Transition plans for students with special needs provide support for social and academic success while giving students an accurate picture of what to expect in high school. The Texas Comprehensive Center recommends that schools develop a comprehensive transition plan district-wide. This district plan must include the cooperation of staff from the…

Challenging economic conditions, changing student demographics, and heightened levels of accountability may require community colleges to address student retention more strategically. Community colleges must cope with external forces while at the same time attempting to meet their mission of open access. Retention is also important when community…

In this paper I argue that the teacher educators who deliberately create and nurture caring teacher-student relationships, despite the many challenges, benefit both themselves and their students in several ways. Although the notion that teachers should care for their students is not new, it may well be that professors too seldom "communicate"…

A university open house attracts students and parents who are interested in learning about the institution's mission and specialized offerings. The traditional approach to an open house involves a meet-and-greet session and a lecture by a faculty member who describes the program and necessary requirements for graduation, followed by a tour of the…

Universities have both social and cultural contexts, and new students need to participate effectively in both in order to succeed in this environment. With ever increasing numbers of students and the diversity of the contemporary university population, institutions have to consider innovative ways to effectively engage individuals. In terms of…

A single qualitative case study design was used to determine the opinions of administrators and faculty from a community college that is considered to be transitioning to a learning-centered college. The researcher conducted the case study to describe, explain, and evaluate the phenomenon. The researcher also recorded facilitators or roadblocks…

The purpose of the study was twofold: to explore how school counselors and athletic educators experienced implementing the 2010 Massachusetts Anti-bullying law and to explore how participants experienced using the Sharevision structured group reflection process as the format for group discussions. The Sharevision structured group reflection…

Postgraduate coursework is now delivered to a largely mature age study population, in what may be an unfamiliar mix of online and distance learning to many students. This paper reports on a novel approach to student orientation in this new environment. Orientation is conceptualised as a process of transition between the domain of everyday life and…

This GEM describes the "Freshman 15 Jeopardy" workshop, a 30-minute nutrition education session aimed to expose incoming college freshmen to the college food environment, to increase their awareness of factors that cause weight gain, and to instruct them on lifestyle choices they could employ to prevent weight gain. This short workshop has not…

The Biology Intensive Orientation for Students (BIOS) Program at Louisiana State University was designed to increase the success of incoming freshman biology majors in the first course in their major. The program combined content lectures and examinations for BIOL 1201-Introductory Biology for Science Majors, the first course in their major, as…

When Jasper Place High School in Edmonton began shifting its attention away from competing for more students from its feeder junior high schools and toward better student retention, it found that the transitional process was the key to success. Jasper Place principal and counselors worked with their counterparts in the junior high schools to…

This article focuses on the English language experiences of a group of pre-sessional students, an under-represented group in the literature on language and education. In particular, it investigates the opportunities that such students have to use English outside the classroom, shown to be a key factor in student satisfaction with their study…

What steps can be taken to assure that 8th graders make a successful transition to 9th grade? More students fail ninth grade than any other grade level. When middle school students took part in high school transition programs with a variety of different articulation activities, fewer students were retained in ninth grade. Ideally, these transition…

Most colleges and universities offer Freshman Orientation for new students. When students arrive, however, they often are unprepared and unsure of how to take full advantage of these orientation sessions. No matter what the orientation program looks like at a college, knowing what to expect during the first few weeks can make the difference…

A popular taxonomy for categorizing outcomes of training is the four-level model formulated by Kirkpatrick (1959). The first level in the model consists of reactions to training. Kirkpatrick recognized only affective reactions, but more recent reformulations of the model posit other types of reactions, including utility and perceptions of…