This article draws on historical and philosophical lenses and interviews with students to question some fundamental tenets underlying the practice of freshman learning communities (FLCs): that they develop community and improve students' learning experiences. The article brings to the discourse of FLCs some critical questions regarding their value…

The college environment appears to encourage heavy drinking. Consequently, correlates of student drinking were assessed at college entrance. First-semester freshmen (N = 520, 54 percent women) completed self-report measures of social affiliation and self/peer drinking for high school and college. Analyses indicated that: 1) increased drinking at…

In the United Kingdom over the past few years there has been a dramatic growth of national and regional repositories to collect and disseminate resources related to teaching and learning. Most notable of these are the Joint Information Systems Committee's Online Repository for [Learning and Teaching] Materials as well as the Higher Education…

This article is a response to S. Elizabeth Bird and Jonathan P. Godwin's article "Film in the Undergraduate Anthropology Classroom: Applying Audience Response Research in Pedagogical Practice." The intention of my response is to expand the dialogue on film use to promote cultural understanding in university classes and campus-wide. Through…

Fewer women than men are involved in the fields of computer science and in other computer-related technology areas. In the United States, fewer than twenty percent of graduates of those programs are female. Fisher & Margolis (2002) say that despite the rise of a women's movement, women have lost ground in the world of computing. This is not…

The key challenge to academic leadership is to restructure the allocation of academic assets, particularly the organization of the faculty, in ways that better serve emerging societal and scholarly needs.

In response to policy developments in higher education in the UK, the Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (ILTHE--now merged in the Higher Education Academy) was established in 1999 to provide a national framework for teaching and learning at tertiary level. This article considers the training environment of novice lecturers…

The authors examine the college conditions that contribute to character development, using data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). (Contains 4 tables and 5 figures.)

Through case study research critical leadership and management tasks are identified regarding the integration of educational technology in teaching at research universities. The institutions studied, regardless their different characteristics and approaches, face common difficulties in engaging "second-wave" faculty. Furthermore, the coordination…

This research investigated the extent to which potential barriers to educational attainment and campus adjustment prompted 138 nontraditional students (25-63 years of age) to use more academic and social services. In four models tested, the younger, the unemployed, and those stressed by increased tuition used more services. Most of the barriers…

The Task Force on Graduate Education in Physics (TFGE), an ad hoc committee convened jointly by the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and the American Physical Society (APS), has studied the current status of graduate education in physics Ph.D. programs, and has made recommendations based on what was found. The findings indicate that…

Prior to 1994, the presence of minority belief systems and values in education were largely ignored in South Africa. It could be expected that after ten years of democracy students' understanding of, for instance, the values of inclusivity and diversity in a multicultural society in general and tertiary education in particular should not be in…

The purpose of the study is to identify the effect of the research assessment exercise (RAE) on the balance between collegiality and managerialism in English universities. The article examines the institutional strategies for the 2001 RAE and its effect on organisational culture, identifying change in governance, management and leadership in…

In this article, the author describes how institutions of higher education have changed over the course of 40 years, and notes some changes in higher education. In 1966 the total U.S. population was 196,560,338; this fall it hit 300 million. In about the same time, the number of colleges and universities rose from 2,329 to well over 4,000,…

The author describes an undergraduate course she taught on "Representations of Slavery." In particular, she explains how the course involved studying an historic site on her university's campus: the former slave plantation of leading antebellum racist John C. Calhoun. She also analyzes how her school represents the site on its Web pages. (Contains…