How can youth be educated and empowered to become responsible food citizens? Evidence from a university-community partnership with youth in Michigan is presented to illuminate participatory approaches to youth engagement in food systems. We found that youth have valuable knowledge to enhance our understanding of food environments. At the same…

How does a early career faculty member survive the pursuit of campus-community initiatives? This article draws on experiences gained through a unique faculty position that combines community engagement with full academic responsibilities. "Survival" in this position emerges from the integration of community engagement with the…

"Striving" is a concept that describes colleges and universities seeking to reposition themselves as more prestigious, often more research-focused institutions (O'Meara, 2007). The goal of this paper is to explore faculty members' views of a striving university context. My analysis revealed that faculty assigned both rewards…

Universities develop strategic planning documents, and as part of that planning process, logic models are developed for specific programs within the university. This article examines the long-standing pecan program at New Mexico State University and the deficiencies and successes in the evolution of its logic model. The university's agricultural…

This dissertation research project aimed to identify benefits and drawbacks of public land-grant university involvement with tourism planning and development, an emergent form of university-community engagement. Using qualitative methodology, the study's findings led to the codification of levels of university tourism planning and development…

Early learning has increasingly been the focus of social policy and programmes with a proliferation of public, community and commercial entities entering the field of production. Understanding this phenomenon requires educational researchers to conceptualise early learning both within a globalised network of circulating commodities and within…

Volunteering with our local community organizations (many of them charitable) is clearly set to become more of a feature of our lives as staff and students working in higher education. This activity is seen as potentially valuable in enhancing the student experience, particularly through a strengthening of students' employability prospects. This…

As a teacher, educator, and strong advocate for service learning, I became very interested in both the opportunities and the limitations of current approaches to service learning. This article begins to sketch an as yet unrealized relational approach to service learning, drawing on ideas about encounters with Others in the work of the philosopher…

The global war on terror has placed a number of stressful demands on service members and their families. Although the military offers a wide range of services and supports to military families, not all families are willing or able to use them. For example, geographically dispersed families can find it challenging to connect with military support…

This dissertation examined the annual Women's Week events hosted by Ball State's Women's and Gender Studies Program. It served to paint a historical picture of how the local Muncie community has been linked with the academic community at Ball State through events about women's issues. The program began when a group of people wanting to broaden the…

This article profiles the University of Nevada, Reno, a place of unexpected beauty and history, with an impressive breadth of academic programs and the state's largest research portfolio. Founded in 1874 as the state's land-grant institution, the university is now ranked in the top tier of "best national universities" by "U.S. News…

The dread of summer learning loss that students experience make the approaching months of summer bittersweet. Although teachers may not be able to guarantee that students retain the specifics of their science lessons, they can begin taking steps now that can help science inquiry remain at the forefront of their minds during the break. A year-long…

Objectives: To test an original scale assessing perceived barriers among school administrators to allowing community use of school recreational facilities outside of regular school hours. Methods: Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Results: Using EFA and CFA, we found that a model including factors of…

Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) incorporate a combination of tools, methods, and procedures to evaluate the potential health effects of a proposed program, project, or policy. The university public health department, in collaboration with the county health department, and the local planning organization, developed a curriculum for a…

In this article, the author talks about a rain garden project at Hampton Elementary School in Bay City, Michigan. The goal of the project was to slow and filter silt-laden runoff (from parking lots, sidewalks, and playground) on its path to Saginaw Bay in Lake Huron. In addition, doing so, the rain gardens would demonstrate to the township, city,…