This article presents an interview with Alice G. Dewey, professor emeritus at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and granddaughter of the renowned American philosopher John Dewey. She is an economic anthropologist who did ground-breaking research on local markets in Indonesia in the 1950s. She recently co-edited "Surviving Against the Odds:…

Western Governors University was conceptualized in 1995 at a meeting of the Western Governors Association, and founded soon after in an effort to increase degree production in higher education at a lower cost. It has expanded significantly over the past few years, driven both by increased demand for online education and by drastic state budget…

With America's military out of Iraq, and funding for global military operations on the decline, thousands of newly discharged men and women are trying to figure out "What's next?" Most of the Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, and Sailors joined the military before their 21st birthday, and it is often the only job they have ever held. While it is true…

When these inequities began to change in the 20th century, due in part to the sweeping court-ordered integration following Brown v. Board of Education and the simultaneous expansion of public colleges and universities, all citizens began to gain access to educational achievement and, as a result, true access to the American power structure. The…

The ideal of community engagement suggests that both a student's career and his college's mission are (or ought to be) inextricable from the community in which they are embedded. That students, faculty, and academic institutions should serve community purposes, actively engage in community affairs, and network themselves in real and virtual…

The Center for an Urban Future (CUF) released a report last November asserting that, with a six-year graduation rate of 28 percent, City University of New York (CUNY) community colleges "should be doing much better." The report declared graduation rates "lackluster" and criticized community colleges for "not yet delivering on their potential." But…

There are many views about what types of actions can or cannot be defined as mentoring. The author opines that educators often make it much more complicated than it needs to be. At its core, mentoring is the act of listening, of asking good questions, and of probing others to more clearly articulate their ideas. Mentoring also involves challenging…

The Princeton Teaching Initiative at Princeton University is an all-volunteer group formed to teach for-credit college courses in the New Jersey state prison system. The courses are coordinated with the Mercer County Community College (MCCC), which accredits the courses and maintains the students' transcripts. Volunteer professors, postdoctoral…

For at least 30 years, professional work has been changing. Even such once-elite professionals as doctors, lawyers, and professors have become subject to significant control. Single-practitioner medical practices have given way to group practices subject to the rules of insurance plans; lawyers join mammoth firms where paralegals time the steps…

Nonprofit leaders have long been told to behave "more like a business" and the corporatization of higher education, where the author now labors, has gotten critical attention. But these issues are still not widely discussed in philanthropy, where the author once toiled, except by a few intrepid souls who study and critique the field. In the 1960s,…

Before graduate school, before his undergraduate degree, before community college, all throughout K-12, this author was considered an "at-risk" student--at risk of dropping out of school. During those early years, he took note of the things that seemed unjust and now he directs his academic work toward engaging at-risk students and providing them…

Student ratings, first introduced into the college classroom in the late 1920s, have long symbolized the often uneasy relationship between undergraduates and their professors. Certainly, research about student ratings has been exhaustive over the last 50 years. Several thousand studies have been published, many concerned with issues of validity…

In the scrum of popular and political discourse on global warming, the scholarship of climate science is often left sitting on the sideline. Yet understanding the science and the scientists presents the best chance of developing an informed opinion about climate change. Confusion about the science, misunderstanding of risk assessment and…

In this article, the author shares how she designs fun and fascinating western humanities courses at a community college in Minnesota. Using the example provided by many excellent past instructors, and through numerous late-night research sessions, she began to develop techniques and exercises that would help her achieve her goals in the…

On May 14, 2010, Sandra K. Soto was the faculty convocation speaker for the University of Arizona College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. To a significant extent, she congratulated the parents and graduates and flattered the graduates by crediting them with having learned both skills and information, and urging graduates to make use of their…