As the founder of the highly successful construction services firm Component Assembly Systems (CAS), Lew Rapaport’s life’s work can be seen throughout some of the country’s most iconic structures: Yankee Stadium, Carnegie Hall and the Freedom Tower at One World Trade Center, to name just a few.

But the most important legacy we have, he says, is the way that we treat others.

“Nobody blooms alone,” says Rapaport ’59 of his achievements as the chairman and CEO of CAS.

“If you get there,” he adds, “you didn’t do it on your own—there were a lot of people behind you.”

Rapaport, who received a bachelor’s degree in American studies from the ��in 1959, credits a “huge amount of folks” with helping him to get where he is today, including the professionals at CAS and his wife, Susan, a 1959 graduate of the who had her own successful career.

He also credits the lessons he learned as an undergraduate at Maxwell. To help others just starting out and to show their gratitude to Maxwell and celebrate its recent 100th anniversary, Lew and Susan Rapaport have the Maxwell Endowed Undergraduate Scholarship fund.

“This generous gift by Lew and Susan demonstrates their enduring commitment to supporting Maxwell and Syracuse University in a most meaningful way—by reducing the financial burden on undergraduates, enabling them to focus on their academics and related learning opportunities,” says Dean David M. Van Slyke. “We are grateful to the Rapaports for their longstanding friendship and generosity to Maxwell, not only because of the benefit to our students, but also because their gift may inspire generosity among others.”

The $100,000 gift marks the Rapaports’ second endowed scholarship at Maxwell; in 2018 they the Susan and H. Lewis Rapaport Endowed Scholarship to benefit undergraduate students studying history or political science.

Modest Beginnings

Growing up in Queens, Lew Rapaport’s work ethic and business sense were shaped by his grandfather, a plumber and business owner on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and his father, an architect who owned his own firm. However, the younger Rapaport’s main interests were not construction; they were American history and military history.

“I read just about every book my high school library and the local library had on the Civil War,” he says.

Rapaport came to the University in 1955 as a young ROTC candidate during the Korean War. ��He began taking classes in history and economics, eventually declaring a major in American Studies.

“The professors I had, some of them were world famous,” he says. “Stuart Gerry Brown was one of the foremost experts in the United States on Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

He credits the school with helping to broaden his perspective, see the world from multiple viewpoints and to understand how democracy works.

Another Maxwell professor, Władysław Kulski, served in the Polish foreign ministry before World War II and helped to negotiate the Anglo-Polish military alliance.

“He used to read to us every day from ‘Pravda,’ telling us what they were saying from the Russian point of view and then read from ‘The New York Times’—and there were two different stories,”�� Rapaport says. “I realized right away … you needed world information and you needed information from people who were there and lived it, like Dr. Kulski.”

He also learned how to disagree respectfully while staying true to his values—an especially important lesson for today’s undergraduates, he says.

Rapaport recalls an incident on campus in which an anti-war protest group tried to disrupt ROTC marching drills.

“I said to myself when it was all over, and I would say this today to young people: Stand up for what you think is right. You may not agree with my side, and I may not agree with your side,” he says. “But you must try to negotiate.”

Meanwhile, Rapaport’s fiancé, Susan, transferred to the University from Skidmore College and earned a business degree from Whitman.

Helping Hands

By the time Lew and Susan graduated from the University in 1959, the Korean War had ended. The two married before Lew went into the Army and graduated from the U.S. Army Artillery and Missile School at Fort Sill, later serving as a training officer at Fort Dix. After completing his service, he took a job as a construction supervisor for the Webb & Knapp Co. in New York City, which built the Lincoln Towers.

Soon, in 1964, he and a co-worker started a small business of their own, called Score Carpentry—the precursor to CAS. Their first project was the Gas Pavilion Building at the New York World’s Fair. Over the next six decades, Rapaport grew the company nationally with eight locations in major cities throughout the U.S.

A longtime Maxwell School Advisory Board member, Rapaport is a Life Trustee of the USS Constitution Museum in Boston and a member of the Patriots Circle of the World War II Museum in New Orleans. In 2024, the Maxwell School awarded Rapaport the Centennial Changemaker Award in Economic Development.

Key to his success, Rapaport says, has been his enduring credo.

“Never give up,” he says, adding, “and always do unto others as you would have done unto you.”

Forced labor in global supply chains may decline in coming years as Generation Z—today’s teens and young adults—gain financial influence. Unlike previous generations, they are more willing to pay a premium for products manufactured ethically.

These and other findings are the result of a two-year study by the University’s (DSL) on behalf of Thomson Reuters, a global content and technology company based in Canada.

In addition to revealing data that helps inform industry leaders, policymakers and the public, the collaboration provided valuable research and experiential learning opportunities to numerous University students engaged with the DSL.

It also laid the groundwork for a strategic collaboration that DSL Director Jay Golden says will complement the lab’s endeavors while giving students opportunities to interact with industry thought leaders and examine critical sustainability issues under the mentorship of Thomson Reuters experts.

“Given the impactful and positive experiences our students have had with the forced labor in global supply chain collaboration, we are thrilled to deepen our relationship with Thomson Reuters,” says Golden. “It provides student and faculty researchers within the Dynamic Sustainability Lab greater opportunity to tackle important real-world challenges in companies and governments around the world and come up with innovative, next-generation solutions, models and tools.”

Golden founded the Maxwell-based DSL in 2021 after he joined the school as the inaugural Pontarelli Professor of Environmental Sustainability and Finance. He describes the lab as a cross-disciplinary, nonpartisan think tank that examines the “opportunities, risks and unintended consequences” that arise from the adoption of new technologies, new strategies and growing dependence on foreign-sourced resources and supply chains used in energy, climate and sustainability transitions.

Students engaged with the DSL represent a wide range of programs including many Maxwell majors. They share their data findings in government reports and technical bulletins and at sustainability symposiums the DSL hosts annually in major cities like Boston, New York City and Washington, D.C.

A Student and National Thought Leader

The DSL’s connection with Thomson Reuters began with Maxwell graduate student Heather Panton G’26 when she enrolled in the executive master’s in international relations program in Washington, D.C. Today she is senior advisor for human rights crimes and social impact at Thomson Reuters.

In 2023, Panton was awarded an Eisenhower Fellowship to advance her study of forced labor—a form of human trafficking—in global supply chains. She traveled to Malaysia and Thailand to study best practices and drive public awareness to educate consumers about making ethical purchasing decisions. She received academic guidance from Golden and shared with him a growing interest in the potential impact of up-and-coming consumers.

“When I was abroad, so many people asked about demand from the next generation,” Panton says. “Historically, American baby boomers often prioritized price, without fully considering how cost-cutting would ripple through suppliers and vendors across the supply chain. That has put pressure on companies to reduce costs in ways that sometimes affect workers’ wages and living conditions abroad. We believe Gen Z will play a critical role in shifting that dynamic by asking tougher questions, such as, ‘Was this product made with slave labor?’”

Golden was excited for the opportunity to work with Panton. Her resume included roles with the McCain Institute, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Justice and the White House. Among them: special advisor for human trafficking and the inaugural human trafficking czar during the first Trump administration.

“She was not only our student but also a thought leader in the country,” says Golden. “I’ve learned a lot—probably more than she’s learned from me.”

Golden brought Panton’s Eisenhower Fellowship research to the DSL, where students spent the next two years expanding her work, studying generational purchasing trends, gathering data and refining her findings.

“They’re such smart students—they’re right on the mark,” she says. “We’ve worked to expand the scope of what they’re thinking about. We want them to be focused and driven, thinking about exposing things that I don’t know that many people are talking about in the mainstream. We want them to be able to present in a way that’s not only academically rigorous but also digestible—something that industry or government can consume right away.”

Presenting Research to Global Industry Leaders

The students produced a by the DSL, and a has been posted on Thomson Reuters’ website. Both share that by 2030, Generation Z will represent 17% of retail spending in the U.S., and 81% of consumers in the age group have changed their purchasing decisions based on brand actions or reputation, with 53% participating in economic boycotts.

While pursuing a bachelor’s degree in policy studies, 2024 Maxwell alumnus Ka’ai I worked as a student researcher with the DSL. He gathered information about forced labor laws across the globe, collected related policies for multi-national corporations and assisted with surveys.

“We basically did a level-set in terms of ‘How do we understand where we are at now, where are we at in terms of forced labor, and how that is affecting the market?’” says I.

The experience was empowering and prepared him for his current work with Deloitte Consulting.

“As a young professional, I’m working on many of the same things I did with the Dynamic Sustainability Lab—data analysis, survey development, stakeholder engagement,” I says. “As I navigate the professional workspace, I feel much more confident and capable going in to a pretty competitive workforce.”

Another outcome of the DSL forced labor collaboration with Thomson Reuters: two events in the 2024-25 academic year at which data findings were presented and expanded upon by subject area experts. The symposia in Washington, D.C., and in Portland, Oregon, drew representatives from footwear and apparel companies as well as government officials.

“Our students helped push the notion, ‘We are your growing customer segment,’” says Golden. ��“The leadership from these companies that were in attendance really acknowledged that and were receptive. The work that started with Heather has expanded to where we have the attention of the global footwear and apparel industry. It’s a rare occasion that the type of research finds its way into the mainstream in consumer decisions and draws the attention of international governments and especially the top leadership of global companies.”

Panton says the collaboration with DSL is mutually beneficial.

“The academic rigor is unbeatable,” she says of the research and resulting data. “It’s a great combination of practitioner-meets-academic—we’re taking substantive work and making it very easy for anyone in a C-suite to look at it.”

For reporters looking for experts to offer insight on tariffs, please see comments from Syracuse University faculty who are available to speak with media. To arrange interviews, contact Ellen James Mbuqe, executive director of media relations, ejmbuq@syr.edu.

Tariffs and the Auto Industry

is Dean of the College of Law at Syracuse University and began his career in the Office of the General Counsel at Ford Motor Company in the International Trade and Transactions practice group. His practice focused on ��U.S. law for foreign affiliates and subsidiaries, among other topics. Later he served as Ford’s Director for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Government Affairs.

• “The global automotive industry works best in free markets, free of market distortions such as tariff and non-tariff barriers. Free markets have led to greater consumer choice and lower prices. The industry requires long lead times to adjust to changes in tariff policy. An immediate 25% tariff on automotive parts and finished vehicles from Canada and Mexico will introduce a great deal of uncertainty into the supply chain, and ultimately will lead to higher vehicle prices until the market can adjust,” said Lau.

History of Tariffs

, professor of history in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, is the author of��. The book gives a history lesson of the tariffs used by American governments from the 18^th century until early 20^th century. Early in American history, Congress instituted high tariffs on most imports due to distrust of foreign goods.��But due to demand for things like silk, tobacco, and sugar, a brisk illicit traffic developed to maneuver around those laws. Cohen said:��

• “The US has long used tariffs to collect revenue, aid manufacturing, and exert power.�� But I can’t think of a trade war initiated so randomly in a time of peace and prosperity” said Cohen.
• “Early 20^th Americans replaced tariffs with income taxes because the former generated insufficient revenue to pay for a modern military,” said Cohen. “Reformers also viewed the tariff as a source of corruption, as businesses bribed Congressmen to support taxes giving them monopolies.��Tariffs led to widespread smuggling, which even an extensive network of customhouses could not staunch. Writing a tariff bill became so complicated that Congress gave the president wide discretion to negotiate rates.�� Now, we’re seeing the consequences, as one man can start a trade war.”

��Economic Impact and Tariffs

, assistant professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, is an expert in international trade, tariffs, and supply chains. He’s been interviewed by several news outlets about tariffs including a recent interview with Newsweek, “.”

From the article:

• “Ryan Monarch, a professor of economics at Syracuse University, told��Newsweek��prices will be driven up not only by the tariffs themselves, but also the increased costs with complying with customs rules.
• There will be added costs both from sellers, who will need to prepare paperwork and calculate the value of each package as well as U.S. customs workers who will be tasked with enforcing the new policy, he said.
• ‘Part of the reason the exemption exists in the first place is that it didn’t seem worth it to try to do all of the work to examine all of these packages and imported things that are of such low value,’ he said.
• In total, a 25 to 30 percent price increase would not be ‘outlandlish,’ Monarch said. It’s difficult to predict the full impact, but companies are unlikely to eat the costs of these fees, he added.
• ‘We should expect that those prices are going to go directly onto American buyers. Research has shown that Chinese suppliers pass on those prices completely.’”

Tariffs and the Supply Chain

is a Professor of Practice – Supply Chain Management and Director of Executive Education at the Whitman School of Management. He is a scholar when it comes to providing insight about how economic policies will impact the national and global supply chains. He’s been interviewed by many outlets on tariffs specifically, including Buffalo’s and the .

Here’s what he’s highlighted:

• The tariff on Chinese goods could impact almost every U.S. industry according to supply chain expert Patrick Penfield.
• “We import a lot of base ingredients from China that’s used in various industries. So you’re talking pharmaceutical, the toy industry, electronics. So almost every industry in the United States would be impacted.”

US-Mexico Relations

, associate professor of history at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, is an expert on Mexico and United States relations. She can discuss trade and tariffs between the US and Mexico, immigration, security and fentanyl.

McCormick, who is the Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations at Syracuse University, was interviewed by Insight Crime for the article “.”

• “Tariffs will hurt the Mexican economy, which will further weaken the Mexican system and the rule of law, and that’s going to make Mexico much more vulnerable to further incursions from organized crime,” McCormick told InSight Crime.
• “I don’t see any real concerted, long-term improvements that would come out of this to tackle issues of security and organized crime in Mexico,” McCormick told InSight Crime.

The 2024 Paris Summer Olympics and Paralympics are here and representatives from the Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics at Syracuse University will have an impact on this year’s Games–and, quite possibly, future Olympic Games.

The Falk College representatives who are involved in several unique ways with the Olympics and Paralympics include current Falk students Dan Griffiths and Livia McQuade, Department of Sport Management Associate Professor Jeeyoon “Jamie” Kim, and Sport Management graduates and former Syracuse University student-athletes Freddie Crittenden III ’17, Kristen Siermachesky�� ’21 and Lysianne Proulx ’21.

Here are their stories:

Student: Dan Griffiths

At Syracuse University and now with the U.S. Track and Field team (), sport analytics major Dan Griffiths��’26 is helping to revolutionize how performance data is collected and analyzed.

When Griffiths started working with the Syracuse track and field and cross country teams before the 2023-24 academic year, the teams weren’t utilizing a data-gathering system. But the student-athletes were using Garmin wearables to track their own data, so Griffiths built his own application and a tool that transported all of their data into his application, which then created spreadsheets he used to analyze that data.

With Griffiths’ help, the Syracuse women’s cross country team won its since 2011. Throughout the academic year, Griffiths conducted and presented his research at various national competitions and conferences, including the (he was runner-up in sport analytics research), and the inaugural Sport, Entertainment and Innovation Conference () last week in Las Vegas.

Griffiths’ success at Syracuse and his interest in track and field led to his connection with USATF, which gave him the freedom to explore his areas of interest. Using a combination of the latest technology, Griffiths helped create three-dimensional models to best understand an athlete’s musculoskeletal forces.

“For throwers (discus, shotput, javelin), my work focused on using a pose estimation model to detect patterns that could be linked to longer, more powerful throws,” Griffiths says. “For sprinters and distance runners, I used pose estimation data to monitor overtraining and track progress throughout the season and before meets.

“I also conducted extensive research for multi-event athletes in the heptathlon and decathlon,” he adds. “This research aimed to understand how fatigue affects scoring in multi-events and how different training sequences can reduce fatigue.”

Griffiths shared his work with the coaches, and at least two of the athletes he analyzed will be participating in the Olympics: javelin thrower Curtis Thompson and 400-meter runner Alexis Holmes. During his time with USATF, Griffiths traveled to the New York City Grand Prix Meet–the final meet for track and field athletes before the U.S. Olympic Trials–and the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon.

“The thing we think about every morning is ‘How can we win another gold medal today?’”��Griffiths says. “Having the opportunity to combine everything I’ve learned and truly be a trailblazer and innovator for USATF and those athletes, especially in a track and field biomechanics context, has made me uber-passionate about the work we are doing at Syracuse and the future of AI/analytics and sports.”

The track and field events run Aug. 1-11.

Student: Livia McQuade

Livia McQuade ’25 is a sport management major and sport event management minor who has spent this summer in Loveland, Colorado, as an athlete relations intern with . Olympus is a management and marketing agency that provides top sponsorship opportunities and marketing strategies for Olympic and Paralympic athletes.

In her role, McQuade has interfaced with athletes from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams and their partners, and with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and other national governing bodies. Her projects have included reviewing contracts, building athletes’ personal websites and organizing outlines for athletes’ speaking engagements.

“I’ve had a truly incredible experience within the Olympic and Paralympic Movement–during a Games year of all times!” McQuade says. “Through it all, I’ve had the privilege to work with some of sport’s most impactful Olympians and Paralympians, including Apolo Ohno, Jessica Long, Noah Elliott, Sarah Adam, Alex and Gretchen Walsh, Alex Ferreira and Steve Serio.”

McQuade, the executive vice president of the in Falk College and co-chair of the club’s 2024 , says she wants to work with the Olympic and Paralympic movement following graduation and this internship has been an invaluable step in that process. Her experience with Olympus will continue in September, when she’ll attend the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games to serve as a resource for U.S. athletes, their families, and their sponsors. The Paralympic Games run from Aug. 28-Sept. 8.

“I could not be more grateful and excited,” McQuade says of her upcoming experience in Paris. “My leadership (at Olympus Sports Group)–Ian Beck and ’16–have thrown extraordinary opportunities my way, and they will remain valuable mentors long into my career.”

At the U.S. Olympic Trials in late June, longtime U.S. hurdler����’17 qualified for his first Olympic Games by running a personal-best 12.96 seconds in the 110-meter hurdles. Crittenden finished second overall to teammate and three-time world champion Grant Holloway, who recorded a time of 12.86.

A public health major at Falk and former All-American for the Syracuse track and field team, Crittenden just missed a bronze medal at the World Championships last summer and now at age 29, the Olympic Trials may have been his last opportunity to qualify for the Olympics.

“It feels amazing. Honestly, I’m still in shock and I’m trying to figure out what happened,” Crittenden said immediately after his Olympic Trials run. “But it’s an amazing feeling to come out here and accomplish what I’ve been trying to accomplish for the past 17 years. It’s beautiful.”

Two former sport management majors and Syracuse student-athletes, rower Kristen Siermachesky ’21 and soccer goalkeeper Lysianne Proulx ’21, are alternates for the Olympics with .

Proulx is Team Canada’s third-choice goalkeeper, meaning she will be activated if either the starting or backup goalkeeper is injured. Although she didn’t start at Syracuse until her junior season, Proulx recorded the fourth-most saves (281), second-most saves per game (5.3) and seventh-most shutouts (eight) in program history.

Since graduating from Syracuse, Proulx has excelled in professional leagues in Portugal, Australia and now in the United States with of the National Women’s Soccer League. This past February, Bay FC acquired Proulx from Melbourne City for what Melbourne City described as a record-breaking transfer fee for an outgoing A-League player.

A native of Montreal, Q, Proulx represented Canada in the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup and FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup. She went to the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup as Team Canada’s third-choice goaltender behind Kailen Sheridan and Sabrina D’Angelo, who have maintained their positions for the Olympics.

Like Proulx, Siermachesky will be available to her team if an injury occurs. But unlike Proulx, her path to Canada’s rowing team featured a different sport at Syracuse: ice hockey. She played four years as a defenseman at Syracuse and recorded a black-and-blue inducing 132 blocks in 125 games for the Orange.

After graduating from Syracuse, the native of New Liskeard, Ontario, considered playing ice hockey overseas but decided to pursue her graduate degree in sports administration at North Carolina. She wanted to continue her athletics career, but North Carolina doesn’t have an ice hockey team. Then-Syracuse ice hockey coach Paul Flanagan suggested she try rowing and contacted the Tar Heels’ coach to make that connection.

Siermachesky’s athleticism and potential caught the eye of the Team Canada Development Team, which asked her to move to British Columbia to train with the national team. Just three years into the sport, she is now on the cusp of competing in the Olympics and it’s likely she and Proulx will remain in the mix for the next summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028.

The rowing competition runs from July 27-Aug. 3, while the women’s soccer tournament started July 24 and runs through Aug. 10.

Faculty: Jeeyoon “Jamie” Kim

��is an associate professor in the Department of Sport Management who studies the long- and short-term social and economic effects of hosting the Games and other major sporting events. Kim is the former manager of the Korean Olympic Committee, and on Aug. 8 she’ll present at the 11th International Sport Business Symposium in Paris.

Kim’s presentation will focus on how the��, an Olympic-style event for athletes between 15 and 18 years old, can better impact their host city and support the aims of the Olympic Movement.

“The hope for Olympic sport participation legacy is grounded on the ‘trickle-down effect’ (i.e., watching Olympians compete will inspire youth to participate in sport),” Kim says in a recent Q&A. “For the Youth Olympics, the event can also be a steppingstone for younger athletes to compete on the international stage and grow to become Olympians. Additionally, the Youth Olympics offer many grassroots-level sport opportunities (e.g., sport camps, collaboration with local schools) to encourage the general youth to learn about Olympic sports.”

To combat youths’ dwindling interest in the Olympics, the International Olympic Committee added break dancing, sport climbing and surfing to the lineup for Paris. Kim says this is a critical time for the future of the Olympics as upcoming Games in Paris, Milan Cortina (2026), and Los Angeles (2028) will be held in traditionally strong sports markets where there are opportunities to increase interest.

“Paris 2024 will be the first Olympics to include breaking in the official program,” Kim says. “We will have to see how the event turns out. But, so far, looking at the Olympics qualifiers series and the ticket popularity, it seems like there is a lot of interest garnered for the sport.”

Kim spent five-and-a-half years with Korean Olympic Committee as a member of its International Games, International Relations and 2018 PyeongChang Olympics task force teams. While in Paris, Kim will conduct research in Korea’s Olympic Hospitality House and share her findings with students in her Olympic Sport Management and Olympic Odyssey courses.

And Kim plans to attend the women’s individual finals event of her favorite summer Olympic sport, archery. “Korea has been very strong in the sport historically, and it is always fun to watch a sport where my team does well,” Kim says.

A group of faculty and graduate students are part of a growing movement in academia that is re-evaluating long-held assumptions about research design.

Critical Quantitative Theory seeks to disrupt the traditional dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative research methods, with the former typically assumed to be more rigorous and suited to “hard” sciences and the latter seen as more subjective and better suited for use with critical theoretical perspectives. By disrupting this dichotomy, CritQuant—sometimes called QuantCrit—seeks to use data and statistics in a more equitable way, arguing that by doing so, it might become a useful and more racially just method of examining social justice questions.

Introduced in a 2018 Race Ethnicity and Education journal article—“”—this method calls on education researchers to explore inequity by examining data sets and statistics through critical analytical frameworks, such as critical race theory (CRT), intersectionality and feminism.

At the School of Education, an interdisciplinary team of faculty and graduate students has been meeting twice a month—since spring 2023—as the Critical Quantitative Research Forum. Among its original members are , associate professor of reading and language arts; , associate professor of higher education; , associate professor of counseling and human services; , associate professor of quantitative research methodology; , associate professor of teaching and leadership; and doctoral student ParKer Bryant, a Lender Center for Social Justice Fellow.

Change and Possibility

“There is a primacy to quantitative data because it is seen as objective, so its findings have a privileged status,” says Professor Johnson. “Some people tend to trust quantitative data and see it as more valid than qualitative research methods, such as ethnographies, interviews or case studies.”

One reason for this paradigm, explains Johnson, is that in qualitative research, the researcher is the “instrument” that gathers data, through an interview or by analyzing texts “as opposed to a quantitative instrument, such as a survey that is analyzed by software.” Thus, the quantitative researcher is assumed to be impartial and their experiences or beliefs irrelevant. That assumption has sometimes cloaked biased research and conclusions, as with the widely criticized 1994 study .

“If quantitative research is the privileged approach, then it needs to be transformed if we are going to work toward equity,” Johnson says. “We can’t put all the work of addressing critical equity questions on qualitative researchers, so how can we use statistics to tell the story of social justice, point out inequities and put forward ideas of change and possibility that illuminate and address structural inequalities? I’ve been thinking about this since I was a grad student.”

A Challenging Space

As a current doctoral student, Bryant is researching the impact of academic language on creative thought. It’s a topic traditionally suited to qualitative methods, such as interviews, surveys and ethnography, she says. However, she became interested in CritQuant “because I wanted to explore my research question thoroughly. I’m already familiar with qualitative research, but I want to understand quantitative methods such as linear and advanced statistical models. There’s no reason not to know quantitative models.”

The research forum is collegial, Bryant observes. “What I tell my friends is that faculty really want to be there, so it feels as if you are having high intellectual conversation among colleagues. It’s a challenging space.”

Bryant was invited by the faculty members to join an internal grant project that continues the forum’s work.

“How Can Educational Inequities Caused by Racial Wealth Gap Be Reduced? A Critical Quantitative Analysis of Individual, Home, and School” is using quantitative methods to examine whether individual or institutional-level factors have a greater influence on “the mediated relationships among socioeconomic status, opportunity to learn and students’ learning outcomes.”

“This study aims to contribute to advancing quantitative methods in educational research using the CritQuant framework based on critical race theory and intersectionality,” writes principal investigator Jang. “We believe that educational scholars would benefit from our work in considering CritQuant as a racially just method.”

Peeling Back Assumptions

Given her scholarly work focuses on the effects of campus climate on the sense of belonging of students of color in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, Johnson is well-situated to critique the quantitative vs. qualitative dichotomy.

The reason why qualitative research is appropriate for answering questions of social justice is that “it can tap into communities the way that other research can’t, by asking about lived experiences or centering marginalized and minoritized voices,” she says.

Conversely, quantitative research is seen as not amenable to social justice work because statistics can be used to advance and explain non-equitable conclusions, as in “The Bell Curve.” “The history and restrictions of quantitative methods are seen as having limited value in an equity agenda. Folks like myself, trained in quantitative methods, are trying to figure out ways to use statistical research methods within critical frameworks such as CRT.”

One technique to make quantitative research more equity-minded—“positionality”—dispenses with the idea that the researcher is impartial. “CritQuant forces researchers to position themselves in the research and asks them to consider their biases and subjectivity,” Johnson says. “Research questions arise from somewhere, after all.”

Johnson says her research interests often return her to when she was director of minority student affairs at Worcester (Massachusetts) Polytechnic Institute, supporting Black, Latinx and Indigenous students. “That experience created lots of questions for me, and I often think back to the challenges my students had,” Johnson says.

“My experiences as a Black woman working at primarily white institutions frames where I’m coming from in my research, and CritQuant makes me reckon with that,” Johnson says. “Qualitative researchers are expected to do this work, so why aren’t quantitative researchers expected to do the same? We encourage our doctoral students to write out their positionality in their research design, in order to peel back assumptions of unbias and objectivity.”

Structures and Systems

Another technique is embedded in the CritQuant forum’s grant project and speaks directly to why the method has the power to transform educational research.

“Quantitative research often can situate deficits on the people being studied, whereas CritQuant research can be used to examine structures,” says Johnson. “In other words, we’ve spent a lot of time trying to fix the student, but critical quantitative research has the power to examine whether outcome differences might be environmental or institutional. Maybe we don’t need to fix the student but instead look at fixing the structures and systems.”

As education graduate students ask more questions about how to integrate CritQuant into their research topics, the research forum is becoming a space where faculty can share their own experiences and challenges, such as how to use quantitative methods with subject groups that are small in number or how to incentivize participation ethically.

“I research groups that are already minoritized on campuses,” Johnson says, “so when researching campus climate, I have to be able to overcome survey fatigue and build relationships in order to ask questions about racism and sexism. There is an extra labor required on the part of the researcher.”

Johnson sums up the work of the research forum as enacting the “critical” part of Critical Quantitative Theory. “It’s exciting to engage with faculty and graduate students in an informal way to sort that out.”

Syracuse University thought leaders, events and research news were showcased in the following news outlets this week:

• , professor of geography and the environment in the Maxwell School, was quoted in the Yahoo story ““
• , assistant teaching professor in the Maxwell School, was published in The Fulcrum: “”
• , associate professor of public health in Falk College, was interviewed for the Newsday article “.” He was also quoted in a second Newsday story “.”
• , professor of practice in the Newhouse School and director of the Syracuse University Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship, was interviewed by the NPR show “Up To Date” for the piece “” She also spoke with Spectrum News for the story “.”
• , professor of marketing practice in the Whitman School, was quoted in WalletHub: “”
• , incoming director of the Disability Law and Policy Program and associate professor in the College of Law, was quoted in the New York Post story “.”
• , director of the Bandier Program at the Newhouse School, was quoted in the Vanity Fair article “” and the Los Angeles Time article “.”
• , Trustee Professor of television, radio and film and director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture in the Newhouse School, quoted about the death of Bob Barker in , , ��and the��.
• , director of research and associate teaching professor, was quoted in the Newsweek piece “.”
• , professor of political science in the Maxwell School, was quoted in the International Business Times article “.”
• , professor of food studies in Falk College, wrote an op-ed in Albany Times Union “”
• , associate professor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, was quoted in the Lifewire story “.”
• , adjunct professor in the Maxwell School in Washington D.C., was quoted in the USA Today story ““
• , professor of law in the College of Law, was quoted in The Hill article “.”

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