This article points composition scholars toward two bodies of theory that are gaining attention in our discipline, performance studies and multimodal discourse theory. Each raises important questions about the ways we teach writing, the kinds of composition processes we value, and the means by which students construct authority in the university.…

We find that faculty consider their self-interests, those of their students, and the value to their institution when deciding whether to adopt online education. Our sample of business school faculty at a public urban university suggests that faculty who perceive online education as contributing to a desirable image for the business school, and…

This article argues that teaching as a situated, civic activity must be a core intellectual activity in the engaged metropolitan university. Situated writing provides the key pedagogy for the Chicago Civic Leadership Certificate Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, an engaged public research university. The role of writing, or…

An engaged metropolitan university can play a critical role in transforming its region by using its resources for the solution of problems and the improvement of the citizens' lives and livelihoods. California State University, Fresno has impacted its region through university-led collaborations and partnerships such as the Fresno Regional Jobs…

Our urban-located land grant institution has long been committed to engaged research, teaching, and service. This paper describes efforts to articulate and implement a strategic urban land grant vision that places urban/metropolitan engagement at the center of our institution's "urban age" future. We describe intentional and broad-based efforts in…

This article addresses the issue of basic writing, demonstrating how one university's basic writing program acts as a steward of writing. The assumption that basic writers only consume resources rather than contribute to academic excellence is rejected. What links the author responses to this issue is a publication of student writing entitled…

The University of Texas at El Paso offers over seventy learning communities to first-year students from extremely diverse socioeconomic and educational backgrounds. Ninety percent are Hispanic, 54 percent are first-generation college students, and 59 percent must participate in developmental classes before moving forward with college-level…

A long-running university-school partnership is the foundation on which LEAP UP, the Literacy Enrichment and Active Participation University Partnership, is built. Services learners from a variety of The University of Akron programs provide one-on-one support for struggling readers at Leggett Elementary School. Key to the program's success is high…

Online education has become a staple of higher education institutions. In the latest survey conducted by the Sloan Foundation, it was found that over two-thirds of higher education institutions were offering a variety of online courses and programs. According to Allen and Seaman (2008), over 20% of all students took at least one online course in…

This study used a mixed-methods approach to evaluate a hybrid teaching format that incorporated an online tutoring system, ALEKS, to address students' learning needs in a graduate-level introductory statistics course. Student performance in the hybrid course with ALEKS was found to be no different from that in a course taught in a traditional…

Today's higher education students are more technologically savvy than past generations. For metropolitan universities this phenomenon is particularly important as they attempt to provide an engaging and rigorous environment for these digital natives, who view their world somewhat differently than other generational cohorts. Because of contemporary…

Technology can support the interface between urban and metropolitan universities and the cities and regions of which they are a part. Through partnerships and the Web as a medium for communication and collaboration, technology can support community dialog around institutional goals. Through identifying opportunities and facilitating reflection in…

Civic competence is critical to the successful functioning of pluralistic democracies. Developing the knowledge, skills, and motivations for effective democratic participation is a national and global imperative that many higher education institutions have embraced through the teaching strategies of community-based learning and service-learning.…

Since the fall of 2006 a number of Towson University students concentrating in the discipline of anthropology have been part of a civic engagement and service-learning project focusing on an historic African-American community in Baltimore. While the focus of the research project concentrates on the processes of gentrification, individual student…

Recent reforms in the Carnegie Foundation classification system and regional accreditation standards have fueled momentum for community engagement in higher education. This study employs a knowledge-flow conceptual framework to identify barriers and facilitators that influence the adoption of an engagement agenda at land-grant and urban research…