Steeped in a rich history of formal connections between institutions of higher education and the citizens and communities in which they are embedded, the importance of engaging education in the community has long been recognized for its myriad of benefits to all involved including increased funding for university research, more informed practice…

Technology & engineering teacher preparation programs at colleges and universities in the United States have been in a state of decline since the 1970's. In the fall of 2013 a study was conducted to compare the required curricula of the 24 undergraduate programs that maintain enrollment of 20 students or more in order to determine what a…

Founded in 1964 and housed within the University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Education, the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) is one of the nation's oldest and most highly regarded education research and development centers. While there is notable diversity in the focus areas and methodological approaches of WCER scholars whose…

One of the most taxing duties of a writing program administrator (WPA), and one that is likely to cause the most burnout, is initiating curricular reform, an initiative often met with pushback and resistance. Within the literature on curriculum reform in first-year composition, this resistance seems to arise from a complex web of issues related to…

The emergence of modularized curriculum in community college career and technical education (CTE) programs has received substantial attention over the last decade, with researchers suggesting that this type of curriculum redesign may assist with student retention and success. The purpose of this study was to describe advisory committee member…

Because of their commitment to the voluntary measurement and improvement of student learning outcomes, colleges and universities that are members of the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) have been at the forefront of the national shift from teacher-centered to student-centered learning. The institutions participating in the CIC Degree…

Alienation between the U.S. military and society has grown in recent decades. Such alienation is unhealthy, as it threatens both sufficient civilian control of the military and the long-standing ideal of the "citizen soldier." Nowhere is this issue more predominant than at many major universities, which began turning their backs on the…

Mark Van Doren, the noted literary scholar, once remarked, "The college is meaningless without a curriculum, but it is more so when it has one that is meaningless." Many current critics of undergraduate curricula in America assent to the crucial need for programmatic renewal in our colleges and universities. They bemoan the cookie-cutter…

Annually, ACT provides each state with "The Condition of College & Career Readiness," a report that details the college readiness of students who took the ACT[R] test. This report is a companion to "The Condition of College & Career Readiness." This paper traces the college enrollment, retention, re-enrollment, and…

Alverno College is a private, liberal arts college located in a residential neighborhood on the southwest side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In fall 2008, the student body numbered 2,783, and there were 231 resident students. The student body is highly diverse (34% minority), and most students commute to campus for their classes. The culture at Alverno…

Colleges and universities across the country are encouraging the integration of service-learning and community-based research into the curriculum, often by establishing centers to assist in that process. The goal of this paper is to outline a set of tasks for campus-wide institutional support of service-learning that are necessary and that can…