The proportion of underrepresented minority (URM) students graduating with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) degrees, matriculating to graduate programs, and entering the STEM workforce continues to be significantly low. The Virginia-North Carolina Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (the VA-NC Alliance)…

The medical profession, as well as allied health careers, in the United States continues to experience a lack of diversity in terms of the number of African Americans practicing in these fields. This work highlights a postsecondary program developed to increase the population of Black physicians and health care workers throughout the nation: the…

The Juntos Program empowers Latina/o students and their families to gain the knowledge and resources necessary for academic success in high school and college. This is made possible via four interlinking components: Family Engagement; 4-H Clubs; Success Coaching and Mentoring; and a Juntos Summer Academy. Nineteen focus groups with participants in…

North Carolina's education model is based on an agrarian calendar when it comes to time spent in school and on an industrial, factory model for the process of how students are educated. Educational models structured around the agrarian calendar and industrial model served the state well during a time period in the state's history, but that time…

The College Writing/Elon Academy summer partnership at Elon University offers a program model for supporting underrepresented students' transition to college. While the modified section of a required first-year writing course has some limitations, the summer course supports students' development of more complex writing processes and provides…

First year students, like all students at a university, comprise a diverse mixture of personal traits, backgrounds, experiences, and assorted learning styles. Each of these unique student characteristics can either enhance or inhibit successful integration to the campus community. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of various…

The CollegeKeys Compact[TM] is a national call to action to school districts, colleges and universities, state education agencies, and nonprofit organizations to identify, share and expand programs and practices that address the needs and challenges of low-income students and help them get ready for, get into and get through college. The College…

This article describes a multifaceted program that improves the mathematics instruction in a school district's 10 lowest-performing schools. This program includes seven support components--including monetary incentives for teachers, professional development, education technology, and reduced class sizes. After three years, results show that the…

A summer health careers program in rural North Carolina educates and recruits high school students into health professions. Collaboration between an Area Health Education Center, a local hospital, and schools makes the program successful. A week of classroom presentations is followed by up to 6 weeks of job shadowing. Seventy percent of the 160…