In this paper, a former educator, now a family counselor traces the recent history of parent involvement programs and relates his experiences in developing a rationale and model for parents' involvement in their children's education. Since the 1950s, the mutual understanding between schools and families about their shared responsibility for…

Individuals who work in the helping professions (physicians, counselors, nurses, pastors, and social workers) often work with individuals in stressful crisis situations. In addition to working in high stress situations, helpers in rural areas also suffer from isolation from support networks and peers that are available to urban helpers. This…

An effort to foster intergenerational bilingual literacy by setting up technology-mediated partnerships between geographically distant parents of school children is described. The ethnic and linguistically minority parents who participated were from San Diego; Denver; and Caguas, Puerto Rico. This partnership between distant parents is part of a…

During Fiscal Year (FY) 1987, the Allen, Texas, literacy project assisted seven new northeast Texas literacy programs in start-up and trained tutors for the existing program and new programs. For FY 1988, the goal was to fill the perceived need for development of management skills in area literacy programs. A 2-day Regional Adult Literacy…

The Penn State Mini Medical School is a high-impact community engagement program created and led by the Office of Continuing Education at the Penn State College of Medicine. The broad goals of the program are to respond to the general public's intense desire for health and medical information, to educate the community about biomedical science and…

Exposure to lead can be devastating for children, and federal regulations established in 2001 are forcing local governments to mitigate this risk. This essay discusses the creation of the Lead Alliance, a university-community coalition created to address lead hazards facing children from low-income households in South Bend, Indiana. Among the…

The Women and Poverty Public Education Initiative (WPPEI), established by the University of Wisconsin Women's Studies Consortium Outreach Office in 1994, developed a collaborative outreach scholarship model that paired women from the poverty community with women's studies faculty from universities in eight Wisconsin communities to study the…

During times of economic uncertainty, how can universities develop and sustain resources for engagement efforts? This article focuses on how a university-wide research and outreach coalition at Michigan State University called Families and Communities Together (FACT) is exploring a variety of funding approaches and implementing successful…

At Michigan State University (MSU) we have developed and are testing a faculty survey instrument to gather institution-wide information on outreach activity. We have sought to define consistent quantitative measures that can be used both to describe the whole institution's investment of resources in engagement activities and to establish…

This conference is built on two very interesting premises; first, that university outreach can change society and second, that outreach can also change the university. What is the mechanism by which this mutual influence can offer? What does the university offer the community, and what does the community offer the university? The short answer…

The Community College of Vermont (CCV) does not have a campus library, but supports its programs with library services offered at 12 different sites within the state. The 12 sites, which were begun in spring 1985, each have a 500-volume non-circulating reference collection, with a special emphasis on business and human services materials to match…

The racial composition of participants in a Florida crisis intervention agency's programs indicated that, among the population at risk, black youth were overrepresented in State delinquency and child welfare programs and underrepresented in the agency's intervention services. This practicum was designed to enhance the agency's ability to reach…

Murray State University has established financial self-sustaining programs to provide high-quality academic experiences for non-college-age students in the rural environment surrounding the university. The programs are designed to promote the long-term goal of increasing college attendance rates in an area where they are among the lowest in the…

A descriptive research study of the educational outreach activities conducted by Ohio theatres used a mail questionnaire to survey the 36 professional and large community theatres within the state. Thirty responded, for a response rate of 83.3 percent. For each theatre, the instrument sought information on the kind of theatre, the number of staff,…

Minimum standards are set forth for the 12 member libraries that currently constitute the Library of Michigan/Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (LM/LBPH) network to ensure that all LM/LBPH network libraries provide uniform, quality service to patrons in the service area. Introductory material includes listings of the Michigan…