Section 1008.30 (formerly 240.117), Florida Statutes, requires the State Board of Education to develop and implement a common placement testing program to assess the basic computation and communication skills of students who intend to enter a degree program at any public community college or state university. Every year the State provides reports…

Invited as a paper from E-Learn 2009 This study compared two programmes developed as a learning tool for students to practise basic laboratory procedures. One was a Flash simulation programme, the other a Second Life virtual reality programme. A cohort of 93 bioscience students participated in the between trial. A control group was used to…

In this important resource, Dr. Fleming (a noted expert in the field of minority retention) draws on educational evaluations she has developed in the course of her distinguished career. This book analyzes the common factors and the role institutional characteristics play in minority student retention to show what really works in increasing…

Based on research conducted in a three-year, mixed-method, multi-site National Science Foundation, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Talent Expansion Program (STEP) Project, this book offers a comprehensive look into how engineering department culture and climate impacts the successful retention of female and under-represented…

This report highlights the ongoing discussions between the believers of "online learning" vs. the "not enough proven research" for K-8 cyber schooling. Discussing successful processes and operations in states around the country, the author focuses on Maryland and, in particular, Baltimore schools, and reports that very little…

When scholars write about their research in writing programs' archives, they often face the ethical question of whether to name the administrators who were involved in documents. The author identifies and provides examples of three basic orientations to this issue, which he calls overt-historical, covert-qualitative, and hybrid-institutional.…

Most recently, many higher education institutions have continued to struggle to answer the question of whether they should promote diversity as a central value of the university or protect themselves from legal challenge by avoiding the inclusion of diversity initiatives. In this article, the authors first provide several examples documenting how…

Since 2004, the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) has tracked the postsecondary experiences of successive cohorts of graduating Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students and examined the relationship among high school preparation, support, college choice, and postsecondary outcomes. The goal of this research is to help CPS understand the…

The purpose of this chapter is to continue and potentially expand the conversation about how a diversity-affirming ethical orientation and an understanding of critical epistemology might guide institutional decision making in community colleges in the direction of social justice. The chapter begins with a conceptual overview of the terms…

Colleges often seek to promote a psychological sense of community (PSOC) among their students. However, there is limited research on factors promoting PSOC, and little empirical evidence on whether students of different ethnic backgrounds might experience PSOC differently. This study, which took place on a predominantly White campus, explored…

Every major city in every state in the country has a public community college, as do U.S. territories such as Guam and Puerto Rico. President Bush, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and civic and business leaders of all stripes are increasingly talking up community colleges as critical to training U.S. workers for ever-changing job needs in…

From the first planning meeting in December 1997, to the first grant awards made in 2001, the educational programs and training activities of the Educational Partnership Program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have inspired and challenged many people to employ new and better ways to train and develop next generation…

This review of the literature investigates the various factors identified by researchers to explain women's underrepresentation in the engineering field. Because a great deal of research has been published through the years, a compilation summary of existing research was necessary. This literature review utilized searches from thousands of…

The State of New Jersey continues to grow as a home for thousands of immigrants from around the world. The number of foreign-born persons increased 25 percent in New Jersey from 967,000 in 1990 to 1,208,000 in 2000. According to data from the 2006 American Community Survey (ACS) of the U.S. Census Bureau, only two states, New York and California,…

All tenured and tenure-track faculty know the trinity of promotion and tenure criteria: research, teaching, and service. While teaching and research are relatively well-defined areas of institutional focus and evaluation, service work is rarely tabulated or analyzed as a key aspect of higher education's political economy. Instead, service, silent…