The Trenton (New Jersey) Office of Policy Studies was established in conjunction with Thomas Edison State College to analyze emerging issues in urban public policy. The program is active in the internal life of the city's government while maintaining an independent academic orientation that shields it from political and practical pressures.…

Demographic influences on the makeup of urban university student populations are discussed, focusing on how demographic trends can shed light on some current debates in higher education. Issues discussed include welfare and education, ethnicity and poverty, migration patterns, the aging population, and children of Baby Boomers. (MSE)

Describes the four-year process by which the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater redefined its faculty evaluation, promotion, and tenure system to link faculty rewards to student learning outcomes and to promote faculty priorities more consistent with the institution's mission. At the outset, two-thirds of the faculty were tenured. Topics discussed…

This essay describes the broad consideration of educational standards that occurred with a cohort of masters' licensure students in public, urban university and high school contexts. This deliberation over standards was rooted in the model of standards development presented by these future teachers' licensure program and called upon this next…

Efforts at Portland State University (PSU) in Oregon illustrate how an institution can clarify its own purposes, evaluate how the environment supports its academic mission, and effectively institute changes that will bring faculty activities and institutional purposes into a more harmonious alignment. In 1990 PSU began a strategic planning process…

This report concerns a qualitative study on African-American leadership effectiveness as perceived and defined by African-American student leaders at the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque). Six African-American student leaders (three males and three females) participated in-depth interviews. The interviews were audiorecorded and transcribed.…

This report argues that many higher education institutions in metropolitan areas, in order to fulfill their mission of enhancing the utilization of research knowledge, must develop appropriate internal and external bridging mechanisms between scholarship and utilization. It further argues for the development of appropriate adaptations in the…

Students graduating from early childhood programs at a southeastern urban university in June 1992 and June 1993 completed the Educational Attitudes Inventory and the Teacher Efficacy Scale upon entry to the program, before entry to a practicum experience with kindergarten students, and upon completion of both the practicum experience and a student…

Seven pamphlets by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) contain policy statements on the following subjects: (1) quality and effectiveness in undergraduate higher education (stressing the need for a redefinition of educational quality at the undergraduate level); (2) urban state colleges and universities (educating…

This report discusses a project addressing the difficulties that Queens College has with English as a Second Language (ESL) students in the typical humanities classroom. ESL students represent 40% of the college's student body, and instructing them is a significant intellectual and pedagogical challenge. Despite training in English language and…

The relationship between student library use and selected student characteristics, including fields of study, academic achievement, and progress toward a degree was investigated at a large, urban, nonresidential university with a full-time-equivalent student population of 15,000. Findings include the following: students with higher grade point…

The trends from 1970-75 in course-by-course grading at a large public urban university are described. A total of 144 undergraduate courses were analyzed to determine if systematic grade inflation was occurring. Multiple linear regressions were fitted to more than 125,000 final course grades by courses. Most course grading patterns showed little…

The main purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which community consensus existed regarding a variety of major changes in Pittsburgh and the extent to which widely differing perspectives of community leaders might contribute to conflict, or at least significant difficulties, on these issues. A pragmatic secondary objective was to…

This paper describes efforts by Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) to develop programs to serve the needs of first-year students, focusing on collaborative efforts across the university system to retain nontraditional and underrepresented students. The School of Liberal Arts Faculty Mentor Program links a first-year seminar…

Examines how this university extension project for urban studies and design assists small and large towns in Arkansas to cope with development problems. The project uses faculty, professionals, and student interns to assess situations and provides professional consulting and referral services and public informational programs. (JB)