State financial aid is a critical piece of college affordability for students from low-income backgrounds. Nearly three quarters of all students attend college in their home state - which is typically a requirement for state-based financial aid - and first-generation and students from low-income backgrounds are even more likely than their peers to…

Student retention is important to any university, especially keeping commuter students who are traditionally less anchored in campus life. Even more at risk, given the leaky STEM pipeline, are STEM commuter students. In 2016, Valparaiso University launched the Establishing Practices Integrating Commuter Students (EPIC) program, centered around…

Despite persistent calls by professional organizations and leaders in the field for theory-based programs, it is often difficult for student affairs professionals to articulate why and how their programs should work (i.e., program theory). This lack of program theory influences professionals' ability to use assessment results for program…

This document is a report on the research which was designed to evaluate the affirmative action policy for ethnic minorities in Georgia. The mixed research methods were utilized in the study. Specifically, the following research methods were used: (1) Survey of 12th graders in non-Georgian schools; (2) Survey of the students in the One-Year…

High-risk drinking among college students is believed to be the most serious health issue facing college and universities throughout the United States. In 1999, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) established a task force to address the issue and released a report with recommendations for intervention and prevention.…

Many universities have instituted global education programs to prepare their students for the demands of living in a global society; yet, little information exists about the effectiveness of these programs from the participants' perspectives. At the local level, a liberal arts university has not undertaken an assessment of its global learning…

When the University of North Dakota began working to improve general education, two concerns were recognized. The first issue, which faculty and administrators across campus found immediately engaging, was how to change general education so that it would be a better program, more likely to yield clear student learning benefits. A second concern,…

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Graduate Education Initiative (GEI) provided funding to 54 departments in the humanities and related social sciences during the 1990s to improve their PhD programs. This article estimates the aspects of PhD programs the GEI influenced and how these aspects influenced attrition and graduation probabilities. It uses…

Internships have been used by many academic programs to augment the student's educational experience. We discuss two internship programs that have been continuously refined in recent years to provide the students with a structured learning experience. We present a model for enriching student experiences by integrating internship experiences with…

While self-pacing may appear to be an ideal solution to problems stemming from individual differences in academic skill levels among college students, students in Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) courses may tend to procrastinate. Three course contingencies were studied for their effectiveness in reducing student procrastination and…

This paper reports the opinions of Australian second- and third-year early childhood education students concerning the benefits of a collegial support program designed to assist professional development by improving the quality of practicum supervision. It was expected that as a result of improved supervision, students would experience increased…

This report presents the findings of an evaluative study of the current status of engineering education for minority students at the collegiate and pre-collegiate levels in the United States. It is based on a survey of 50 existing programs and a review of the professional and research literature in this field. The major findings of the analysis…

An evaluation of the College Aides Program in Baltimore, Maryland, public schools was prepared by an independent agency. This program, funded under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, offers low income college students the opportunity for full time study by providing part time jobs. Students from Morgan State College were…

Americans have long had and deserved the stereotypical reputation of knowing little about the language and cultures of other nations. Most college students, including language majors, leave higher education with inadequate language skills, and many high school language teachers are also in need of improved skills. The reliance of literature to…

This chapter describes how an action research framework facilitates using evaluation and assessment results to improve programs and demonstrate institutional effectiveness. (Contains 1 table.)