Partnerships and Grants

The Grow Your Own Collaboratory creates a sustainable infrastructure to improve the attractiveness of the teaching profession in Tennessee. In a 50-state scan, Tennessee ranks in the bottom quintile on attracting and retaining teachers. During the two years of the project, the team will design, implement and refine a professional development program for mentor teachers. Research shows that well-prepared mentor teachers are essential to retaining novice teachers. By designing and implementing their own mentor professional development program (with significant resources), we hypothesize that this project will positively impact the satisfaction of current mentor teachers while simultaneously improving the retention of the novice teachers who will experience well-prepared mentors.

Faculty involved in this project will conduct experimental research on the impact of a co-created summer mentor training retreat. The control group of mentors will receive the summer retreat in year two of the grant. We intend to publish findings on any quantitative and qualitative differences between mentors who are trained in a co-created summer retreat and mentors who are trained using existing training methods. The TN GYO Center will sustain the maintenance and delivery of the resulting mentor teacher PD program after the grant project ends.

Within rural communities, school psychologists are constantly fighting barriers that their urban and suburban counterparts often do not have to contend with, which directly impacts the millions of students who attend school in these communities. Two of the main barriers they face are a lack of resources and funding. This can inhibit school psychologists from providing thorough evaluations, which can potentially impact being able to accurately determine eligibility for special education. This is crucial, as students with disabilities are more likely to attend higher education if they receive the services they need in high school.

Our grant looks to address the above-mentioned barriers for our rural communities in Tennessee with the creation of the RAIL (Rural Assessment and Intervention Library) System. The RAIL System would provide rural school districts with the following: ability to check out assessments and/or interventions that they can’t afford or justify purchasing; ability to try new assessments/interventions to decide if they are worth purchasing; access to protocols for rating scales in English and Spanish;  academic and social/emotional interventions to use for free; current publications they can check out and review; and access to a team of school psychologists for consultation.

Tennessee ranks 44^th in the nation for health outcomes, with rural residents experiencing grave disparities versus their urban counterparts. Health care workforce shortages also plague rural areas, in part due to isolation and limited professional development opportunities. There is a need not only to improve the health of rural residents, but also to expand the capability of the health care workforce. This proposal will simultaneously address both problems by going on the road with 3 One UT-branded rural health units—launching from UTHSC, UT-Martin, and UT-Southern—to provide outreach, education, and training to a) the community and b) the health care workforce.

Tennessee ranks 44^th in the nation for health outcomes, with rural residents experiencing grave disparities versus their urban counterparts. Health care workforce shortages also plague rural areas, in part due to isolation and limited professional development opportunities. There is a need not only to improve the health of rural residents, but also to expand the capability of the health care workforce. This proposal will simultaneously address both problems by going on the road with 3 One UT-branded rural health units—launching from UTHSC, UT-Martin, and UT-Southern—to provide outreach, education, and training to a) the community and b) the health care workforce. Our nursing-led initiative creates a strategic overlap to spread and scale beyond current projects and workforce development activities to reach a broader population. The team will engage with UT Extension Offices, community members, and external stakeholders to develop educational opportunities to address the needs of these counties, capitalizing on existing programs and leveraging the synergistic expertise of our nursing faculty and colleagues from other disciplines. By uniting strengths across the UT system, we will create a lasting impact on rural health outcomes and the rural health care workforce.

Methamphetamine is widely used in TN, often combined with opioids, and is a factor in many drug overdose deaths. In TN in 2022, there were 3,826 overdose deaths, with opioids present in 3,073. Stimulants like methamphetamine were present in 2,103 deaths. Several factors predict relapse to substance use, and likely predict the intensity (quantity and frequency) of substance use. Among these factors are pain, psychological distress about pain (pain catastrophizing), and stress, which may influence drug use via increases in craving or other mechanisms. The impact of these factors on quantity of drug use in methamphetamine and opioid users has not been studied.

This project will enroll people who are actively using methamphetamine and opioids. We will assess participants at regular intervals to examine the association of intensity of drug use with experimental pain psychophysical measures (pain sensitivity and pain unpleasantness), pain catastrophizing (as measured by standard scales), and chronic stress. We will also examine the association of current drug craving and current pain with intensity of drug use. We predict that pain sensitivity and pain unpleasantness, pain catastrophizing, chronic stress, current pain, and craving will be positively associated with intensity of drug use and may interact to mediate use.