Claims personal narrative essays, although controversial, touch a unique chord in listeners and in readers. Suggest incorporating critical thinking and modeling by the instructor into personal narrative essay assignments. (NH)

How do part-time faculty members in community colleges view their roles? Data from part-time faculty responses regarding their experiences in higher education vary. Valadez and Antony (2001) analyzed data from 6,811 part-time faculty collected from the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES) 1992-1993 National Survey of Postsecondary…

Describes how the author uses reading response journals in her composition classes. Shows how it actively engages students in the reading/writing process, and how students learn careful, active reading and develop confidence generating ideas and formulating opinions via the structure, freedom, enhanced comprehension, critical thinking, and…

Reports results of a study of adult students over the age of 24 at one community college in New York State. Explores (1) the reasons the mature person takes a life-step once confined to the young; (2) the difficulties and satisfactions they experience; and (3) what colleges can do to respond to their needs. (SR)

The colleges in the Illinois Community College System submit detailed student records twice during each fiscal year. This report is based on fiscal year 2004 enrollments and completions and comparative information is supplied from the four previous fiscal years (2000-2003) are also presented. Detailed tables comparing fiscal year 2003 and fiscal…

Describes how the author uses the poems of Edgar Lee Masters'"Spoon River Anthology" in her developmental writing classes to foster literary discussion, build vocabulary, and teach a broad range of essay writing skills. (SR)

Currently, 42 percent of Americans in the 25-34 age range hold a degree from a two- or four-year institution of higher education. At one time, that proportion was high enough to make the United States the best-educated country in the world. But in one generation, America's educational attainment has held steady while in other countries it has…

Suggests that the five-paragraph theme does in fact have value, and explains why assumptions about its ills are wrong-minded. (SR)

Presents findings from a study of community college faculty attitudes about their status. Respondents with prior full-time faculty experience at a four-year institution were more likely to agree than those without such experience that four-year faculty consider two-year faculty to be on the margins of higher education. Neither group considered…

This article describes a chemical-processing program at Saginaw Career Complex in Saginaw, Michigan. The program is preparing 42 11th- and 12th-graders to work as chemical-processing operators or technicians by the time they graduate from high school. It was developed in partnership with the Saginaw Career Complex--one of 51 centers in the state…

Presents a program at a two-year college designed to meet the needs of its students by improving student preparedness and furthering student achievement. (PR)

This now classic text remains a cornerstone of continuing efforts to develop inclusive peer play programs for children on the autism spectrum. The second edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect major new developments in the field of autism. Notable additions include an updated description of the Integrated Play Groups (IPG) model and…

This chapter describes how the authors are using data and professional learning to mobilize change in developmental English and mathematics curricula and pedagogy across multiple community colleges in California.

The first tribally controlled college in the nation was established by the Navajo Nation in 1968 and served 300 students. Today there are 35 tribal colleges serving more than 30,000 students from more than 250 federally recognized tribes across the United States and Canada. Although tribal colleges make up less than one percent of the…

Describes the design of a standard first-year composition class in which the author used online discussion forums. Discusses how these design choices helped create a dynamic community of readers, writers, and learners in a writing classroom. Discusses pedagogical goals, and course design. Discusses several reasons why this approach works so well,…