Building on research on family communication and forgiveness, this study seeks to understand how families communicate the value and practice of forgiveness. Through semi-structured interviews, the study asks participants to recall their formative conversations and experiences about forgiveness with their family members and to discuss how those conversations influenced their current perspectives on forgiveness. Interviews from five female undergraduate students yielded seven main themes from where individuals learn how to forgive: 1) Sibling conflicts, 2) Family conversations about friendship conflicts, 3) Conversations with Mom, 4) Living by example, 5) Take the high road, 6) “Life’s too short”, and 7) Messages rooted in faith and morality.

A notable dilemma in the educational systems of current year is the lack of diversity in the faculty, administration, and curriculums. Diversity in education is colloquially understood to instill benefits in students that include development of sophisticated communication skills and heightened motivation, which may in turn have measurable benefits on health. In an effort to articulate the impact of introducing greater variegation into these systems and vocalize recommendations toward incorporating diversity into existing educational systems, the history of minority groups in schooling systems was analyzed, as were common health concerns for these communities. To this end, local students from Arizona State University were surveyed about their perceptions on diverse populations within their educational system. Moreover, these groups were also polled about how the messaging they receive about health and diversity may impact self-perceptions about their own health, as well as how applicable that messaging is with their own experiences.

Theories about the human origin in evolution and religion are fundamentally countering beliefs that are still debated to this day. This study continues to explore this relationship in the college population at a public university with the intention of targeting a diverse religious population. This research hopes to answer the question: does having greater literacy in evolution lead to a noninterventionist perspective on evolution? The prediction is that evidence of increased evolution comprehension will influence students to have a more agnostic, or noninterventionist, view on evolution. An evolution class was given a survey that had two parts broken into demographic and evolution sections with one question that asks about compatibility between evolution and religion. This was given twice in a single semester to track the growth of evolution knowledge and any other differences. There were 265 students in the initial survey, but only 223 responses in the post-survey. The compatibility question had 8 statements that range from creationist to atheistic perspectives and was divided into two sides: interventionist (divine involvement) and noninterventionist (deity may be present but does not intervene). More than 70% of the class had a noninterventionist perspective on evolution despite the Christian categories being the second largest group students identified with after agnostic. The agnostic statement was the top choice followed by the atheistic answer on the noninterventionist side. Lastly, there was some growth of evolution knowledge for each religious category in the evolution section but is not significant for interpretation. Based on the collected data, it is not sufficient to answer the question and requires more data collection via a longitudinal study.