In response to the need for greater racial and ethnic diversity, the Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) at Indiana University Indianapolis introduced a mandatory equity and inclusion-centered training program for faculty search committees in August 2023. This training addresses key challenges in achieving faculty diversity, including biases, narrow…

The Latino and Adult Student Success (LASS) Academy is a multi-year initiative administered by CAEL (the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning) focused on supporting Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) in their efforts to improve outcomes for adult and Latino adult learners. In its first phase, from 2018 through 2021, the LASS Academy…

Faced with operational complexities on par with those of a city, larger colleges and universities have long understood the value of taking a strategic approach to understanding and managing enterprise risks. Personnel dedicated to risk analysis and control at these institutions are tasked with taking a holistic view of the exposures, liabilities…

The Next Generation Science Standards embody a new vision for science education grounded in the idea that science is both a body of knowledge and a set of linked practices for developing knowledge. The authors describe strategies that they suggest school and district leaders consider when designing strategies to support NGSS implementation.

In an era of limited fiscal and human resources, educational developers are seeking innovative ways to connect with their constituents. Developing a "virtual" center for teaching and learning (CTL) is one approach to consolidating development resources and reaching busy full-time and adjunct faculty. This article will describe the…

This article describes how the Chicago schools system has been bedeviled by the social conditions faced by the city's inhabitants, and now by attempts to use privatization and school closures as the "solution" to those problems. The article describes how teachers in the Chicago Teachers' Union combined with community members to challenge…

The project "Multimedia in science teaching: five years of research and teaching in Portugal" was successful in featuring the national research on multimedia in science education and in providing the community with a simple reference tool--a repository of open access scientific texts. The current work aims to describe the theoretical…

This chapter describes fears that may lead to faculty resistance to civic engagement and suggests approaches to conquering these fears in order to further develop the civic capacities of our students and institutions.

In our service-learning courses, students work with real people and record and reflect on these experiences, to learn appropriate professional behavior, how to think creatively, and how to respond to changing circumstances. Many of our students are strategic learners, characterized by alertness to assessment and intention to achieve the highest…

Teachers often start a new school year working extremely hard to reteach last year's content, particularly for their lower income students. According to "Making Summer Count," a report commissioned by The Wallace Foundation and written by researchers at Rand, rigorous studies of voluntary summer programs, mandatory summer programs, and…

This chapter describes undergraduate research expansion in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) in the context of both fiscal and student enrollment challenges.

This chapter outlines the birth and growth of a veterans' program in Salt Lake City, Utah, and discusses next steps in spurring additional innovations and advancements to improve service for student veterans in community colleges.

Low motivation to participate in traditional or team sports, apathy toward competitive environments, and a low rate of transfer of skills to lifetime activities and wellness can be barriers for student pursuits of lifelong fitness. Adding an outdoor component can be a solution for some of these problems, while still accomplishing the National…

The University of Minnesota Extension Center for Youth Development made an organizational decision in 2011 to invest in a system-wide approach to implement youth program quality into the 4-H program using the Youth Program Quality Assessment (YPQA) tool. This article describes the four key components to the Minnesota Youth Program Quality…

Education research provides a range of curricular reform options that can lead to improved student course outcomes. These options can appear easy to implement with the hope of immediate increases in student learning. In 2006 the Ithaca College Physics Department went down this path by moving all of their 100-level courses out of lecture halls and…