Even as the number of students attending college has more than doubled in the past forty years, it is still the case that nearly half of all college students in the United States will not complete their degree within six years. It is clear that much remains to be done toward improving student success. For more than twenty years, Vincent Tinto's…

From setting the stage to engaging the community in understanding the purpose of collaborative professional learning teams, this volume covers what leaders need to know to implement more effective professional learning. Chapters focus on changing school culture, scheduling time, planning, using data, designs for professional learning, facilitating…

Developing a timetable for a college fund-raising campaign may be critical to success. Planning involves deciding what tasks to include, how to prioritize and schedule them, and how much time to allot, based on task requirements, institutional size/complexity, experience. Other factors include campus climate, board style, systems readiness, and…

Setting organizational or program objectives is seen as requiring three steps (brainstorming goals for the year, prioritizing them, and visualizing them as smaller, discrete tasks) and six principles (making goals group-specific, setting deadlines, being realistic and explicit, writing down goals, defining measurable steps, and creating…

College alumni directors are finding that alumni want more than parties at their reunions and are overcoming attendance slumps with creative, substantive programing. Ideas include faculty seminars on topics of current interest, sometimes integrated with professional continuing education, alumni panel discussions, involving the family, involving…

It is argued that colleges and universities can become more productive by enhancing the efficiency of student learning. This requires both acceleration of learning through individually paced mastery learning, better academic focus, year-round schooling, and an earlier start to graduate and professional education. Eight strategies for enhancing…

College reunion success depends on careful planning, including (1) starting early; (2) documenting all planning efforts; (3) motivating, including, and communicating with volunteers; (4) using formal and informal meeting time effectively; (5) providing a program highlighting events planned; (6) freeing staff to be volunteer-reliant; and (7)…

Two articles address issues in the development of French and Spanish language programs in elementary schools: instructional materials and time and money factors. The information presented is drawn from experience in developing the Radford, Virginia FLES (Foreign Language in the Elementary School) program. The first article describes some aspects…

A needs assessment program can help recreation managers recognize new and changing leisure interests and needs of the people they serve. This article reviews strategies that military services use in needs assessment programs. Issues encountered when conducting an assessment are discussed. (DF)

A discussion of college extracurricular activities programing looks at current and predicted trends in campus entertainment preferences, based on the perceptions of student activities directors from around the country, and offers suggestions for tailoring programs to the changing needs and interests of college student populations. (MSE)

Summarizes research on recent developments in the trend toward full-day kindergarten programs. Topics covered include (1) full-day and half-day differential gains, (2) the nature of gains produced by full-day kindergarten, (3) the lack of causal relations among program components, (4) enduring effects, (5) differential student effects, and (6)…

As colleges face budget reductions, they must consider the substantial hidden costs of unemployment benefits for terminated part-time faculty. Planning a sound program of benefits management that includes cost containment requires the cooperation of personnel director, chief financial officer, and chief academic officer. (MSE)

This chapter, taken from a guide to designing, implementing, and evaluating instruction and services for students with disabilities, addresses the issue of teacher collaboration. It provides information about the nature of teacher collaboration, its role in relation to special education service delivery as well as other school trends, its…

This paper presents the results of a study on faculty workload undertaken by the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) as part of its ongoing interest in issues of cost and productivity in higher education. The survey not only included responses from SHEEO members in the 50 states, but also from multi-institutional system governing…

Small community or vocational colleges often face the problem of trying to run quality academic programs with adjunct or part-time faculty who have little contact with the regular faculty and little say in policy-making. The Utah Valley Community College writing program, which successfully combined regular and adjunct faculty in planning and…