Today's college student is not your '60s drop-out. In 2010, college students tended to stay enrolled (i.e., persist), even if it was in a different school, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. For a student enrolled in the fall, persistence is defined as either continued enrollment during the next term after the fall or…

The purpose of the provincial ESL articulation process is to maintain high standards of quality in ESL programming at the public post-secondary institutions of British Columbia, as well as to facilitate access to programs at other public institutions for students wishing to transfer. Goals of the provincial articulation process are to: (1) provide…

This practitioner packet is designed to help community college administrators implement reforms to developmental education at their colleges. It reviews common impediments to developmental reform and presents data that supports directions colleges can take to create a system of developmental education that might serve students more effectively.…

In April 1998, Missouri's Coordinating Board for Higher Education established basic indicators against which outcomes of the state's investments in postsecondary technical education are measured. One year later, the Coordinating Board approved a set of performance measures to be used to guide research on the results of Missouri's postsecondary…

Can professors, through their casual, random remarks to students, alter lives and transform identities? The answer, based on two exploratory studies described in this article, appears to be yes. Drawing from constructive-developmental ideas of student maturation and from features of chaos theory as applied to the complex dynamic system of…

A study was conducted at Mississippi State University to assess differences in the academic achievement of two matched groups of two-year college transfer students. One group (N=30) had attended a junior college which followed a traditional semester time table of 15 to 18 weeks, while the other group (N=30) had attended a junior college with a…

Describes the objectives, methodology, and resources for a college German course, taught in English, that examines the concept of "outsider" and is aimed at fostering critical thinking, ethical relations, and understanding of contexts. It traces representations of cultural groups in literature and the visual arts. Students learn to question…

The purpose of this dissertation is to outline a pedagogy that promotes language difference in college composition classrooms. Scholarship on language difference has strived for decades to transform teaching practices in mainstream, developmental, and second-language writing instruction. Despite compelling arguments in support of linguistic…

Two dozen 18-year-olds from across Illinois sit circled inside a classroom on DePaul University's main campus, nestled among the pricey greystones and trendy taverns of Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. All are fresh out of high school, plan to become teachers, and are there to participate in a six-week summer institute--part of a scholarship…

The characteristics of two-year colleges and trends in community college education are summarized in this series of fact sheets. The first of these presents a nationwide overview of the number and types of institutions; full- and part-time enrollments; selected student, faculty, and administrator characteristics; tuition and fees; and types of…

Even though pedagogy courses in sociology are on the rise, many departments do not offer or require a course on teaching sociology or a teaching proseminar series. However, faculty in such departments do have other options for incorporating and integrating pedagogical issues into their standard curriculum. In this note, I offer one suggestion for…

Misconceptions that students bring with them to the introductory science classroom plague every area of science and are especially prevalent in astronomy. One way to identify and possibly dispel some of these misconceptions is through the use of a misconceptions survey. The following is a report on the development, implementation, and some early…

The heterogeneous composition of student bodies at 2-year colleges can be an advantage for student volunteer activities. The advantages, problems and innovative approaches characterizing these activities at several junior colleges are discussed and pointed out as being different from those in 4-year colleges and universities. (MN)

This paper presents selected findings from a nationwide study of 1,493 humanities faculty teaching in a carefully drawn sample of 156 two-year colleges. Among the findings reported in this paper were: (1) 40% of the faculty had been neither instructors nor administrators in secondary schools before coming to the two-year college; (2) 90% of the…

In this essay, the authors argue that linking second language learners with communities that need their language skills can result in an empowering experience for students and for the communities with which they work. They describe a college-level service-learning project that was designed to help IMPACT Chicago, a women's self-defense…