Undergraduate teacher candidates participated in a faculty-led, short-term study abroad to Reggio Emilia in Italy to further their knowledge about the educational philosophy used within the school setting and for the purpose of examining how philosophy might be applied in school settings in the United States. The faculty-led, short-term study…

Funding for community colleges varies significantly, even within the same state. Several factors account for these differences, including more generous funding for smaller institutions to compensate for their higher costs per student, unequal local funding from property tax revenues, and political forces. In theory, this variation could lead to…

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…

Preparing to become a music teacher educator is a complex process and one component of this process should be learning to model, demonstrate, and teach assessment practices to preservice music educators. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to discover how, and to what extent, music teacher educators (MTEs) are educated about…

Immersion learning is one form of experiential education and has great utility in social work education. However, there is limited research on student learning outcomes from immersion learning courses in social work education. This ethnographic research describes an immersion learning course offered to BSW students (N = 9) and the learning…

Covering traumatic story assignments is often central to a journalist's job. Violent crimes, natural disasters, and tragic personal struggles--these are newsworthy events. Studies have associated trauma coverage with higher rates of posttraumatic stress disorder, burnout, and other traumatic stress symptoms in reporters. This study uses a survey…

Introductory chemistry courses are required as part of the undergraduate preparation necessary for entry into an array of professional programs. Given the varied priorities of the student population in these courses, it can be difficult to present the material such that students see their individual future academic priorities represented in each…

The author has taught an inquiry-based liberal arts mathematics class using the text "The Heart of Mathematics: An Invitation to Effective Thinking" by Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird a total of 20 times since Spring 2001. The students in this class have almost all been in non-technical majors and many started the semester with…

International studies programs are increasingly popular at colleges and universities across the United States, and most prior research and efforts have been has focused on the international studies major. However, institutions may often find it much easier to create a minor rather than a major program given scarce resources and a preexisting…

The purpose of this study was to examine the factors associated with enrolling, continuing, and completing alternative certification programs in music education. Data were collected via surveys and semi-structured interviews of music teacher candidates from 43 program completers from seven alternative certification programs in three states. In…

Embedded librarianship in distance learning courses taught within virtual environments such as Second Life is an emerging, leading-edge practice. This paper describes the experiences of librarians embedded in undergraduate English composition courses taught entirely in Second Life and presents the results of an empirical research study to assess…

Increased opportunities for undergraduate students in agricultural and natural resource disciplines to write for diverse audiences besides their instructor may increase motivation to write and improve student writing skills. The objectives of this teaching research were to determine and compare the initial writing experience of students enrolled…

Information is presented on nonclassroom-based learning in Missouri higher education during the 1977-78 academic year. Only six institutions in the state reported using television, radio, newspaper, or correspondence study as a means of making college-level credit courses available to students. Correspondence study is a much more frequently used…

This monograph reports on a survey of middle level teacher preparation, based on the 1992 "Windows of Opportunity" study and on a modified Delphi process which identified a pool comprised of members of the Center for Early Adolescence and others. These educators were asked to rate the 33 recommendations from the "Windows of…

This study found that Missouri special education teachers (n=198) felt that their undergraduate courses inadequately prepared them for working with children from families without two biological parents in the same household, though this training was felt to be important. The majority of subjects had received in-service training related to divorce,…