The Louisiana State University Biology Intensive Orientation for Students (BIOS) Program has been found to be an effective retention initiative for freshman Biological Science majors (S. M. Wischusen, Wischusen, & Pomarico, 2010; S. M. Wischusen, Wischusen, W. E., 2007). Students who attended the five-day camp out-perform their non-participant…

The train-the-trainer model has great potential for expanding information literacy programs without placing undue burden on already overextended librarians; it is surprisingly underused in academic libraries. At the University of Kentucky, we employed this model to create a new information literacy program in an introductory biology lab. We…

The Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) program at the University of Minnesota is a primary academic support program for historically difficult, introductory college courses that serve as gatekeepers to academic degree programs. Based upon operating principles of other academic support programs and educational theories, PAL is integrated into the courses…

High school students have had some difficulties in understanding chemistry due to traditional ways of teaching this specific science. It is important to improve teaching methods that increase student motivation, not only to enhance their capacity for understanding, but also to generate a greater level of interest in the study of chemistry for…

Young people in the U.S. are falling behind their peers in the rest of the developed world in science, technology, engineering, and math. The Program for International Student Assessment study, conducted every three years, ranked the U.S. 24th in math and science out of 29 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development…

Describes the Student Learning Center at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, which identifies and provides support services for high-risk courses, rather than high-risk students. Presents an evaluative research study of the supplemental instruction provided to an American history class and the effects of students' achievement and persistence.…

The Biology Fellows Program at the University of Washington aims to enhance diversity in science by helping students succeed in the rigorous introductory biology classes and motivating them to engage in undergraduate research. The composite Scholastic Achievement Test scores and high school grade point averages of the Biology Fellows are…

An intensive summer training course in Mandarin Chinese designed to help currently employed language teachers introduce exploratory Mandarin Chinese courses to their schools is described. Training current staff eliminated three common barriers to exploratory program introduction: needs for (1) additional teaching staff; (2) additional funds; and…

In response to high demand for English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction among the community's Chinese-speaking population, the Quincy School Community Council (Massachusetts) developed the Take And Give (TAG) program, in which graduates of the highest-level ESL classes were trained as peer tutors for students at the lowest instructional…

To address the special second language learning needs of deaf college students, a project was undertaken at Gallaudet University (District of Columbia), the world's only four-year liberal arts university for the deaf, to create 36 videotaped lessons in grammar, signed in American Sign Language, for first-year French and Spanish instruction. The…

A study investigated the success of a project to create a more student-centered engineering curriculum at a Dutch technical university by assessing how faculty's conceptions of teaching related to their teaching practices. Results indicated that although faculty had strong commitment to student learning, they also had misconceptions about…