Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of student-community engagement in ensuring relevance of higher education to civil, social, economic and moral issues. It reviews the literature around three inter-related themes: calls for higher education institutions to engage with their communities; the kinds of attributes university…

This pilot feasibility study provided a preliminary test of a community-partnered intervention that targeted engaging parents and improving parent functioning. This intervention was combined with the Cognitive-Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS), allowing for a comparison of the CBITS-as-usual (CBITS) with the CBITS-plus-family…

The English Language Learner (ELL) Summer Camp in Worcester, Massachusetts--an intensive six-week program that served middle school and high school students from Worcester Public Schools (WPS)--was the product of a five-way partnership that included the school district, higher education institutions (Latino Education Institute [LEI] at Worcester…

Graduate teachers' preparedness for working in rural settings are mediated by the development of pedagogical expertise, professional engagement with parents and the community, and broader notions of preparation to teach in rural contexts. The Studying the Effectiveness of Teacher Education (SETE) project is a four-year longitudinal study tracking…

Information Resource Management - State University System of Florida (IRM-SUS) is the primary collector and provider of data concerning state universities that is used to make sound education policy decisions. The office provides technical assistance to those using the information, state and federal reporting support, those supplying information,…

Performing-arts centers can provide benefits at the high school and collegiate levels, and administrators can take steps now to get the show started. When a new performing-arts center comes to town, local businesses profit. Events and performances draw visitors to the community. Ideally, a performing-arts center will play many roles: entertainment…

Campuses that pursue the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification will in some form take full inventory of their engagement efforts in order to address the range of questions posed by the Carnegie Foundation. At an institution as large, diverse, and decentralized as North Carolina State University, this was no small undertaking. NC State's…

Nearly three years ago, in a span of just nine months, the North Harris Montgomery Community College District lost a bond referendum and its chancellor. Nine months later, the Houston-area district had a new leader, a new name, and a victorious bond issue. And this May--a year after the successful bond vote--the college bought an office complex…

The service learning movement has gained new energy with the election of President Obama, who has made increasing service a central plank of his higher-education agenda. But across the board, colleges and universities struggle with service learning's twin goals of providing meaningful help to the community and academic rigor to students. The…

In this article, artist, educator, and activist Luis-Genaro Garcia describes the development and impact of the "May Day service learning project" on his advanced painting class in a high school in South Los Angeles. The project emerged from students' interests: their ideas, concerns for their community, socio-political consciousness, and…

Based on a qualitative case study conducted within one Saskatchewan (Canada) rural community, the purpose of this article is to describe the challenges a school council faced when supporting a school improvement plan. The primary data for the study were 35 semi-structured individual interviews conducted with school council members, teachers, and…

Since 2002, community-based participatory research methods have been used by the Calvin College Nursing Department to map out a strategic health plan for three urban, low-income, underserved neighborhoods. Nine focus groups and 449 door-to-door health surveys were completed across the three urban neighborhoods between 2002 and 2004. Neighborhood…

The early years are a foundational time for the establishment of dispositions for learning. This paper draws on a recent study in Aotearoa (New Zealand) to illustrate ways educators have been implementing programs, within mainstream early childhood care and education settings, that inclusively offer Maori perspectives on caring for ourselves,…

It is the responsibility of every early childhood program director to support the development of staff, to ensure that teachers and caregivers have the skills and understanding they need to provide the highest quality of services to children. For Head Start directors, this same responsibility is intensified by federal mandates and a mission…

Western Michigan University is building an innovative program to make welcome those students who were raised in foster care and to help them earn their diplomas without having to shoplift or trespass over the holidays. Many of the students have comfortable apartments on the campus, and a hall was kept open over the holiday break for dorm residents…