Concerns about the rising cost of college and growing student loan debt have intensified in recent years, with 85% of non-enrolled adults citing affordability as a key barrier (Gallup & Lumina Foundation, 2024) and a third of currently enrolled college students agreeing that their "institution charges too much for an undergraduate…

High-quality professional development programs are important to all agricultural education teachers, regardless of their stage in the teaching profession. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the perception of Minnesota SBAE teachers in the areas of program design and management, leadership, and Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE)…

Home visiting connects expectant parents, new caregivers, and their young children with a support person, called a home visitor. The home visitor meets regularly with the family, develops a relationship with them, and supports them to achieve their goals and meet their needs. To reach the thousands of additional families who could benefit from…

We describe the online summer portion of a quantitative skills bridge program focused on helping students prepare socially and academically for the transition to college. College students are increasingly asked to employ quantitative skills across the curriculum, but students arrive at college with varied preparation. Further, those with the least…

In this article, we describe the process we adopted in designing a financial education intervention situated within the cultural and systemic realities of structural racism in Black communities and offer new insights on conducting financial education that addresses healing from ethno-racial trauma. We adopted a community-based participatory…

As American teacher educators and teachers are being roiled by restrictive legislation around critical race theory and divisive concepts in some states, our investigation explored the impact of critical communities of practice (CoP) on redesigning and teaching introduction to education courses with a transformative lens. This manuscript details…

Since 2016, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO), with generous support from Lumina Foundation, has been working with states to explore establishing "promise-type" aid programs for adult students (adult promise programs). SHEEO is currently working with 15 states to implement adult promise programs through…

Parent engagement is one approach to decrease the opportunity gap for Black, American Indian, and all children of color. This report from the field describes the use of the World Café participatory approach to support parent engagement in five early childhood, culturally embedded Montessori programs. Serving the Whole Child (SWC) is a…

This promising practice describes the summer programming transformation at a rural, Title I school. After eliminating barriers to education and remediation overtones, the school now provides free transportation, meals, and books for all participants and engages them in research-based, enrichment-focused literacy learning. The program's first year…

Promise programs (also known as free college programs) have grown in popularity over the last few years. When targeted correctly, these programs have the potential to increase enrollment, retention, and graduation rates for underserved students. By focusing a promise program on adult students and including additional supports and services, states…

Current research on millennials primarily focuses on their behavior within an academic or workplace setting. This study expands on previous analysis by exploring how millennials respond to community leadership efforts, particularly cohort leadership programs. Participant outcomes from University of Minnesota Extension's County Bridging Leadership…