Professor emerita LeAnn G. Putney (Educational Psychology and Higher Education) and USU professor and alumna Suzanne H. Jones delivered the keynote address, “The Pathways of Hope in Education: Navigating Challenges, Sustaining Vision, and Empowering Teachers and Learners" at the Northern Rocky Mountain Educational Research Association (NRMERA) 2025 annual conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. They shared foundational theories of hope, as well as their research on collective classroom efficacy that engenders educational hope as a motivational element of learning.

Beyond the keynote, Putney and Jones presented their current research on Perezhivanie (lived experience) and Hope that included alumnus Brett Campbell. Putney also serves as a research methodologist member on USU committees chaired by Jones, and former USU students Don Mendenhall, Brad Dutson, and Jake Earnest, as well as current doctoral students Matthew Huffaker and Lorissa Nelson, participated in five additional presentations.

Included in these was a special session titled, “Navigating the Waters of the Graduate Student Experience,” in which the USU former and current students offered sage advice to graduate students and professorial attendees on graduate college benchmarks from selecting a committee to preparing and defending comprehensive exams, the proposal, the dissertation, and then life after dissertation. As noted by Putney, “The conference theme of Education = Hope was well articulated throughout all the sessions, and we were excited to be an integral part of it.”