointment.

    “The promise of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in the 21st century relies on the stewardship of Addams’ prescient ideals and public practice through visionary programming for diverse audiences. Liesl Olson has demonstrated her leadership in this capacity through the Newberry’s Chicago Studies program, and she will do the same at UIC. We are thrilled to welcome her,” Rugg said.

    A commitment to social justice and public engagement is a fundamental component of Olson’s work to date. Her writing has amplified and yielded new insights to the contributions of women and makers of color in Chicago, past and present. Olson extends her research and perspectives far beyond the academy into robust public practice through her service as board member of and participant in the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, workshops for teachers, and lively talks on PBS and NPR.

    In 2020, Olson helped spearhead Chicago 1919: Confronting the Race Riots, a programming series in partnership with 10 Chicago cultural organizations that explored the history and legacy of Chicago’s red summer. Recognizing the Chicago 1919’s ambition and accomplishments, Olson and her Newberry colleagues were awarded the 2020 Outstanding Public History Project Award from the National Council on Public History.

    “I am honored and thrilled to lead the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum into an exciting new era. I have long admired Hull-House for the way it exemplifies the historic intersection between the arts and activism in Chicago,” Olson said. “I hope to bring the distinctiveness of this city’s cultural life into conversations that help us broaden our understanding of the city’s history and its contemporary challenges. I look forward to working with the extraordinary staff at Hull-House, with students, faculty and staff at UIC, and with neighborhood partners across the city. Together we can carry forth a vision of social justice that inspired one of my great heroes, the feminist, activist, and champion of the arts, Jane Addams.”

    Important exhibitions and projects led by Olson include the fall 2021 Newberry Chicago Avant-Garde: Five Women Ahead of Their Time exhibition and catalogue about remarkable women — Gertrude Abercrombie, Gwendolyn Brooks, Katherine Dunham, Ruth Page and Katharine Kuh — who made indelible contributions to 20th century art history. Since 2013, Olson has directed five National Endowment for the Humanities summer institutes that explore the art and culture of Chicago, including the summer 2022 institute Making Modernism: Literature, Dance, and Visual Culture in Chicago, 1893-1955.

    Olson is also the author of the award-winning “Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis and Modernism and the Ordinary” and is frequently invited to write and speak about Chicago cultural history for scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, television and radio. She was awarded a Public Scholars Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2022.

    Lisa Yun Lee, a former Hull-House Museum director and current National Public Housing Museum executive director, is on the faculty of UIC’s art history department and served on the search committee.

    “UIC students, faculty and the Chicago public will be the beneficiaries of Olson’s appointment,” Lee said. “She espouses the values that Jane Addams embodies and the commitment to social justice the museum advances every day. Her proven ability to bring history to life and make it relevant for diverse audiences distinguishes her in the field.”

    As director, Olson will work closely with the dean of the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts to serve internal UIC audiences and external constituencies, while activating the mission and collections of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.

    The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum serves as a dynamic memorial to social reformer Jane Addams, the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and her colleagues whose work changed the lives of their immigrant neighbors as well as national and international public policy. The museum preserves and develops the original Hull-House site for the interpretation and continuation of the historic settlement house vision, linking research, education and social engagement. The museum is located in two of the original settlement house buildings — the Hull Home, a National Historic Landmark, and the Residents’ Dining Hall, a beautiful Arts and Crafts building that has welcomed some of the world’s most important thinkers, artists and activists.

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    University of Illinois Chicago

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  • Salmonella exposure a risk for colon cancer

    Salmonella exposure a risk for colon cancer

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    Newswise — A new study published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine links exposure to salmonella bacteria to colon cancer risk. 

    The researchers, including a team led by Jun Sun from the University of Illinois Chicago, studied human colon cancer tissue samples and animal models and found that exposure to salmonella was linked with colon cancers that developed earlier and grew larger.  

    The study authors first looked at data from a Netherlands-based retrospective study of colon cancer patients that found tissue samples taken during routine colon cancer surgery with salmonella antibodies tended to be from people who had worse colon cancer outcomes. 

    Using salmonella strains isolated from these tissue samples, Sun and her U.S.-based team studied mice with colon cancer that had been exposed to the bacteria. They observed accelerated tumor growth and larger tumors in mice with salmonella exposure. They also saw that there was increased salmonella translocated to the tumors. 

    “During infection, salmonella hijacks essential host signaling pathways, and these molecular manipulations may cause oncogenic transformation. The current study tells us that more research is needed into the connection between salmonella exposure and colon cancer risk in the USA, and that simply by practicing safe food preparation, we can potentially help to protect ourselves,” said Sun, UIC professor of medicine. 

    Sun’s collaborators in the Netherlands also studied the bacteria in vitro. They combined human cancer cells and pre-cancer cells with the salmonella strain in the lab and measured any growth or changes in the tumor. They saw that even one infection caused transformation and that each salmonella infection exponentially increased the rate of cell transformation. 

    “The mouse and tissue culture experiments show that salmonella infection had a chronic effect to accelerate tumor growth,” said Sun, who also is a member of the University of Illinois Cancer Center at UIC. “This evidence tells us that we need to look closer at salmonella exposure as an environmental risk factor for chronic diseases, such as colon cancer.” 

    Leiden University Medical Center, the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, and Utrecht University, all in the Netherlands, collaborated on this study.  

    In addition to Sun, co-authors of “Repetitive non-typhoidal Salmonella exposure is an environmental risk factor for colon cancer and tumor growth” include Daphne van Elsland, Janneke Duijster, Jilei Zhang, Virginie Stevenin, Yongguo Zhang, Lang Zha, Yinglin Xia, Eelco Franz, Lapo Mughini-Gras and Jacques Neefjes. 

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    University of Illinois Chicago

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  • An integrated, net-negative system captures carbon and produces ethylene

    An integrated, net-negative system captures carbon and produces ethylene

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    Newswise — Engineers at the University of Illinois Chicago have built a machine that captures carbon from flue gas and converts it to ethylene.  

    The device integrates a carbon capture system with an ethylene conversation system for the first time. And, the system not only runs on electricity, but it also removes more carbon from the environment than it generates – making it what scientists call net-negative on carbon emissions. 

    Among manufactured chemicals worldwide, ethylene ranks third for carbon emissions after ammonia and cement. Ethylene is used not only to create plastic products for the packaging, agricultural and automotive industries but also to produce chemicals used in antifreeze, medical sterilizers and vinyl siding for houses, for example.  

    The system and the results of the UIC College of Engineering scientists’ experiments are published in an Energy & Environmental Science paper titled “Fully-Integrated Electrochemical System that Captures CO2 from Flue Gas to Produce Value-Added Chemicals at Ambient Conditions.” 

    “This is the first demonstration of a net-negative, all-electric integrated system to capture carbon from pollutants and create a highly valuable resource,” said Meenesh Singh, UIC assistant professor in the department of chemical engineering. 

    “There is an urgent need to develop efficient technologies for integrated carbon capture and conversion to sustainably produce net-negative fuels. Currently, integrated carbon capture and conversion systems are highly energy-intensive and work in a discontinuous cycle of carbon dioxide capture and reduction. Efficiently integrating carbon capture with the conversion system eliminates the need for transportation and storage, and thereby increasing its energy efficiency.” 

    The integrated carbon capture and conversion system developed at UIC continuously captures carbon dioxide from flue gas to produce high-purity ethylene.  

    “This is an important milestone in ethylene decarbonization,” Singh said.  

    To capture carbon from the air or flue gas, Singh’s lab modified a standard artificial leaf system with inexpensive materials to include a water gradient — a dry side and a wet side — across an electrically charged membrane.  

    On the dry side, an organic solvent attaches to available carbon dioxide to produce a concentration of bicarbonate, or baking soda, on the membrane. As bicarbonate builds, these negatively charged ions are pulled across the membrane toward a positively charged electrode in a water-based solution on the membrane’s wet side. The liquid solution dissolves the bicarbonate back into carbon dioxide, so it can be released and harnessed for CO2 conversion.  

    The system uses a modular, stackable design that allows the system to be easily scaled up and down. 

    To convert captured carbon dioxide to ethylene, Singh and his colleagues used a second system in which an electric current is passed through a cell. Half of the cell is filled with carbon dioxide captured from a carbon capture system, the other half with a water-based solution. An electrified catalyst draws charged hydrogen atoms from the water molecules into the other half of the unit separated by a membrane, where they combine with charged carbon atoms from the carbon dioxide molecules to form ethylene.  

    The UIC researchers integrated the two systems by feeding the captured carbon dioxide solution to the carbon conversion system and recycling it back. The closed-loop recycling of solution ensures a constant supply of carbon dioxide from flue gas and its conversion to ethylene. 

    To test their integrated system, the researchers implemented a 100-square-centimeters bipolar membrane electrodialysis unit to capture carbon dioxide from the flue gas and hydraulically connected it to the 1-square-centimeter electrolysis cell to produce ethylene.  

    They were able to test the system continuously, 24 hours per day for seven days. The system was not only stable the entire time, it also captured carbon at a rate of 24 grams per day and produced ethylene at a rate of 188 milligrams per day. 

    “In the journey to make ethylene production green, this is a potential breakthrough,” Singh said. “Our next step is to scale up the integrated carbon capture and conversion system to produce ethylene at higher rates — a rate of 1 kilogram per day and capture carbon at a rate higher than kilograms per day.” 

    Co-authors of the study include Aditya Prajapati and Rohan Sartape of UIC, and Miguel Galante, Jiahan Xie, Samuel Leung, Ivan Bessa, Marcio Andrad, Robert Somich, Marcio Reboucas, Gus Hutras and Nathalia Diniz of Braskem. Research to develop this technology has received support from the U.S. Department of Energy (DE-SC-0022321) and Braskem. 

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    University of Illinois Chicago

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