In 2005, the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) produced a report entitled "A New Look at the Institutional Component of Higher Education Finance: A Guide for Evaluating Performance Relative to Financial Resources." It gauged the performance of state public postsecondary education sectors (i.e. research, bachelor's…

Objective: The authors describe a junior faculty scholars program in a large academic department of psychiatry, designed to reduce attrition during the high-risk period of transition from post-doctoral fellowship to receipt of the first extramural research award. Method: Scholars receive 25% salary support for two years to enable their…

The Texas Higher Education Forecasting Board began forecasting enrollments in 1979, and the methodology has remained relatively unchanged. However, the 2003 forecast includes a new section that uses the enrollment (participation) forecast to predict statewide degree production in bachelor's and associate's degrees and certificates (success). The…

The purpose of this study was to examine the satisfaction and perceived learning and development of university peer mentors. Mentoring research exists that focus on student retention, academic achievement, and satisfaction of university students who are mentored, but little research exists that provides a comprehensive, quantitative perspective of…

Notes how through personalized instructional tools, students become aware of their own patterns of error, locate and correct errors, and learn to use a handbook. Describes how usage scans (student-led mini-lesson on some point of grammar or style) and fix-it pages (an ongoing record of the student kept by the teacher) work. (SG)

Reports findings from the first two years of a four-year longitudinal study on the influence of ability grouping practices on English students' attitudes and achievement in mathematics in six schools. Traces achievement and attitudes of students as they move from Year 8 to Year 9 using questionnaires, interviews, and classroom observation. (CMK)

This paper describes a summit on Community Colleges in the Evolving STEM Education Landscape organized by a committee of the National Research Council (NRC) and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and held at the Carnegie Institution for Science on December 15, 2011. This summit followed a similar event organized by Dr. Jill Biden, spouse of…

Reflects on 25 years of teaching English in a 2-year college. Makes observations about teachers, students, and accomplishments. Suggest what the future might hold. (MG)

Notes that it is not easy to help students enter into ongoing dialogues on ethics in both school-based and more immediate environments, ask students to consider ethics on both personal and social planes, and require students to write and reflect to stave off the disembodiment of culture. Describe a course that helps students to see rhetoric and…

The traditional teaching career is collapsing at both ends. Beginners are being driven away by antiquated preparation practices, outdated school staffing policies, and inadequate career rewards. At the end of their careers, accomplished veterans who still have much to contribute are being separated from their schools by obsolete retirement…

Considers how students' texts are rituals that should both sanction existing truths and consecrate inventive freedom. Notes that in teaching writing, educators limit students' development by training them to practice only one kind of public ritual: the "official feast" of thesis-and-support writing. (SG)

Discusses how current scholarship argues against one-shot, high-stakes writing tasks. Presents work from students that were part of a team-taught curriculum that coordinated writing and reading classes. Designs activities that would provide a core of material for students to draw on in their final testing situations. (SG)

Shows how an editing assignment emphasizing punctuation can help students in a first-year writing class discover new ideas and perspectives as part of the revision process. Considers a class that experimented with editing punctuation for a dual purpose--as a revision heuristic as well as for correctness. Reconsiders editing and revision…

This article examines issues encountered over a two-year period by a faculty librarian at the Penn State University Libraries while developing and delivering course-related library instruction employing problem-based learning (PBL) in the First-Year Seminar (FYS) of the Penn State School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST). The process of…

Considers how mapping literary works provides students with a powerful tool for critical analysis. Suggests that educators need to force students to do something different with the text. Notes that the author's solution is to insist that her students visualize the text on paper. (SG)