OBJECTIVES:School-based dental sealant programs are important in expanding the reach of oral health care to underserved populations. However, data collection during these visits is also valuable for public health surveillance and program planning. This study aimed to utilize these data to identify groups disproportionately impacted by pandemic closures. METHODS:SEAL!ND is a program in North Dakota that serves schools, where 45% or more of students are enrolled in the free and reduced-fee school lunch program. SEAL!ND provides dental screening, application of fluoride varnish and dental sealants, and oral health surveillance. Data are collected for evaluation and to track pediatric oral health. In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent public health emergency stalled the program and left these children without access to preventive dental services. We examined previous dental visits, untreated decay, treated decay, and early and urgent care need during the 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school years. Binomial and multinomial logistic regressions were conducted to examine the odds ratios of the oral health outcomes by race. RESULTS:The proportion of poor outcomes had noticeably increased for American Indian students compared to White students. There was also increased odds of untreated decay, treated decay, and early and urgent care need for American Indian students compared to White students. CONCLUSIONS:These findings aid in identifying groups of students whose oral health was disproportionately impacted by the disruption in community-based, preventive dental care services during the pandemic for the purpose of future intervention.

Research on faculty emotions is scarce, despite their evident relevance for faculty well-being, higher education quality, and student outcomes. The present studies aimed to investigate six discrete emotions (enjoyment, pride, boredom, anxiety, anger, frustration) faculty may experience during grading. Study 1 compared faculty emotions for grading with emotions for research and teaching (US sample, N = 1226). Mean comparisons showed that grading generally elicited less positive and more negative emotions than research and teaching. Study 2 further examined faculty emotions for grading through the lens of control-value theory, by identifying emotion-specific appraisal patterns in two countries (US, n = 244 and Germany, n = 201). Multiple linear regressions revealed that the most consistent predictor for grading emotions across both samples was cost, in terms of the extent to which faculty perceived grading as a thankless task that kept them away from more meaningful tasks. Our findings further point to the important role of faculty-student relationships and faculty members' confidence in their grading ability for eliciting grading emotions. This study extends existing research on emotions in higher education by considering grading as a relevant emotion-inducing task, and by applying control-value theory to a new context in two countries, thereby contributing to the question of this theory's generalizability. Practical implications of our findings entail that universities should aim to improve the circumstances of grading and equip their faculty with the means to handle their grading duties well, to optimize their somewhat worrisome emotional experiences in this context.

University faculty have many responsibilities, including teaching and research, that call for long periods of work before a significant payoff. Grit, the passion and perseverance towards long term goals, may help explain why some faculty attain their goals more frequently than others. The goal of this study was to examine the role of grit and emotions in faculty teaching and research success. Counseling psychology faculty ( N = 131) from US universities completed an online survey, which included and validated a revised grit scale. Findings showed, more so in the domain of research than teaching, grit correlated positively with enjoyment, negatively with anxiety, and positively with success. In the research domain, the structural regression paths revealed grit to be more relevant for faculty success and emotions. In the research models, persistence of effort predicted perceived control while consistency of interest predicted value. Research value predicted enjoyment and anxiety, and in turn success. In the teaching model, there were no significant paths from grit to control or value; however, value predicted enjoyment, and in turn success. These findings have implications for faculty development as grit has been a relatively understudied construct in this population.