Why are many urban universities' relationships with their surrounding communities fraught despite university efforts at community engagement? Relationships between the factors underlying university-driven neighborhood change remain largely unexplored. In this article, I take the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) as a case study and examine the…

District leaders seeking to close schools often frame decisions as "right-sizing" or "modernizing the footprint" of the district. Historical influences such as population and economic shifts and desegregation during the civil rights era, and more recent factors like deteriorating building conditions, school performance…

This study explores the common barriers and shared visions for creating access to archival collections held by libraries at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). One of few reports that document the needs of HBCU libraries as they relate to archives and special collections. It is based on a series of online focus groups that author…

Since Lehigh University was founded in 1865, it has been inextricably tied to the City of Bethlehem in eastern Pennsylvania. Rich in history and steeped in cultural tradition, the area continues to be an outstanding home for the university. In the aftermath of the fall of Bethlehem Steel, Lehigh and community partners are working together to forge…

In this reflective essay, we describe Widener University's 10-year transformation from a disengaged institution to an institution that has a metropolitan-focused mission vested in civic leadership, community engagement, and service-learning. We describe our journey to embed an expansive civic frame that includes concrete practices of pedagogy,…

Network building vitally impacts career development, but in few professions does it impact daily practice more than in teaching. Teacher networks, known as professional learning communities, communities of practice, peer learning circles, virtual professional communities, as well as other names, play a unique and powerful role in education. In…

This article analyzes a public memory pedagogical partnership that disturbed the public memory of a community organization as an egalitarian space. How students, community partners, and I negotiated privately and represented publicly this legacy of the United States' worst shame required us--and me--to figure out what partnership and collaboration…

Democratic partnerships of universities, schools, and an array of neighborhood and community organizations are the most promising means of improving the lives of our nation's young people. Over the past two decades, many colleges and universities have been experiencing a renaissance in engagement activities. Universities, once ivory towers, have…

The founding of the Australian system of higher education closely parallels the creation of public postsecondary education in the United States during the nineteenth century. Their subsequent histories reflect a growing recognition of postsecondary education's capacity to shape the economic prospects not only of individuals, but of entire nations.…

Noting that a historical example of local control is valuable in assessing the results of greater community involvement in school affairs, this article focuses on the development of the decentralized Pittsburgh school system, which in the early 1900's was composed of 38 sub-district boards, each possessing authority to levy taxes and to appoint…

Americanization is in the end a task for the individual citizen and not for the Government. The individual can be successful in so human a problem only by having a sympathetic knowledge of this task and of those with whom he must deal. To supply at least the foundations of this knowledge is the purpose of this book. The contents are taken largely…

Examines old schools and new, inside and outside, in the historic city center and its developing suburban rings, for the "respectable classes" and the "struggling masses," as a municipal investment and as a design problem, in order to understand the material culture of vital urban places, not as facade, but as environment.…

Reviews the history of Pennsylvania's higher education system since 1755. States that the Community College Act of 1963 imposed a funding system that has proved both inadequate and difficult to change and has discouraged the formation of new colleges. Discusses the current state of community college sponsorship, enrollment, funding, and outcomes,…

In searching for a process to help program teams of campus-based faculty and field-based educators develop five-year and annual statewide program plans, cooperative extension administrators and specialists in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences discovered that the use of the logic model process can influence the successful design of…

The rural school project of the continental United States consists in educating over 18 million young people between the ages of 5 and 20 who live in small towns and villages, or in the open country. The 300,000 or more schools classified as rural enrolled nearly 12.5 million pupils in 1920, employed 425,00 teachers, supervisors, and principals,…