Piedmont College's quality enhancement plan (QEP) emphasizes a developmental and progressive integration of high-impact practices (HIPs) into the academic and social fabric of the institution. The QEP is HIP initiative provides students with multiple opportunities to deepen learning and leadership skills, which leads to improvements in student…

A number of approaches and methods are being used to assess higher cognition within online threaded discussions, as evidenced by the corpus of scholarship. However, a review of the literature suggests that current strategies relating to asynchronous discourse have tended to focus on cognitive processes that are mostly driven by task-oriented…

We present several modules that address social justice issues in an introductory statistics course. The activities consider possible disparities of housing location, language spoken at home, and job sector as they relate to, respectively, access to healthy foods, air pollution via proximity to traffic, and health concerns via proximity to fracking…

Students seeking to study abroad are increasingly able to select their preferred level of immersion in such areas as program duration, similarity of classmates, language of instruction, and housing environment. As researchers endeavor to understand the relative contribution of these decisions to intercultural learning outcomes, information is…

This article investigates efforts by a small regional university without a geography department to incorporate geography into its general education curriculum as part of a "quality enhancement" process mandated by its accreditor. Drawing on interviews and surveys of students and faculty, we highlight lessons learned that may be useful…

In light of the current emphasis on adequate preparation of college graduates for the 21st century marketplace, this action research study recounted and examined two experiential cross-pollination team-oriented projects, incorporated into the classroom at a small (1100 students), private university's marketing educational program. Tailoring…

In response to requests for assistance from a Tibetan refugee community in Mainpat, India, Northern Arizona University developed a unique service-learning experience, the Mainpat Project, to provide health and other services. The project continued for 4 years despite the limited infrastructure and resources of a small public university and the…

This paper is the first in Pioneer Institute's UMass at a Crossroads series. In the opening study, the authors focus on UMass' significant growth in two areas, academic competitiveness and student enrollment, compared to other New England state universities, MA private universities, national private universities and national public universities.…

Research on college student retention has been conducted for over four decades. However, the majority of this research focuses on first-year college students, with very few studies focusing on the retention of college seniors. While only a small percentage of college seniors withdraw from their universities, the impact of not obtaining a…

Instructor communication behaviors and student motivation to learn relationships were studied at a small liberal arts university. Specifically, relationships between instructor nonverbal immediacy, verbal immediacy behaviors and student motivation to learn were measured. Only instructor verbal immediacy behaviors had a significant linear…

This article documents the author's two-year study of the learning experience of first-year students undertaking a research paper. The study was conducted at a small liberal arts college with a history curriculum designed to provide content knowledge in introductory-level lecture courses, followed by skills in writing and research in upper-level…

Objectives: This paper explores the extent to which curriculum infusion (CI) impacted undergraduate students' alcohol use, perceived peer alcohol use, use of protective behavioural strategies, academic performance and course engagement. Design: Two faculty members infused content on norms and protective behavioural strategies into selected…

The BSW Experiential Learning (BEL) Program aims to infuse intergenerational content into the curriculum and recruit students to the field of social work by implementing face-to-face learning opportunities with older adults. This article discusses and compares the experiences of 4 diverse BEL projects that implemented gero-experiential learning…

Despite widespread acknowledgment of the importance of interdisciplinary pedagogy, disciplinary teaching remains the norm on most campuses, primarily due to cost and institutional constraints. Bridging the gap between literature on interdisciplinary teaching and active-learning techniques, this article describes an innovative and less costly…

"Strengthening the STEM Pipeline: The Contributions of Small and Mid-Sized Independent Colleges" demonstrates that small and mid-sized independent institutions are preparing students for careers and graduate study in STEM fields more efficiently than many public universities. Contrary to popular assumptions, the report shows that smaller…