California's vast Central Valley has been called "the Appalachia of California" and "the Other California." Long neglected as either irrelevant or hopeless, the Central Valley has become the focus of government and private philanthropists who understand the growing importance of this region to the state and the nation. The…

A parade of people composed of young mothers, young professionals, middle-aged men and women and elder South Carolinians are marching across the parking lot into the former McAlister Square Mall. They have access to higher education because higher education has come to them--not in the form of a traditional campus but as the concrete realization…