Although most teachers of students with visual impairments spend time in internships prior to teaching, they often begin teaching without firsthand contact with capable adults who have visual impairments (that is, those who are blind or have low vision). As a result, they may be unfamiliar with the daily planning and adaptation undertaken by those…

First-generation college students are an underrepresented group in terms of study abroad participation nationally and at Arizona State University (ASU). The ASU and International Studies Abroad (ISA) Planning Scholars Scholarship Program was developed to support first-generation college students in their pursuit of study abroad. This mixed-methods…

Summer bridge programs are supposed to connect a graduating high school senior's summer to their first semester in college, easing the transition away from home and into a university setting. Although research is plentiful on the programs, assessments regarding the overall effectiveness of such programs have been mixed (e.g., Cabrera, Miner, and…

Background: Few HIV/STI and pregnancy prevention programs for youth in American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities have been rigorously evaluated despite sexual health disparities in this population. This study reports the evaluation of a culturally adapted Internet-based HIV/STI and pregnancy prevention program for AI/AN youth, Native…

The espoused foundation of U.S. society, "E pluribus unum" (out of many, one), is based on the belief that this nation should simultaneously support pluralism and promote unity. The road to making this ideal a reality, however, has not always been smooth. The ever-widening achievement gap highlights how this discordance plays out in our…

By 2013, all 50 states and the District of Columbia had adopted college- and career-ready standards in English language arts and mathematics, placing a greater emphasis on argument writing to prepare students for life after high school. Solving the specific problem of how to help teachers teach to new standards for argument writing as well as the…

When American Indian/Native American studies (AI/NAS) programs began to emerge in the halls of academia during the late 1960s and early 1970s, some who served as faculty and staff questioned whether they would be one-generation phenomena. Would the programs survive, would they continue to draw students, and could they make an impact on…

In the summer of 2012, the University of Arizona Libraries implemented an online training program to effectively train Access Services staff and student employees at a large academic research library. This article discusses the program, which was built using a course management system (D2L) and various e-Learning software applications (Articulate…

Mentoring programs are a well recognized means to quicken students' assimilation and increase retention, but not all mentoring programs are successful. It seems that for a peer student mentoring program to be effective, the program would need mandatory participation on both ends. Perhaps both mentors and mentees could voluntarily enroll in…

The state's Race to the Top (RTT) application requires changes to the state's evaluation/accountability system. It requires a teacher effectiveness measure, district effectiveness measure, leader effectiveness measure. Regarding the teacher effectiveness measure, RTT requires linking the data of individual students to individual teachers as part…

Various approaches to the professional development school (PDS)--each designed for its respective audience, mission, and purpose for engagement--have shaped the professional development school effort during the past 25 years. Central to these approaches is improving teacher quality in the service of student learning. This provides direction for…

The purpose of this document is to describe the US ED growth model pilot program from its inception to the point at which the program was no longer a pilot and was opened up to all states. In addition, the paper is designed to help states in the process of planning to submit a growth model proposal. The information in this document is mostly…

The public receives environmental information from a variety of sources. Evaluation of a single program or one organization's effort is incomplete. Through surveys and interviews, we evaluate the cumulative impact of outreach by 20 water-related organizations in Maricopa County, Arizona. Household water conservation is a topic addressed by 18…

With funding from NSF, the Prime the Pipeline Project (P[cube]) is responding to the need to strengthen the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pipeline from high school to college by developing and evaluating the scientific village strategy and the culture it creates. The scientific village, a community of high school…

The Arizona State University Downtown Phoenix campus is a grand-scale exemplar of a city-university partnership. Its demonstrated impacts are economic, social, and educational, transforming both the city and the university. The magnitude of the investment of $223 million by the citizens of a city in a state university is unparalleled in higher…