While it is well-known that faculty-student interaction is key to student success, few institutions have directly leveraged faculty in supporting academic persistence. Many myths about persistence proliferate, and faculty can unwittingly hinder persistence by implementing the wrong kinds of practices. Faculty are most empowered to support student…

The authors present findings from a recently completed census survey of all mathematics departments in the United States that offer a graduate degree in mathematics. The authors report the viewpoints of departments about characteristics shown to support students' success as well as the extent to which these characteristics are being implemented in…

Northern Kentucky University (NKU) is a comprehensive public university located just five miles south of Cincinnati, Ohio. At NKU, educators aspire to provide a personal educational experience to the more than 12,000 undergraduate students who enroll each year. Given the demographics of the undergraduate student body--more than 50% are…

"Three Big Lessons in Six Years" is both a reflection on the past and a look ahead to the future at Charlestown (C-Town) High School (Boston, Massachusetts) and other early college programs across the country. The purpose of this series is to document essential design elements, operational structures, and critical support for students to…

Passionate about making interfaith cooperation the social norm in a highly diverse religious world landscape, Eboo Patel is founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core. The organization brings together young people of different religious and moral traditions for cooperative service and dialogue around shared values. In this article, which is…

Responding to reduced funding and organizational restructuring, many state Extension programs have reorganized counties into regional-based entities and limited family and consumer sciences (FCS) to specialized programs in areas such as foods and nutrition (Braverman, Franz, & Rennekamp, 2012; Franz & Cox, 2012; White & Teuteberg,…

This paper reports on the development of an engineering curriculum for a new industrial engineering programme at a medium-sized private university in the northeast United States. A systems engineering process has been followed to design and develop the new curriculum. Considering the programme curriculum as a system, first the stakeholders have…

In this paper, we analyse 53 Dutch accreditation reports in the field of information technology to assess the mechanisms of the reported involvement of the professional field in the undergraduate programmes of universities of applied sciences. The results of qualitative content analysis reveal a coupling effect in reporting on mechanisms of…

In 1954, Hugh Stretton took charge of a threadbare history department at the University of Adelaide. By the end of his tenure as department chair in 1966, staff numbers had increased fivefold and the department was recognised as one of the best of its kind in Australia. Stretton wanted his department to "teach history interestingly",…

The College of Lake County Regional Photonics Initiative project was motivated in part by the hiring of out-of-state technicians for local Photonics industry positions. Fifteen high paying employment opportunities during the recent recession could not be filled from the locally available workforce. Research on the current demand and future growth…

Nearly 15 years after the Rio Conference and 10 years after the Lucerne Declaration on Geographical Education for Sustainable Development we are interested to what extent the goals of this declaration have been implemented? What role does Geography play in Education for Sustainable Development in higher education? We analyzed the modules of 107…

"Get ready, get in, and get through." Latino adolescents and young adults are enrolling in the nation's colleges and universities at record numbers. However, completion rates of Latinos range from 8% to 25%. We examined individual rather than organizational factors shown to influence Latino student post-secondary levels of success.…

For 50 years, Smith College's Summer Research Fellowship (SURF) has provided undergraduate women scientists the opportunity for an immersive experience to conduct independent research under the mentorship of science faculty and staff. This article highlights summative assessment data on SURF program outcomes as well as the institutional planning…

To better understand the components that create an equitable learning environment, we have analyzed a number of highly successful programs that we developed and conducted targeting K-12 students, their teachers, and university students. We identified four criteria experienced by the student that are essential for his or her recruitment,…

Online video can be an effective way for Extension to share data stories. Short videos that convey their messages without sound can maximize impact on several social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter. A pilot video was produced in this style; shared on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube; and evaluated on the basis of the social media…