Research Topical Areas of Interest:  Teacher Research, Nutrition and Health Issues, Families, Parenting

1.      Families (Topical Area): South Dakota Perceptions of Communities Among Youth and Older Adults (Title)

2.      Teacher Research (Topical Area): Action Research with the SDSU Center for Early Childhood Education(Title)

3.      Teacher Research (Topical Area): Observing and Documenting Integration of Literacy Components into an Inquiry-based Dramatic Play area (Title)

LL   -Looking into nutrition aspects with young children

-Sue Brokmeier and Lynda Venhuizen are involved in a research project regarding kindergarteners as writers.  Our ECE majors will be learning about writing from the kindergarteners’ writing samples and Sue’s insight as a kindergarten teacher.  Sue and  Lynda will be presenting our findings at the 2007 Conference of the Association for Constructivist Teaching.

-Lynda Venhuizen had a poster presentation selected for the Zero to Three National Training Institute in December titled “Unpacking Your Suitcase: Translating New Knowledge into Practice” 

-Nicole Graves current research projects and interests are varied.   She is working on writing an article based on data that was collected during the spring of 2007.  A colleague and Nicole collected data from Social works students at two Minnesota Universities.  One of the Universities is a private institution and the other is a public institution.  Student’s knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about aging were measured and correlated with future interest in working with an elderly population. Nicole's thesis work involved research about delayed parenting.  It is still an area of research that she is interested in.   Nicole is currently drafting an article to submit for publication. Another research interest is to learn about later life transition to marriage.   Her primarily interest is in interviewing couples who married at the age of 50 or later.   This project is currently in the preliminary stages with plans to get the study underway by the spring of 2008. Nicole is also working  as a evaluation team member for a grant-funded projected aimed at measuring the quality of childcare in the state of South Dakota.   She has been been part of this research for the past 6 ½ years.