Top industries impacting Ohio and East Central Indiana's economies are: (1) agriculture; (2) manufacturing; (3) IT; and (4) service. Without continuation of agriculture and manufacturing receipts, our people and communities will be unable to afford to critical services throughout our region (Aiman-Smith & Green, 2002, Deryn, 1989, Ditcher,…

The history of Adult Education (AE) graduate programs spans almost a century, yet many programs have experienced significant challenges in recent years to remain viable. The purpose of this paper is to understand the struggles AE graduate programs encounter in building, maintaining, and growing programs in North America. We conducted two separate…

The purpose of this study was to describe challenges identified by participants from three cohorts in a methods training workshop meant to strengthen evidence-based intervention knowledge and practice. Since passage of the "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA), educational leaders and decision-makers have been charged with ensuring that…

Increasing costs and decreasing numbers of university Extension faculty have made it difficult to provide quality turfgrass short course education. In response, faculty from nine institutions collaborated to develop the Great Lakes School of Turfgrass Science. This 12-week online course provides students with unique learning experiences through a…

Chess programming is an old and venerable branch of game development. In the modern computing environment, it encompasses the development of chess engines, chess user interfaces (UIs), chess tournament broadcast tools, chess databases, endgame tablebases (EGTBs) and opening books. In this paper, the author shares his multi-year experience of…

The Common Planning Time Project of the Middle Level Education Research Special Interest Group (MLER SIG) of the American Educational Research Association provided an avenue through which researchers from throughout the United States could investigate numerous aspects of common planning time in schools. Although several studies have investigated…

In the course of engaging with a Mathematics and Science Partnership (MSP) project, we planned a yearlong Leadership Academy that fit under the "train the trainers" model for professional development. Midway through, teacher leaders rejected a traditional conception of leadership based on expertise, individualism, and the transmission of…

In this paper, the author aims to share some of the efforts, successes, challenges and lessons learned over approximately two decades of professional development projects both large and small. In retrospect the author contends that efforts toward change, improvement and advancement were always bumping against culture. So, this address attempts to…

This paper describes how Appreciative Inquiry was used to design an organization's evaluation system that would contribute to the staff's capacity to engage in evaluation and to think evaluatively. By building on participants' peak evaluation experiences, their values and wishes with regard to evaluation, and what is commonly accepted as…

Richland County, Ohio has brought together what is generally considered to be the broadest-based private development corporation in the United States. In 1982 a group of bankers and corporate executives made a decision to make a countywide commitment to support one corporate construction exclusively to direct a program and strategy for economic…

A description is given of a staff development program designed to bridge the gap between regular teachers and teachers of gifted children. The program is based on the following concepts: (1) teachers must be provided with practical ideas that can be put into place immediately in the classroom; (2) teachers must feel ownership of their own…

The first section of this paper presents the results of Ohio's 1999-2000 Annual Education Technology Assessment. Topics addressed include: the assessment methodology, progress toward eight SchoolNet goals, and better state and local decisions; overall progress toward building the infrastructure and fostering the growth of new practices; and needed…

Three presentations are provided from Symposium 34, Career Development, of the Academy of Human Resource Development (HRD) 2000 Conference Proceedings. "Emerging Career Development Needs as Reported by Adult Students at Four Ohio Institutions of Higher Education: A Qualitative Study" (Kathryn S. Hoff) reports 4 major themes emerged from…

In an effort to compare five models used in delivering inservice instruction to administrators, a survey questionnaire was developed. The goals were to identify the principals' evaluations and perceptions of these models, to summarize the findings of the study, and to present the implications concerning the design of inservice education and the…

Fourteen economic development practitioners were asked to participate in a modified Delphi study that attempted to provide a level of agreement about future trends and issues that affect economic development at the county level in Ohio. Literature from several fields was reviewed to find potential trends and issues and, using a Likert-type scale,…