The Pell Grant is the foundational need-based student aid program in the United States, providing students of lower socio-economic status a pathway to afford college costs and educational expenses. Currently, over one-third of all U.S. undergraduate students receive Pell. This paper examines federal Pell assistance and institutional costs for…

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,…

More than one-half of all institutions of higher education are located within or just outside urban areas. These colleges and university can offer rich resources to provide stability to a city and to improve the quality of life and learning in their communities and schools. The authors describe the university-assisted community schools model that…

Urban colleges and universities not only have a responsibility to engage in activities designed to improve the educational attainment of local urban youth, but also have extensive financial, human, intellectual, and organizational resources that may be directed productively toward this purpose. This article describes the multipronged approach that…

Organizations created formal mentoring programs to replicate the benefits of informal mentoring. With regard to measuring mentoring functions, organizations are using informal measures to measure formal mentoring programs. As a result, empirical measurements of the effectiveness of university formal mentoring programs are limited. Researchers…

This article is a study of the policies that govern the use of the university library by external users at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and 12 peer institutions used by IUPUI for comparative purposes. A search of each institution's Web site was conducted as well as interviews with circulation librarians and managers.…

This dissertation uses a mixed-methods design to examine persistence into the second year by students' parental education level. The institution selected for this dissertation is Temple University, a large, urban, public university in the Northeast. Using Tinto's (1993) model of student departure as a conceptual framework, the quantitative…

Is there anything that screams "College!" more than the local pizza joint? As a high school college counselor, the author has been on too many campus tours and sat in on too many information sessions to keep count. Honestly, they all tend to morph together. All good colleges have passionate, engaged students immersed in learning,…

The University Green program of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) is an urban forestry partnership between four universities and their surrounding communities. The program offers excellent strategies for fostering improved college-community relations and stewardship by students and residents alike. University Green aims to improve the…

In this keynote address presentation, Ray Suarez, senior correspondent for public television's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," makes a compelling case for saving America's urban neighborhoods from decline. Suarez discusses the role that higher education must play in this effort. [Keynote Address presented at the Outreach Scholarship 2003…

Explores the success of specially admitted--below traditional standards--graduate students at a major university; using faculty perceptions of student performance and ability as the criteria, the specially admitted students were perceived not to differ from their traditionally admitted cohorts. (Author/JM)

USING DREXEL INSTITUTE OF PHILADELPHIA AS A CASE STUDY, EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES LABORATORIES INVESTIGATED SIX AREAS OF INQUIRY FACING AN URBAN UNIVERSITY CONTEMPLATING EXPANSION--(1) THE ECONOMICS OF THE HIGH-RISE BUILDING, (2) THE ECONOMICS OF CONSTRUCTING LOW BUILDING UNITS WHICH CAN BE VERTICALLY EXPANDED AT A LATER DATE, (3) THE CONVERSION OF…

The Temple University Neighborhood Extension Program (TUNE) got its start during a series of discussions among representatives of Temple University, the Model Cities Program, and the neighborhoods surrounding the university's North Philadelphia campus. The most complex problem identified during these meetings was the cycle of poverty in which many…

Presentations at a seminar on systemwide tracking that grew out of efforts to promote implementation of South Carolina's desegregation plan are included. Two subjects were the focus: retention and the use of monitored developmental programs as a means of retention and of safeguarding quality. Essays include "Systemwide Student Tracking"…