How has a small midwestern rural community college contributed to the growth of the nation's largest direct marketer whose annual earnings exceed $1.5 billion? Discover how Western Nebraska Community College has developed a Corporate Academy and a Corporate Associate of Occupational Studies degree customized to meet the unique needs of employees…

This chapter reviews the literature on the status of distance education in rural community colleges, and addresses issues rural community colleges face in implementing distance education. (Contains 1 table.)

The purpose of this study was to field-test several conferencing technologies in regional schools in Victoria to determine whether the technologies are appropriate for the needs of the university supervisor, trainee teachers and supervising teachers with regard to practicum placements. The study also explored the potential of technology for other…

The 2007 Legislature enacted the Achieve Scholarship program, which provides a $1,200 scholarship to high school graduates who took rigorous courses in high school and met certain income and other eligibility criteria. In deliberations about this new program, concerns were expressed that certain rigorous courses like Advanced Placement,…

Australia and Canada are large countries with small populations relative to their size, in which a not inconsiderable number of citizens live beyond major centres of population. In both resource-based economies, the provision of quality education in rural schools is an important part of the national social and economic infrastructure. This article…

Rural community colleges often face the problem of having to cancel classes due to low enrollment. To eliminate this problem one western community college developed several presentation modes for College Reading I (CR1) to combine low-enrollment classes. This study was a program evaluation on non-equivalent groups to determine which presentation…

This paper presents the annual report of the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) for 2010. Four years ago, NMSI was just an idea. NMSI not only hit the ground running in 2007, it picked up the best ideas in the country and rolled them out in schools and universities from coast to coast. Within a year of its creation, NMSI had awarded…

The Central Region states have greater percentages of rural students and schools than the U.S. average. This report describes how nine teacher preparation programs in the region prepare their graduates for teaching positions in rural settings. The study found that, of 120 institutions in the Central Region that offer teacher preparation, only 17…

In this empirical study, teacher reported knowledge, use, preparation, and importance of higher-level thinking summative assessment questions were analyzed. This study was conducted using a survey distributed to seven Minnesota high schools that represented urban, suburban, and rural settings. Survey responses were cross tabulated with demographic…

Indigenous students in rural Alaska hold high educational aspirations and yet few students realize their educational goals (Hamilton & Seyfrit, 1993; Kleinfeld & McDiarmid, 1986; McDiarmid & Kleinfeld, 1981). Our purpose in this study was to understand why so many Alaska Native students from small, isolated communities…

This study looks at how teachers are prepared for rural contexts in China with a focus on the representation of the countryside in teacher preparation. Drawing upon the concept of the rural as social representations of space, an ecological approach to learning to teach, and the notion of curriculum as value-laden and political in terms of both…

The growth in technology and the global nature of business and work have created new challenges for higher education. Administrators from institutions around the country desire more international study by their faculty and students as well as more visitors and residents to the campus from countries abroad. Are college students prepared for the…

The Indiana State University Professional Development Schools (ISU PDS) Partnership sprang from the convergence of two strong needs: (1) the need for real life practice in the way of extended clinical experiences for teacher education students in schools of practice; and (2) the need on the part of the schools in the community to have access to…

In this essay, the author discusses her journey from her first year of the PhD program at USC, and the work she is doing now for a company that builds infrastructure in Afghanistan. She explores the ways in which studies for her 1985 PhD in Rhetoric, Linguistics and Literature did and did not prepare her for the work she does now. Her memoir…

The concepts of professional learning communities and organizational disciplines support staff development and leadership that lead to sustainable systems. Little research has examined the ability of rural schools to achieve sustainable systems. This quantitative design study considered the relationships between predictor variables of…