Editorial

This issue of JACE coincides with the world moving towards the end of the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as is evident not also from the academic literature, but only in the popular media, the education sector and learning more generally, has been particularly challenged. It is appropriate therefore that we begin this issue with an account from psychologists, Lorentz Neuwirth, Svetlana Jović and B Runi Mukherji from the State University of NewYork (SUNY) OldWestbury, of how a public institution at the centre of the pandemic can respond to needs of a diverse student population. Many of the other articles in this issue are also from other researchers and practitioners in the US, perhaps reflecting the proportionately larger population of authors in the country working in the field of adult education. Moving further south in the US, the next article from Christopher Bennett, E-Ling Hsiao, Dianne Dees, Daesang Kim andMichael Bochenko considers the impact of the TRIO programme, a well-known national initiative to support the retention of non-traditional, first generation and low-income students, on older students at a public state college in the state of Georgia. Their results amongst a significant cohort of students points to a number of positive outcomes of interventions. Still in the US, Virginia Montero-Hernandez and Steven Drouin consider the stories of first generation graduate students with Mexican parents. The findings from their research point to the importance of self-actualisation and of the contributions of this group to their families and community. Experiences of trauma are a core narrative of this work with the Latinx community. Back in New York state, the work of Sarantsetseg Davaasambuu and Christine Zagari considers the needs and satisfaction of a group of community college students taking non-credit courses, and how their college can respond to these. They argue that these adult students, who form a significant cohort of the population of colleges in the US, have been largely overlooked by researchers. Although a study of one particular institution, their five recommendations may have wider implications for the sector. In this issue, we are really criss-crossing the US, and our next article from Lauren Mangus, Cheryl Somers, Jina Yoon, Ty Partridge and Francesca Perniceis considers the achievement of young adults studying at a large, urban university in the Midwest. Using an ecological approach, they consider factors that include self-efficacy, motivation, study