Supporting Parent Engagement: Lessons from Settlement House Programs

This report is intended to give readers a picture of some of the challenges and best practices involved when settlement houses and other similar agencies undertake parent engagement programming. The report draws on the experiences of six UNH member agencies, all based in New York City, that have received grants from the MetLife Foundation to support parent engagement work

Advancing Literacy Through the Arts: Lessons from Settlement House After School Programs

The report opens with brief profiles of the seven arts/literacy projects supported by the E.H.A. Foundation grant. In the second section, the report describes some of the challenges involved in operating these kinds of projects and best practices used to make them as appealing and meaningful as possible to children. That discussion is followed by a section that offers insights from staff and program managers of the seven projects who reflect on how the projects have contributed to the education of children. The report ends with brief conclusions. The report draws on information gathered through site visits to the seven projects, observations made at UNH-sponsored discussion meetings of project managers, and interviews with selected staff and managers

Controlled growth of complex oxide thin films

Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) is attractive for research on complex oxides. The growth of oxide materials with PLD is the control of the surface morphology. For most materials it is necessary to control the thickness and roughness of the thin films down to an atomic scale. Such well-controlled growth can also be used to manufacture artificially layered structures of different materials with different propertie