During the early Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union used adult literacy education to wield influence in "Third World" countries. Frank C. Laubach, the "Apostle of Literacy," wrote prolifically about adult literacy and conducted and advised literacy campaigns in more than 100 countries, yet his work is understudied…

In 2005, a record breaking 26 named tropical storms including 13 hurricanes ravaged the Gulf Coast of the United States. In response to the devastation of hundreds of schools, the Laura Bush Foundation swiftly created The Gulf Coast School Library Recovery Initiative to help school libraries become fully functional and to offer the needed print…

Five-year-old Michael lived on a small island in Micronesia. He was wonderfully creative in laying out a house on the sand with the sticks he gathered from a mangrove swamp. Akanina, a mother in the village, lost both her infant son and her own mother within a short time due to a lack of available health care and affordable medication. In Rino's…

On January 3, 1909, Emily Hamilton and Louis Overstreet wrote to President Theodore Roosevelt begging his "leave to work under your Committee for the relief of the sufferers of Italy." The two were engaged and were willing to rush their marriage plans if the president needed them. Their letter was prompted by the powerful earthquake that…

Built on 1,500 acres of land reclaimed from the Yellow Sea off Incheon, about 35 miles from South Korea's capital, New Songdo City is billed as the largest private real-estate development in history. It is Korea's answer to Shanghai and Dubai. Estimates put the cost of the Songdo project, which is barely five years old, at up to $60-billion. The…

On Friday, March 11, 2011, one of the worst disasters in the world hit the country of Japan. A magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, forever changing the lives of the people and the state of the country. Not only were lives lost and homes destroyed, the tsunami that followed caused numerous nuclear accidents around the Fukushima…

For the past two years, a steady stream of visitors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has made the roughly 7,000-mile trek from Cambridge to Abu Dhabi to help build what aspires to be the first graduate-level research university devoted entirely to fostering renewable, clean, and sustainable sources of energy. Set to open this…

In this manuscript we examine an example of globalization--the international organization-aided reform of faculties of education in Egypt. We first sketch the historical context during which secondary and primary-level teacher education became a part of Egyptian higher education. Then we draw on extensive documentary analysis and our own roles as…

More than 10,000 schools in the United States have adopted the multi-tiered model of behavioral and academic supports known as school-wide positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS). Schools and districts adopting, implementing, and sustaining PBIS are charged with collecting and disseminating data generated by and related to students,…

Several definitions of service learning exist. For this initiative, the authors used Torres and Sinton's (2000) definition that students are learning about social issues and applying new knowledge to real problems in their communities. This project entailed a partnership of committed citizens of different groups (middle, secondary, and university…

Open educational resources (OER) are gaining ascendancy in education, particularly in higher education. Logic suggests that the potential benefits of OER are likely to be greatest in resource-poor contexts such as Africa. However, little is known about the feasibility and sustainability of their use in African institutions. In the Health OER…

A number of Iraqi-American academics, meeting this month for a conference on how to rebuild Iraq's battered higher-education system, said the Iraqi government's plan to send thousands of students abroad annually would lead to a "brain drain" of a new generation of the nation's top talent. Prime Minister Nuri al-Malaki has proposed…

One of the poorest and most densely populated countries in the world, Bangladesh has faced many challenges during its almost 40-year history as an independent nation. Yet the country has recently made substantial progress in improving young children's survival and protection. It now provides health care, nutrition, immunization, and education…

Educational exchanges and fellowships are not new; the best known, the Fulbright Program, is more than 60 years old. But the Community College Summit Initiative Program, as this fledgling effort is known, reflects a growing recognition among American government officials that the United States must do a better job in its public-diplomacy outreach…

Historically Black colleges or universities (HBCUs) have long struggled to compete with traditionally White institutions (TWIs) when it comes to breakthrough research. Of the 908 U.S. institutions that received National Science Foundation research funding in fiscal year 2005, only 72 were historically Black, and they took in $294.2 million in…