This article describes how to design program assessment for mathematics departments, in two-year and four-year colleges across the Midwest, based on a set of components that was generated from a Delphi survey. An example is provided to illustrate how this was done at a small four-year college. There is an alignment between these components and a…

There has been much recent interest in the extent to which the teaching in higher education delivered by non-academic staff has increased in the recent past. Within the Biosciences there has always been a tradition of engaging postgraduate students to support the delivery of some forms of teaching. In this paper we report on the findings of a…

This paper examines the use and role of the term "hypothesis" in science teacher education as described by teacher students. Data were collected through focus group interviews conducted at seven occasions with 32 students from six well-known Swedish universities. The theoretical framework is a sociocultural and pragmatist perspective on…

The goal of this research was to understand the various aspects of the action research initiative in the Department of Mathematics and Science, Singapore Polytechnic. A total of 55 lecturers took part in this study and data were collected through semi-structured questionnaires, informal conversations with the lecturers, observations of their…

The Statistical Research Center of the American Institute of Physics conducts an annual census from October through February of all 75 departments that offer degrees in astronomy in the United States. For the class of 2007, the authors received responses from 73 (97%) of these departments. Estimates were derived and included in the totals for…

The study of the identity processes of women of color in science-based fields helps us (a) find ways to support similar women, and (b) study the dynamics of inequity, within and beyond science. Participants in this study (a Black woman, a Latina, and an American Indian woman) survived inadequate high schools and discouraging college science…

According to industry representatives, computer science education needs to emphasize the processes involved in solving computing problems rather than their solutions. Most of the current assessment tools used by universities and computer science departments analyze student answers to problems rather than investigating the processes involved in…

Significant involvement of students in the development and implementation of college alcohol prevention strategies is largely untested, despite recommendations by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and others. Objective: The purpose of the Pragmatics Project was to test a student engagement model for developing and implementing…

This study explores the representation of women in computer science at the tertiary level through data collected about undergraduate computer science education at Kabul University in Afghanistan. Previous studies have theorized reasons for underrepresentation of women in computer science, and while many of these reasons are indeed present in…

The Texas Electronic Coalition for Physics was established in 2000 as a means of demonstrating that by linking together, small programs can maintain their vitality in higher education. Using Interactive Television, the Internet, telephones, faxes, and other electronic media, five physics programs scattered across the state of Texas formed a…

This paper explores the performance efficiency of natural and technical science departments at Austrian universities using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). We present DEA as an alternative tool for benchmarking and ranking the assignment of decision-making units (organisations and organisational units). The method applies a multiple input and…

The aim of the work presented here was to devise an activity associated with factors affecting boiling points. The intervention used a four-step constructivist-based teaching strategy, which was subsequently evaluated by a cohort of students. Data collection consisted of application of a purpose designed questionnaire consisting of four open-ended…

This article employs the concept of community to interpret teacher professional learning in the context of the school science department. Using the transcripts of staff meetings, lesson observations and the conversations of school administrators, the departmental community is examined in terms of three metaphors: subject, relationships and…

In surveys, research university faculty often report that they value teaching more than their departments do. This incongruence holds implications for job satisfaction, stress, time spent on teaching, organizational continuity, and even student evaluations. Using an interactionist view of organizations, Mary C. Wright examines the reasons for this…

The Statistical Research Center of the American Institute of Physics has been collecting Enrollment and Degree data for over four decades. This departmental census goes out in the fall of each year to all physics and astronomy departments in the US and Puerto Rico. This report is based on data collected in the fall of 2005 from the 764 departments…