Over the past decade, deliberate efforts to "market" colleges and universities to specific audiences have gone from being a marginal--and somewhat suspect--activity in higher education to becoming a strategic imperative. Heightened competition for top students, increasing bottom-line pressures due to tuition discounting and comparative "shopping"…

This chapter describes characteristics of department chairs and identifies various tasks and challenges that they face during their time in office.

The author describes his experience with the process of peer reviews by economists of economics departments. On the bases of roughly 20 reviews of departments in the public and private sectors over two decades, he discusses how the process works and what can be accomplished by it and identifies some pitfalls that should be avoided. He offers…

Non full-time faculty--whether adjunct, part-time or contingent--has become the lifeline of a vast majority of colleges and universities. They teach many of the foundation and core courses taken by first- and second-year students, teach professional courses in which their own life experiences are invaluable, and step in at short notice to fill-in…

Conducting scientifically rigorous evaluations of character education interventions is complex. This evaluation guide is presented as a resource primarily for project directors who are federal grantees embarking on an evaluation of a character education intervention, although it contains useful information that can benefit other education…

Research opportunities for undergraduates in the social sciences remain relatively rare. If they exist at all they are usually in the natural sciences and engineering. In study abroad the situation is particularly pronounced: a semester or year abroad is still more a time for cultural and linguistic immersion than it is for building specific…

Good teachers were shying away from accepting 4th-grade positions because of the growing accountability pressures that were being unfairly brought to bear on that grade level. Highly publicized reports of the state's new battery of standardized assessments were scaring off applicants. To address the personnel needs while more fairly sharing the…

The trouble started when an anonymous e-mail alleged abuse of power at Centennial High School in Howard County, Maryland. Each week, the local paper reported new developments in the investigation. On top of that, the family of a Black student reported that a culture of racism existed at Centennial. At the end of the year, members of the community…

To examine how school characteristics are tied to science and engineering views and aspirations of students who are underrepresented in science and engineering fields, this mixed-methods study explores relationships between aspects of students' science identities, and the representation of women among high school science teachers. Quantitative…

This study explores graduate faculty involvement in graduate student recruitment at a research university to determine if, because of challenges to enrollment trends, faculty are involved, and, if they are, is it because administrators mandate it or because faculty have a professional desire to be involved? The sample size consisted of 148…

Transcripts of 784 psychology alumni from 4 universities revealed that students' timing of first enrollments in a statistics or methodology course was the result of an interaction between personal preferences and differences in program requirements. Where only a single methodological course was mandatory, first enrollments were especially late in…

An internship is essential for the development of competency-based leadership. Variation in the quality of time spent in clinical settings depends on the use of approaches that provide interns with opportunities to observe, participate in, and reflect on the problems of leadership and management found in schools. In essence, the internship is an…

Objective: The authors describe a developmental model for enhancing residency research training for careers in academic psychiatry. Over the past 10 years, the University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychiatry has developed a research track (RT) for its residents. While the Department's plan has been to address the critical need of training…

Traditionally, college English departments have resisted granting undergraduate internships a central place in their curricula. Many of these departments do little more than allow students to pursue internships as loosely supervised independent studies. An internship practicum course such as Purdue University's, however, enables students to…

This book presents 11 contributed papers which examine communication aspects of the department chair position in academia. It is noted that most academic department chairs are not trained in management skills, including communication strategies. After an introductory chapter by Christopher H. Spicer and Ann Q. Staton, the following papers are…