Dr. Monique Mills (Speech and Hearing Sciences) and I have been awarded a Cross-College Seed Grant for our project ‘Assessing Students’ Narrative Language: Emic and Etic Perceptions”. The study addresses race-based educational disparities and is designed to identify culturally-fair measures of narrative language – a skill that predicts students’ academic outcomes in literacy. The study will identify ways in which the language of school-age Black students is evaluated informally and formally, thereby improving academic assessment of this group.