Rural schools, especially smaller ones, offer enormous opportunities for teachers to get to know their students and to cultivate their academic talents. However, students with potential in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) face specific obstacles to having their talents fully realized in rural schools. Joni Lakin, Tamra…

The first-year student experience in college is a crucial time for personal and professional development, especially for students entering science, technology, education, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Unfortunately, it is also the time when students most commonly leave STEM, largely due to disconnection from faculty and peers. The Freshman…

Iowa State University Human Sciences Extension and Outreach (HSEO) provides informal educational opportunities to older adults and their families in rural Iowa within the subject areas of family life, family finance, and nutrition and wellness. The successful implementation of educational opportunities is partially determined by the knowledge of…

GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) is a federal program designed to promote college access and success for students from low-income backgrounds. Although some literature has examined K-12 outcomes, little research has explored the extent to which GEAR UP achieves its intended postsecondary objectives. The…

In line with family systems theory, we examined patterns of hostile interactions within families and their associations with externalizing problems among early-adolescent children. Using hostility scores based on observational data of six dyadic interactions during a triadic interaction (n = 462; i.e., child-to-mother, mother-to-child,…

Gardening and nutrition lessons for children can affect knowledge, actions, and behaviors that support more healthful lifestyles. The objective of the study described in this article was to determine the effectiveness of a master gardener--led education program for youth at a week-long summer camp in Iowa. Garden knowledge was assessed via a…

Developing a global mind-set in college students is a goal of many colleges and universities. Most often this goal is met by encouraging students to study abroad. This article explains how a service learning student engagement program at home achieves this goal by pairing Introduction to Sociology students with young immigrant children in a weekly…

The article provides details of the process of starting an actuarial science major at a small, liberal arts college. Some critique of the major is included, as well as some challenges that may be faced by others wanting to start such a major at their institution.

This comprehensive study asks what a group of rather diverse disciplines have in common. It involves a cross-disciplinary examination of an entire college, the College of Design at Iowa State University. This research was intended to provide a sense of direction in developing and assessing possible core content. The reasoning was that material…

The value of experiential learning is widely acknowledged, especially for the development of communication skills, but students are not always aware of their own learning. While we can observe students practicing targeted skills during the experiential activity, the experience can also color their explicit understanding of those skills. Transfer…

This chapter introduces a University of Iowa effort to enhance and support active learning pedagogies in technology-enhanced (TILE) classrooms and three elements that proved essential to the campus-wide adoption of those pedagogies. It then describes the impact of those professional development efforts on the curricula and cultures of three…

Twelve universities and one American Indian (AI) tribal college were selected for the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute's 5-year stipend traineeship program. These tribal traineeships were designed to provide social work child welfare education for tribal and nontribal students. Twenty-two AI students and 58 nontribal students completed a…

Recent decline of students pursuing engineering degree programs is a great concern for many higher education authorities including Federal and State governments. Existing programs in high schools have not yet produced the desired results. Consequently, a number of initiatives to remedy this situation have been proposed and implemented. One such…

Preventing injuries to children, especially debilitating and life threatening, requires an awareness of where these types of injuries occur during the school days. This review examines falls from playground equipment, events that have been identified as the leading causes of nonfatal unintentional injuries for children. Thus, the issue of…

The issue of early childhood trauma is becoming more prominent in early childhood policy discussions, driven by a growing recognition of the potentially devastating impacts of trauma and violence on infants, toddlers, and families. This article provides facts about the impacts of trauma and other adverse early experiences on child health and…