This summer, Human Development Professor Amy Salazar traveled to Japan to advance an international collaboration focused on helping young people with foster-care experience succeed in higher education.
Salazar is working with research partners at the International Foster Care Alliance to conduct a pilot study of an intervention designed to support college access and retention among students who have experienced foster care. During her visit, she traveled throughout Japan interviewing students and support staff, gathering feedback on what it has been like to participate in the program.
Salazar also shared her expertise at Musashino University in Tokyo, where she gave a symposium presentation on foster care and higher education.
The collaboration extends Salazar’s longstanding work focused on improving educational opportunities and outcomes for young people with foster-care experience while bringing that work into an international context. By learning directly from students and the professionals who support them in Japan, the project lays groundwork for understanding how higher-education systems can better help young people with foster-care experience access college and persist toward a degree.