research & Publications

  Jannah Scott, Former Deputy Director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and Director of the American Center for Religious Freedom, was interviewed by the Azerbaijan State News Agency (AZERTAC). In her interview, Scott touched upon the preservation of multicultural values in Azerbaijan; the Azerbaijani state initiatives aimed at promoting the intercultural and interreligious dialogue, and the registration of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the country.

This article is a call to Faith Leaders to tap into the greatest capacity that they have for promoting peace, which is an element of who they are as people of Spirit. Research has shown that the spiritual factor can be an important element in bringing people together and reconciling across differences.

The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) concept was initially developed for adult members of the community to help prepare for disasters and minimize damage when disasters occur. CERTs also served as a tool for building community capacity and self-sufficiency by supporting a diverse group of people working together in dealing with challenges affecting their communities. The novel approach to CERTs described here sought to involve high-risk youth from low-socioeconomic status communities in CERTs and first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training to help them build ties with communities, stay off the streets, and become leaders in the community. It also helped to provide different perspectives on life, while building more resilient communities better prepared to minimize damage when a disaster strikes. 

Working alongside local jurisdictions, over the Obama years, the DHS Center developed the Building Resilience with Diverse Communities (BRDC) engagement process to improve relationships with faith-based and community organisations and to ‘reach unreached’ populations in emergency preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation. BRDC works to improve community resilience by engaging the ‘whole community’ through its seven-stage process. The initiative demonstrates that emergency management can adapt the BRDC process to effectively integrate faith-based and community groups into their plans and processes, leverage existing resources and, by doing so, increase resilience with some of the hardest to reach and unreached populations in their jurisdictions.

In the 1990's, Arizona had almost 400,000 children between the ages of 13 and 19. Tens of thousands were dropping out of school or caught in the web of drugs, alcohol, violence, teen pregnancy and suicide. This report laid the foundation for many youth-serving organizations who were developed in the 90's and early 2000's to change the odds for this population. 
Report Available Upon Request

This is a republication of an earlier article that expands on the role of various factors in choosing and leaving Science in highly selective institutions. It extends and deepens the analysis, focusing on ethnicity rather than gender.

In the early 1990s, it was important to note how ethnicity determined whether or not students chose to attend certain Ivy League institutions and whether or not they chose to stay. This research looked at data from Brown, Yale and Cornell Universities and Dartmouth College to determine if ethnicity played a role. Research findings had implications for student admissions, student support services and other elements of student life.