Should your department offer a course on how to be a scientist and a successful graduate student? We offer this course at George Mason University as a mandatory part of the graduate curriculum, but this is not common practice for graduate biomedical engineering programs. Graduate education in biomedical engineering is evolving rapidly, with an…

States and institutions employ articulation agreements to streamline curricular pathways. We investigate the efficacy of that streamlining by considering how course sequences, enacted through pre- and co-requisites, relate to graduation rates for transfer students at different time intervals. Applying a curricular complexity framework that…

In corequisite models of instruction, marginally prepared students are placed directly into college-level coursework, taught with a paired support course. Initial research suggests that such models yield significant improvements in the number of students passing credit-level mathematics when compared to previous models of prerequisite remediation.…

Gatekeeper courses such as Anatomy and Physiology are often referenced in discussions regarding the national shortage of persons in allied health professions. In an attempt to bolster access to STEM professions, some community colleges are mandating prerequisite courses such as Natural Sciences and/or General Biology for STEM gatekeeping courses.…

This article examines the equivalency of virtual credit recovery (VCR) programs as a viable alternative to earning back failed credits needed to graduate on time. Utilization of interviews and questionnaires assisted with collecting perspective data of 10 teachers facilitating the VCR program. Artifact analysis provided a third source of numeric…

Technology & engineering teacher preparation programs at colleges and universities in the United States have been in a state of decline since the 1970's. In the fall of 2013 a study was conducted to compare the required curricula of the 24 undergraduate programs that maintain enrollment of 20 students or more in order to determine what a…

This paper documents the perceptions and experiences of faculty members in the midst of statewide reform efforts in Virginia and North Carolina to integrate developmental reading and writing courses. Using interview and focus group data from 161 faculty and administrators in both states (combined) as well as three detailed case studies of faculty…

Do students change as a result of completing their general education requirement? This question was examined by using a pretest/posttest design with five different cohorts of students required to complete a general education program in American history and politics. Differences among various groups in Cohen's d (the standardized difference between…

A study investigated the ways in which vocational education is related to high school graduation requirements in Minnesota and several other states (Ohio, Virginia, and Washington). A review of literature showed the historic development of high school graduation requirements, the role of vocational education in secondary schools today, and…

In order to determine the changes in high school graduation requirements and their impact on vocational education programs, a longitudinal study was initiated to track high school and vocational education program enrollments in Virginia and the United States for five years beginning with the 1984-85 school year. A questionnaire was prepared and…