State early childhood administrators are planning to strategically invest the federal appropriations in the American Rescue Plan Act (ARP) to address disruptions in children's care and learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. State leaders must consider how this one-time funding can be used effectively while understanding the context around…

As service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) have become increasingly legitimized in higher education as scholarly pedagogical practice, resources to support faculty in learning about and undertaking this engaged work have grown. As Zlotkowski (2015) points out in his framing essay for the SLCE Future Directions Project (FDP), the movement…

The 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) initiative is the only federal funding source dedicated exclusively to supporting local afterschool, before-school, and summer learning programs. Over the years, the program has evolved to become a local afterschool model -- serving students attending high-poverty, low-performing schools in…

Lessons in community building and cultural understanding are important aspects of a 21st-century education. Through such lessons, students gain the keys to societal understanding as they gain knowledge about their cultural and historical contexts, and use that understanding as a setting for exploration of deeper values, emotional experiences, and…

The Computer Information and Technology Department (CIT) program of Purdue University is offered at our regional campus in Columbus, Indiana. Like many programs throughout the country, we face issues in recruiting new students. Over the last seven to eight years, we have faced declining enrollment, even as our main campus at West Lafayette saw…

Since 2012, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation has supported educational enrichment in rural areas by awarding over $3.3 million in grants to six outstanding organizations operating in Iowa, Indiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. In this report, the authors combine the experiences of these organizations with findings from the…

For the past two years, the Foundations in Physics and Mathematics (FPM) summer program has been held at Indiana University in order to fulfill two goals: provide additional physics and mathematics instruction at the high school level, and provide physics graduate students with experience and autonomy in designing curricula and teaching courses.…

This article shares a reframing of lifelong learning beyond a formal career. Like many of his peers, after 40 years in postsecondary education, the author has moved beyond his most recent full-time work teaching in an adult education graduate program to emeritus faculty status. In this article, he shares his experience moving into the next phase…

Many colleges offer a summer bridge program and even more offer learning communities for first-year students. Few, however, link these initiatives. This article will offer brief descriptions of IUPUI's successful bridge, learning community, and themed learning community (TLC) initiatives; examine the links between them; and share assessment data,…

Purdue University recently received $1.2M in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the development of educational programs for high school teachers, high school counselors, and high school students. The purpose of these intervention programs is to show that women (and men) can have interesting, useful, and society-impacting…

Three general goals guided the creation of this summer education project: to maintain academic basic skills over the summer months, to involve parents in the learning process, and to involve teachers in reading inservice training. The summer television programs available to all Indiana children are "Ride the Reading Rocket" for grade 2;…

Teachers can easily identify what subjects their students have trouble with, whether it is transcription and translation, glycolysis and fermentation, balancing chemical equations, or vector analysis of forces acting on an object. Yet, no matter how teachers try to make these complex issues more accessible to students, or how new editions of…

Vocational Trade-Industrial-Technical (VTIT) teachers in Indiana participated in self-planned summer workshops designed to enhance their human relations skills as well as their technical knowledge. Workshop objectives included identifying high priority needs and problems the teachers have in common and encouraging involvement from all levels of…

An intensive summer training course in Mandarin Chinese designed to help currently employed language teachers introduce exploratory Mandarin Chinese courses to their schools is described. Training current staff eliminated three common barriers to exploratory program introduction: needs for (1) additional teaching staff; (2) additional funds; and…

Describes Project INSITE (Institute for Science and Technology), a partnership of Indiana school districts, scientists, Purdue University, and other organizations that collaborate to improve K-12 science education using emerging technologies. INSITE includes a summer institute, internships/mentorships, master science teacher in residence, and…