This project argues that a central challenge in contemporary education is an incoherence between the inherited purposes of schooling and the realities young people now face. While schools continue to emphasize siloed content and performance measures, students are entering a rapidly changing, AI-mediated world that demands critical thinking, adaptability, collaboration, and reflection. Integrating research on depth of learning, interdisciplinary scholarship, and a practitioner case study, this project proposes competency-based learning as a practical structure for supporting deeper learning, increased relevance, and a renewed orientation toward wellbeing in the age of artificial intelligence. 

The paper employs a literature review and theoretical synthesis drawing from educational philosophy, psychology, contemplative traditions, and emerging research on youth and artificial intelligence. These ideas are examined alongside a reflective narrative of a multi-age competency-based unit, using practitioner experience as a lens through which to explore how theory operates in classroom practice. Rather than a formal qualitative study, the practitioner narrative functions as an interpretive case illustrating the lived implications of the framework. 

This project contributes a conceptual framework linking learning theory, human development, and competency-based education within the context of AI. It grounds competency-based learning in developmental processes and demonstrates how educators can design learning environments that cultivate reflection, relationships, and adaptive thinking. Ultimately, the paper addresses a broader social question: how must education evolve to prepare young people for an unpredictable future? By emphasizing human capacities—creativity, citizenship, collaboration, and critical reflection—it offers a pathway for gradual change through existing structures such as standards, assessment practices, and teacher preparation programs.

K-12 Educators across the country are currently facing substantial stress and distress. Learning effective coping skills is essential to educator wellbeing and happiness. Hundreds of Montana Educators have participated in UM’s online asynchronous Evidence-based Happiness for Educators course which actively engages educators in reflecting on and practicing strengths-based positive coping skills. The purpose of this case study is to explore the memories, applications, and effects experienced by educators during and after participating in the course. After interviewing 38 participants, researchers recognized the course served as a catalyst for change and that participation in the course created ripple effects that caused lasting changes in participant mindsets, relationships, and ways of being in their personal lives and professional communities. Themes and outcomes of this study illuminate the importance of experiential learning using evidence- and strength-based positive coping strategies to not only support educator wellbeing, but also to support student and community wellbeing.

Dinuclear metal-peroxo species have been proposed as key intermediates in the dioxygen activation pathway for a number of nonheme diiron and dicopper enzymes such as soluble methane monooxygenase (sMMO). A key step in the O activation is the cleavage of the metal-peroxo O-O bond to form higher-valent metal-oxo species. Meanwhile, the reverse O–O bond formation process catalyzed by the Oxygen-Evolving Complex (OEC) in natural Photosystem II is a pivotal step in the conversion of water into molecular oxygen during photosynthesis. In synthetic chemistry, compared to the diiron and dicopper complexes, dicobalt peroxo complexes are relatively less studied. Furthermore, none of the known dicobalt peroxo complexes have exhibited O–O bond activation to generate higher-valent derivatives.

In this work, UV–vis spectroscopy revealed a reversible O–O bond activation and formation process in dinuclear cobalt complexes. We systematically investigated the thermodynamic and kinetic factors governing the fate of the O–O bond within the equilibrium between Co^II(μ-OO)Co^II and Co^III₂(μ-O)₂ species. This equilibrium is affected by the reaction temperature. Further characterization of this system using NMR spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry indicated that the observed interconversion is driven by modulation of the cobalt redox potentials.

This is the first time that the reversible cleavage and formation of the O-O bond is clearly demonstrated in a cobalt system. This finding not only challenges conventional understanding of metal–oxygen reactivity but also opens new avenues for designing new catalytic systems and studying fundamental bond activation mechanisms. Taken together, these discoveries push the boundaries of known cobalt chemistry and demonstrate how synthetic models can offer new insights into biological oxidation processes.

Social identity theory aims to understand how individuals form identities based on group memberships, and how those identities influence people’s cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. Social identity effects are often dynamic, highly responsive to activation, can distort people’s interpretations of fact or even their own preferences, and can differentially inspire in-group favoritism, out-group derogation, and intergroup conflict or cooperation depending on context. Since the effects of social identity on the human dimensions of wildlife are likely myriad and multifaceted, how have researchers used social identity theory in the existing wildlife literature? In this article, we apply a systematic scoping literature review to investigate the extant research on social identity theory in wildlife conservation settings. Across 99 refereed articles, our review documents the ways in which, to date, social identity theory has been used to understand human relationships with wildlife. Toward future research, we draw inspiration from social psychological research in other domains to suggest new, underexplored avenues for integrating social identity perspectives into human dimensions of wildlife research and practice.

Land is central to the history and mythology of the American West, and yet owning and accessing land is increasingly unattainable for most Americans. Changes in who can own land alter material practices of agriculture or conservation as well as ideas and narratives underlying those material practices, i.e., the land’s imaginary. This research employs a mixed-methods approach to 1) geospatially analyze how the regime of land ownership is changing in two agricultural communities in Montana, and 2) explore associated shifts in rural land imaginaries.

Scholars have researched the effects of land ownership changes in rural logging communities and highly-desirable Western towns. Yet to date, there is little research done to understand how Montana’s agricultural communities are contesting or adapting to these new ownership regimes. Key drivers of change in other communities include farmland financialization and amenity migration; I posit that identity creation is an understudied yet significant driver of change. Those buying land do so to craft themselves as a farmer or rancher amidst pervasive Wild West discourses seen in the TV show “Yellowstone” and the idea of “Big Sky Country.” These appeals to identity produce new visions of what land is and should be. The analytic of land imaginaries serves to combine the rhetorical and the tangible of a given landscape, making it particularly useful to study this intersection of ownership and discourse.

Owning land is the litmus test of inequality in America today. Studying the material changes associated with the (in)ability to own land as well as shifts in how residents see the land’s purpose contributes to understanding both the future of agriculture and the impacts of growing inequality. Montana’s landscape is a palimpsest of mythology about what it means to be American; this research explores changes therein.