The University of Delaware is committed to excellence in undergraduate and graduate education, research and service. From its roots as a private academy in 1743, the institution today is a research-intensive, technologically advanced university with global impact.

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One hundred years ago today, University of Delaware Professor Raymond Kirkbride led eight students to France for an academic year to promote cross-cultural understanding and peace. It was the first for-credit study-abroad program in the United States and became a model for global education around the world. A century later, UD continues to be a national leader and innovator in global education, with unique programs like World Scholars and a growing community of international students on campus.
Watch this video to learn more about how UD is celebrating and expanding Professor Kirkbride’s bold vision.

July 7, 1923: The Day UD Changed the World

Coastal cities of the future need creative climate change adaptation tools today. University of Delaware disaster researcher A.R. Siders believes managed retreat— the purposeful movement of people, buildings and other assets from areas vulnerable to hazards—can be a powerful tool for expanding the range of possible solutions to cope with rising sea levels, flooding and other climate change effects when used proactively or in combination with other measures. 

Read more: 
https://www.udel.edu/udaily/2021/june/managed-retreat-ar-siders-coastal-cities-future-climate-change

Managed retreat—a powerful tool for future climate change adaptation

The mission of the Delaware Center for Cognitive Aging Research is to support and advance research, education, and clinical training in Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. We are interested in supporting researchers in conducting clinical and translational research to improve the timeliness and accuracy of the diagnosis, therapeutic interventions, person-centered clinical care, and quality of life for patients across the continuum from typical aging to dementia and families. We combine clinical, academic, and research experience in medicine, neuropsychology, physiology, and engineering from the University of Delaware and ChristianaCare Health System.

Learn more about DECCAR: https://sites.udel.edu/memory-research/

The Delaware Center for Cognitive Aging Research

University of Delaware students created a listening device for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to become composers of their favorite childhood songs. The students reached out to Autism Delaware and visited the Sensory Room at the Route 9 Library and Innovation Center to pilot the listening device, developed by UD researchers Daniel Stevens, a professor of music theory in the School of Music within the College of Arts and Sciences, Matthew Mauriello, assistant professor of computer and information sciences in the College of Engineering.

They applied for and were awarded $50,000 from the Maggie E. Neumann Health Sciences Research Fund to advance their research. The fund specifically targets interdisciplinary research and innovation that aims to improve the lives of people with disabilities.

For more information on the project, email asdmusic.ud@gmail.com

Children with autism become composers using listening device

What you plant in your backyard or community can have a significant impact on the ecosystem. In this video, University of Delaware researcher Doug Tallamy shares one simple action we can all take to better support birds and other wildlife. Tallamy, an expert on the science of plant-insect interactions, is the T.A. Baker Professor of Agriculture and Natural Resources at UD. He is also a New York Times’ bestselling author of such works as Bringing Nature Home, Nature’s Best Hope and The Nature of Oaks.

Plan for the Planet: Doug Tallamy

Vita Nova is UD's student-operated fine-dining restaurant, offering an award-winning lunch buffet Monday through Friday and an elegant five-course meal. Vita Nova serves as a learning laboratory for students in the University of Delaware Lerner College of Business & Economics Department of Hospitality and Sport Business Management.

Each student gets a diverse educational experience by rotating through 17 different positions both in the dining room and in the kitchen. Students gain invaluable culinary, service and management experience in this learning lab.
https://lerner.udel.edu/centers/vita-nova-restaurant/

Uniquely UD: Vita Nova Restaurant

why-homelessness-is-more-than-a-housing-issue-for-students

Why homelessness is more than a housing issue for students

Expert insight from University of Delaware education policy scholar Ann M. Aviles

More than 4,400 students in Delaware were identified as experiencing homelessness during the 2022–23 school year, a number that continues to rise. 

Ann M. Aviles, associate professor in the University of Delaware’s College of Education and Human Development, studies education equity, social policy and services for children and families. She is co-author of a new book, "Serving Students Who Are Homeless: A Resource Guide for Schools, Districts, Educational Leaders, and Community Partners", which offers practical guidance for educators navigating the challenges of student homelessness.

 Nationwide, more than 1.3 million school-aged children experience homelessness annually. While housing instability is often viewed as a social services issue, research shows it has direct and profound consequences for student learning, engagement and well-being.

Housing instability affects every aspect of a student’s daily life. Students may be worried about where they will sleep, whether they will have food or how they’ll get home after school. That uncertainty makes it much harder to focus on learning, Aviles said.

A key recommendation in Aviles’ new book is stronger collaboration between schools and community organizations. She encourages districts to develop community resource maps that identify local food pantries, shelters, health providers and other support services. She also emphasizes the importance of public understanding of homelessness as a systemic issue shaped by policy, affordability and access to services.

To speak with Aviles further, email mediarelations@udel.edu. 


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Delaware study reveals higher rates of anxiety, substance use among LGBT+ youth

Nearly one in four Delaware teens identifies as LGBT+, with researchers calling for urgent, tailored support in schools and health systems.

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LGBTQ+ Developmental Research

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LGBTQ+ Affirmative Therapy

A new study has found that LGBT+ youth in Delaware are experiencing disproportionately high rates of anxiety, depression and substance use compared to their cisgender heterosexual peers.

University of Delaware’s Eric Layland, assistant professor in the College of Education and Human Development, and his coauthors reported that nearly one in four Delaware teens identifies as LGBT+, a dramatic increase from earlier state surveys that put the figure closer to 5%. More than one in 20 identified as transgender or nonbinary, reflecting national trends of increased visibility among Generation Z.

The study revealed stark mental health differences. About half of cisgender heterosexual youth reported recent anxiety, compared to 75 to 80% of LGBT+ youth. These rates exceed both their heterosexual peers in Delaware and national averages for LGBT+ youth.

Substance use patterns also raised concerns. By 8th grade, LGBT+ students reported higher rates of drinking, smoking, vaping and prescription drug misuse. Researchers noted that their substance use looked more like that of 11th grade heterosexual students than their peers in the same grade, pointing to early onset of risky behaviors.

These disparities, established in middle school, largely persisted into high school. While substance use increased among all students over time, LGBT+ youth consistently reported higher rates.

Based on state population data, the findings suggest there may be 18,000 to 20,000 LGBT+ youth in Delaware, including up to 5,000 transgender and nonbinary youth. The authors say this underscores the importance of ensuring that schools, healthcare providers and community programs have the resources to meet the needs of this population.

This is one of the first Delaware-specific studies on youth health disparities by sexual orientation and gender identity using data collected after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results, researchers say, highlight an urgent need for early intervention and affirming support systems for LGBT+ youth across the state.

Layland, who specializes in LGBTQ+ development and affirmative interventions, can speak more about specific interventions. He is available by clicking his profile. 


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Taking discoveries to the real world for the benefit of human health

 It takes about a decade and a lot of money to bring a new drug to market—between $1 billion to $2 billion, in fact.

University of Delaware inventor Jason Gleghorn wants to change that.

At UD, Gleghorn is developing leading-edge microfluidic tissue models. The devices are about the size of two postage stamps, and they offer a faster, less-expensive way to study disease and to develop pharmaceutical targets.

These aren’t tools he wants to keep just for himself. No, Gleghorn wants to put the patented technology he’s developing in the hands of other experts, to advance clinical solutions in women’s health, maternal-fetal health and pre-term birth. His work also has the potential to improve understanding of drug transport in the female reproductive tract, placenta, lung and lymph nodes.

Gleghorn, an associate professor of biomedical engineering, was named to the first cohort of Innovation Ambassadors at UD, as part of the University’s effort to foster and support an innovation culture on campus. Below, he shares some of what he’s learned about translating research to society.

Q: What is the problem that you are trying to address?  Gleghorn: A lot of disease has to do with disorganization in the body’s normal tissue structure. My lab makes microfluidic tissue models, called organ-on-a-chip models, that have super-tiny channels about the thickness of a human hair, where we can introduce very small amounts of liquid, including cells, to represent an organ in the human body. This can help us study and understand the mechanism of how things work in the body (the biology) or help us do things like drug screening to test therapeutic compounds for treating disease. 

And while these little microfluidic devices can do promising things, the infrastructure required to make the system work often restricts their use to high-end labs. We want to democratize the techniques and technology so that nonexperts can use it. To achieve this, we changed the way we make these devices, so that they are compatible with standard manufacturing, which means we can scale them and create them much easier.

Gleghorn: One of the problems with drug screening, in general, is that animal model studies don’t always represent human biology. So, when we’re using animal models to test new drugs — which have been the best tool we have available — the results are not always apples to apples. Fundamentally, our microfluidic devices can model what happens in humans … we can plug in the relevant human components to understand how the mechanism is working and then ask questions about what drives those processes and identify targets for therapies to prevent the dysfunction.
 

 Q: What is innovative about this device? Gleghorn: The innovation part is this modularity — no one makes these devices this way. The science happens on the tiny tissue model insert, which is sandwiched between two pieces of clear acrylic. This allows us to watch what’s happening on the tissue model insert in real time. Meanwhile, the outer shell’s clamshell design provides flexibility: if we’re studying lung tissue and we want to study the female reproductive tract, all we do is unscrew the outer shell and insert the proper tissue model that mimics the female reproductive tract and we’re off. We’ve done a lot of the engineering to make it very simple to operate and use, and adaptable to common lab tools that everyone has, to eliminate the need for financial investment in things like specialized clean rooms, incubators and pumps, etc., so the technology can be useful in regular labs or easily deployable to far-flung locations or countries. With a laser cutter and $500 worth of equipment, you could conceivably mass manufacture these things for maternal medicine in Africa, for example. 

Democratizing the technology so it is compatible and useful for even an inexperienced user aligns with the mission of my lab, which focuses on scaling the science and the innovation faster, instead of only a few specialized labs being a bottleneck to uncovering new mechanisms of disease and the development of therapies. We patented this modularity, the way to build these tiny microfluidic devices and the simplicity of how it's used as a tool set, through UD’s Office of Economic Innovation and Partnerships (OEIP).

Q: How have you translated this work so far? Gleghorn: To date, we've taken this microfluidic system to nine different research labs across seven countries and four continents — including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Belgium and South Africa. These labs are using our technology to study problems in women’s health and collecting data with it. We’re developing boot camps where researchers can come for two or three days to the University of Delaware, where we teach them how to use this device and they take some back with them. From a basic science perspective, there is high enthusiasm for the power of what it can tell you and its ease of use. As engineers, we think it's pretty cool that many other people are using our innovations for new discoveries. 

Q: What support and guidance have you received from the UD innovation ecosystem? Gleghorn: To do any of this work, you need partners that have various expertise and backgrounds. UD’s Office of Economic Innovation and Partnerships has built a strong team of professionals with expertise in different areas, such as how do you license or take something to patent, how do you make connections with the business community? OEIP is home to Delaware’s Small Business Development Center, which can help you think about business visibility in terms of startups. Horn Entrepreneurship has built out impressive programs for teaching students and faculty to think entrepreneurially and build mentor networks, while programs like the Institute for Engineering Driven Health and the NSF Accelerating Research Translation at UD provide gap funding to be able to do product development and to take the work from basic prototype to something that is more marketable. More broadly in Delaware is the Small Business Administration, the Delaware Innovation Space and regional grant programs and small accelerators to help Delaware innovators.

Q: How have students in your lab benefited from engaging in innovation? Gleghorn: Undergraduate students in my lab have made hundreds of these devices at scale. We basically built a little manufacturing facility, so we have ways to sterilize them, track batches, etc. We call it “the foundry.” In other work, graduate students are engineering different components or working on specific system designs for various studies. The students see collaborators use these devices to discover new science and new discoveries. That's very rewarding as an engineer. Additionally, my lab focuses on building solutions that are useful in the clinic and commercially viable. As a result, we've had two grad students spin out companies related to the work we've been doing in the lab.

Q: How has research translation positively impacted your work? Gleghorn: I started down this road maybe five years ago, seriously trying to think about how to translate our research findings. Being an entrepreneur, translating technology — it's a very different way to think about your work. And so that framework has really permeated most of the research that I do now and changed the way I think about problems. It has opened new opportunities for collaboration and for alternate sources of funding with companies. This has value in terms of taking the research that you're doing fundamentally and creating a measurable impact in the community, but it also diversifies your funding streams to work on important problems. And different viewpoints help you look at the work you do in new ways, challenging you to define the value proposition, the impact of your work.


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Pandemic deepened health gaps for people with disabilities, study finds

Preventive heart screenings and routine care dropped significantly for disabled adults during COVID-19, exposing long-standing system failures.

A new peer-reviewed study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine reveals that U.S. adults with disabilities experienced significant declines in preventive cardiovascular screenings during the COVID-19 pandemic — and continued to face cost-related barriers to care, even after accounting for economic disruptions.

Using nationally representative data from more than 150,000 adults between 2019 and 2023, the study highlights how routine care like blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose screenings dropped most sharply for those with cognitive, physical, or multiple disabilities. Adults with disabilities were also more likely to report delaying or missing care due to cost.

These findings underscore persistent health inequities and the urgent need for inclusive public health strategies, especially for populations already at greater risk for cardiovascular disease.

Why it matters:  Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the U.S. Adults with disabilities face higher risks and more barriers to care — making consistent preventive screenings essential. This study offers the first detailed, post-pandemic national look at how different disability groups were affected, with implications for future policy and healthcare reform.

For more information on the study and to speak to experts, contact mediarelations@udel.edu. 





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Mental health risks spike for young LGBTQ+ men of color, new study shows

As the nation celebrates Pride, a new University of Delaware study reveals how intersecting discrimination affects mental health during a critical stage of development.

As Pride Month shines a spotlight on the progress and resilience of LGBTQ+ communities, it also serves as a reminder of the ongoing challenges — especially the toll that stigma continues to take on mental health.

A new in Developmental Psychology study from the University of Delaware’s Eric Layland, assistant professor in the College of Education and Human Development, reveals just how urgent the need for tailored mental health support is — particularly for Black, Latinx and Afro-Latinx gay, bisexual and other sexual minority young men.
 Published during a time when national attention turns toward LGBTQ+ visibility, the study tracks the mental health trajectories of over 400 cisgender men between the ages of 18 and 29, focusing on how experiences of racism, heterosexism, or both — what Layland terms compound stigma — influence patterns of depression and anxiety.

The results are stark: participants who experienced frequent racism and heterosexism across relationships and settings showed the earliest and most severe symptoms of anxiety and depression, with mental health challenges peaking during late adolescence and early adulthood. While symptoms tended to decline by age 24, these years — critical for education, identity formation and economic independence — were marked by emotional strain.

"This study emphasizes how multiple sources of discrimination converge to impact the mental health of sexual minority men of color," Layland said. 

The research calls for early, culturally responsive mental health interventions that help young sexual minority men of color cope with stigma and build resilience. Layland’s team points to interventions that not only teach coping skills but also foster connection, celebrate cultural identity and create peer networks for support.

Layland, who specializes in LGBTQ+ development and affirmative interventions, underscores the importance of systemic change as well. 

“We need clinical and community resources that are adapted to address the intersecting discrimination experienced by sexual minority men of color, especially in their late teens in early twenties,” said Layland.

Supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Mental Health and UD, this study arrives at a crucial time for researchers, educators and community organizations working to create more inclusive and supportive environments.

For journalists covering Pride, mental health, or intersectional equity, Layland’s work offers a powerful, data-driven look at what young LGBTQ+ people of color are facing — and how communities can act to change that story. 

Journalists can reach Layland by clicking on his profile. 



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Study reveals how race-evasive coverage of student loans fuels policy failures

For years, news coverage of the student debt crisis has left out a crucial part of the story: race.

A new study in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis analyzed 15 years of student loan reporting in eight major newspapers to reveal that most media outlets avoided mentioning race until just a few years ago (even though disparities existed for all 15 years of the study). While one might assume this shift came after the racial justice uprisings of 2020, the data shows that the turn toward more explicit racial language actually began around 2018.

Dominique Baker, associate professor in the College of Education and Human Development’s School of Education and the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware, was the lead researcher.

“Even when newspapers did eventually address race, they focused primarily on documenting the size of disparities instead of talking about the structural reasons underlying them, like racism,” Baker said. “Other research has shown that when the news media solely focuses on the disparities and not the structural issues, readers are more likely to punish people of color instead of supporting solutions that could help them."

Why does this information matter? Because how the media talks about policy shapes how the public—and policymakers—see the problem. If coverage ignores the racial disparities in student loan burdens, it makes race-neutral, one-size-fits-all solutions seem more logical—even if they fail to address real inequities.

It’s not just about adding a few words. It’s about changing the lens entirely.

Baker has appeared in dozens of national news outlets for her expertise. She is available for interviews on this paper and other topics surrounding higher education. Email mediarelations@udel.edu to contact her. 


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