The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), the International City Management Association (ICMA), and other national higher education and public-interest groups met in a series of national and regional meetings in a cooperative planning effort to improve academic public service. On a national level, it was agreed that…

A University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign program involving faculty and students in participatory action research to improve community-based organizations in East St. Louis (Illinois) is described. The project's origins, management, community development strategy, and accomplishments are documented, and some of the institutional, environmental,…

The Center for California Studies, a unit of California State University, Sacramento, focuses on governance issues and depends on state funds for administering four fellowship programs. It exists in a borderland between academe and state government, public policy think tanks and interdisciplinary studies, graduate education and career training.…

In an interview, Yolanda T. Moses, president of the City University of New York's City College, discusses a variety of issues concerning black higher education and her institution, including the challenges facing the college, the university's image, academic standards and admissions requirements, financial support, affirmative action, her personal…

Argues for college learning communities as vehicles for high school reform, and by extension, for reform of K-12 instruction. Such learning communities can model sound academic practices that all students should master in their last year of high school and first year of college. Programs at Temple University (Pennsylvania) and Portland State…

Urban and metropolitan college students often experience a traditionally organized curriculum as a series of disconnected course requirements. Portland State University (Oregon) has found that integrating attention to community-building as a central element of the core curriculum strengthened student and faculty affiliations and improved…

This report presents a description of University College, Memphis State University (MSU). Created in 1975, this small, nontraditional college has prospered in the context of a large, state, urban university. It offers nontraditional students a way to create and finish individualized and interdisciplinary degree programs. Faculty can develop new…

The papers in this volume emerge from the experience of Fordham University and the Angelo Patri Intermediate School through their mutual efforts to establish an open-space school in a highly complex, low-income neighborhood of inner-city New York. The papers prepare the reader to understand the process involved in developing programs under…

A partnership between a historically black urban college and a rural university provides urban-rural early field experience exchange for preservice teachers, offers joint educational seminars, prepares preservice teachers for the National Teacher Examination, provides technological training, recruits minorities for careers in teaching, and…

Public health methods can assist in reducing the rate of injuries through application of technology, policy, education, and incentives. Metropolitan universities have great opportunities as key institutions to assist in preventing injuries within their communities by using their research capabilities, student and volunteer workforces, and as…

Discusses processes used to develop faculty workload policy at 13 campuses of the University of Maryland, unique in that it incorporates a report providing clear evidence of faculty productivity and increases in teaching productivity following implementation of the policy. A case study shows both the policy and the workload reporting method…

Temple University (Pennsylvania), an urban institution, is seeking to raise academic standards and is aggressively recruiting suburban students, finding that local high schools are not of high quality. Some critics feel the institution is abandoning the black population and is recruiting white students who are more likely to be better prepared…

In this article the author discusses the communicative encounters--oral and written--between members of two discourse communities--human resources (HR) and faculty--housed within an urban university in the Northeast. The author focuses on one individual's attempts to articulate and impose a component of her community's implicit rules for behavior…

This speech describes Chicago State University's (CSU) model for encouraging student retention and success and the organizational changes that were necessary to implement the model during a period of fiscal constraints. A description of the institution and its context notes that CSU is a comprehensive, urban, commuter university serving a…

Factors that affect the attainment of a bachelor's degree by urban students are outlined. The demographic profile of American school children makes it clear that problems for urban colleges and universities will grow in the years ahead. There is a correlation between income and education achievement; low income students do not achieve, persist, or…