RUSMP’s Director of Research and Evaluation, Dr. Adem Ekmekci, presented three studies at the 2018 Annual Meeting of American Educational Research Association (AERA) which was held in New York City April 13-17. The first study (co-authored by Dr. Alpaslan Sahin) was about development and validation of a self-reported 21st century skills instrument (21CSI). The results from the pilot validation phase were presented for this first study. Data collection for the main study is currently ongoing with plans to to present results at next year’s meeting in Toronto. In the second study, Dr. Ekmekci co-authored with Dr. Sahin and Dr. Hersh Waxman from Texas A&M University. In this study, Dr. Ekmekci presented results from the first two years of a four-year longitudinal study tracking high school students’ future STEM major plans in college. The third study was a follow-up to an earlier one that investigated the barriers and facilitators K-12 mathematics teachers encountered in implementing what they learned in a content and pedagogy-focused rigorous professional development program in their daily teaching (Corkin, Coleman, & Ekmekci, forthcoming; Corkin, Ekmekci, Coleman, 2017). The follow-up study provided a self-regulatory teaching theoretical lens onto teachers’ strategies to overcome previously found barriers and implications for schools and school districts as well as for teacher professional development.