This paper highlights how inter-institutional faculty relationships can strengthen student transfer between two-year and four-year programs. This article stresses the value of such efforts and some of the opportunities, benefits, and challenges of getting started. This type of relationship is important to ensure that courses will transfer…

Understanding how farmers prefer to learn is critical for the development and delivery of successful extension programming. Therefore, Michigan State University Extension specialists conducted an interactive hands-on demonstration workshop (Potato University) addressing pressing issues to Michigan potato production at the Michigan Winter Potato…

Some crises arrive in higher education with no proximal warning, while others might be seen coming from more of a distance. The COVID pandemic fits the latter category, of a crisis that was seen coming but which arrived with velocity and ferocity never seen on such a universal, global scale. A theme that cuts across crises is the uncountable cost…

Entities that seek to provide quality community-based health education need sustainable funding to maintain their efforts. With dwindling funding sources, it has become important to have diverse financial support for program stability. A promising new practice for expanding funding involves partnering with third-party payers. Michigan State…

This historical study chronicles the creation, development, and termination of the Midwestern Conference on School Vocal and Instrumental Music, hosted by the University of Michigan between 1946 and 2005. Beginning as a band music reading session led by William Revelli in 1936, the conference developed into a premier professional workshop by the…

The purpose of this article is to show how scholars and practitioners can come together to address opportunity gaps for Black students at Michigan State University. The authors detail identity-conscious student success strategies within Reason and Kimball's model of theory to practice used by a group of Black faculty and staff. Among the specific…

Many scholars recommend preparing faculty for educator roles. Faculty Learning Communities, The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), and teaching centers represent common preparatory approaches. But faculty and teaching assistants report time, disciplinary disconnects, and lack of incentives as ongoing barriers. Inspired by K-12's…

Organizational transformation takes time, energy, and patience. An active administrative unit, The Hub for Innovation in Learning and Technology (called simply, the Hub) engaged intentional change from its inception. The Hub aspires to help Michigan State University (MSU) "reinvent itself as a learning institution" by transforming…

Library public services staff have primarily focused on providing services through interactions with their users. Although service quality and customer satisfaction are important in the delivery of these services, the emphasis and nature of the work have often been influenced by a library-centric philosophy rather than a user-centric philosophy.…

This article discusses the history, purpose, and services that make up the Grand Valley State University Knowledge Market. The Knowledge Market is made up of faculty and staff directors leading four unique groups of specialized student-consultants who collaborate with their peers. While each service has a unique specialty, The Knowledge Market…

With many potential community partners and a diverse student population, the metropolitan university has many opportunities to operationalize transformative learning, which involves a dramatic shift in one's assumptions that has a lasting change on their perspectives. The challenge of identifying transformative learning initiatives and making…

With more than a thousand honors programs or colleges in the United States and that number growing every year, defining the value of honors is a significant undertaking. Honors seems to have become an obligatory upgrade that no college or university president can afford to be without, but there is more than institutional trending to be considered,…

In December 2010, the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) staff surveyed public universities in other states to learn how they have dealt with cuts in state funding. All of the institutions CPEC surveyed have increased tuition and or fees at least once in the last two fiscal years, and many project additional increases. All have…

Migrant English as a Second Language (ESL) has been an important form of rural adult education in the United States for decades. This chapter provides a national and historical overview of rural and migrant ESL. The educational needs of the growing population of seasonal, migrant agricultural workers are discussed and situated in relation to the…

Concern about the quality of public colleges and universities and the effectiveness of mechanisms for governing and financing them have led states to launch reviews of their higher education systems. The experiences of four states (Arkansas, Kentucky, Michigan, and Minnesota) are described. (MLW)