The New Mexico Rural Revitalization Initiative (NMRRI), an innovative program to enhance the growth and development of rural communities, involves schools and students as part of a holistic approach. The program requires community members to take responsibility for revitalizing their economy and fosters an entrepreneurial spirit among students.

This EPI Policy Perspectives covers a presentation given at the European University Association Annual Convention (March 20, 2009, in Prague, Czech Republic) that addresses the Bologna process in the European Union. The process raised many questions regarding the role of the university, and the entire tertiary/postsecondary system of education.…

Adventure racing got started in the 1990s. The Eco-Challenge and Primal Quest races were multi-day events that included challenging physical activities and extreme conditions. Today, highly publicized adventure races like the Eco-Challenge and Amazing Race usually feature elite athletes or celebrities completing exotic tasks or globe-hopping to…

Having a parent or loved one caught up in the criminal justice system is an ongoing crisis that affects every aspect of family life. Teachers need to understand what is happening so they can provide support. One source of information is programs like Project WHAT! which provides leadership development and paid jobs to youth with incarcerated…

This paper is the first in a two-part series focused on first-generation college students (FGCS) in Christian colleges. It provides an overview of the literature regarding the pre-enrollment needs and experiences of these students and will be followed by a second article focused on the support needs and persistence of FGCS. Because much of the…

This paper deals with the implementation of integrated services providing early support for young children and their families. The integration of services is considered to have highly positive effects on the development of children and on the prevention of child neglect and maltreatment. Therefore, childcare centres have been developed into family…

Schools have long been central to community-based alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) prevention programs. Yet research consistently shows that school programs have only a marginal effect on student substance use and community ATOD problems. Schools are only one of the many influences on young people, and even the best curriculum will fail if…

In June 2013, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago and the Institute for Educational Leadership convened a group of stakeholders, researchers, and practitioners in Washington, DC. The group discussed the role of partnerships in advancing educational opportunities for low-income children and youth in the United States. They examined topics…

This article describes the Community Grant Writing Project (CGWP), a flexible service-learning framework designed for use in writing-intensive courses. The CGWP incorporates best-practice recommendations from the service-learning literature and addresses recent challenges identified for successful service-learning partnerships. In the CGWP,…

In fields such as sociolinguistics and composition and rhetoric, communication is increasingly understood as translingual, that is, as negotiated socially across languages. Those of us engaged in community literacy can and should recognize the deeply multilingual nature of the communities in which we work, and we should understand, embrace, and…

What could two dozen middle school students, two teachers, land surveyors, journalists, divers, college professors, lawyers, archaeologists, an author, and an 85-year old retiree possibly have in common? The answer is their insatiable quest to redefine colonial American history. From geodesy to glaciology, from geology to hydrology, from…

Pathways' students in Regent Park now talk about a new culture of expectation. They bristle at, and obviously reject, most of the labels the media and others place on them and, by extension, their community. They say words such as disadvantaged, poor, violent, and at-risk--to cite a few--do not address the fullness of reality and life in their…

Community-based youth sport coaches are often unprepared to accommodate the unique learning needs of athletes with hidden disabilities. The consequences of not knowing how to work with these athletes can be disastrous for both the athletes and the coaches. Universal design for learning, a practice borrowed from educational theory, can help…

This article discusses a community music project in rural East Timor. Australian musician Gillian Howell lived for three months in the isolated town of Lospalos as an Asialink artist-in-residence, where she worked with local community members and visiting Australian musicians to share music and ideas, and to communicate across cultures. Three…

As the author does his job, trying to sponsor and support reading and writing practices that will ideally enrich lives and communities throughout Arkansas, he is always tempted to rewrite the American Declaration of Independence so that its second paragraph begins this way: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created…