STEM-related educational outreach offers students enriching opportunities to become more familiar with science, in terms of how it relates to their daily lives and with respect to possible career paths that they might want to follow. At the same time, graduate student trainees providing that outreach act as important resources for elementary and…

This article presents the results of combining the American Institute of Chemical Engineers' (AIChE) Chem-E-Car competition activities with engineering outreach to K-12 students in a service-learning course. Survey results are presented to show how the program develops technical skills as well as leadership, teamwork, and communication skills in…

Tutoring programs that link colleges to public schools are seen as a way to improve the academic performance of K12 students while providing a practicum site for college-age students. Prior research on college-K12 partnerships focuses on how the academic achievement of both K12 and college students are enhanced by these relationships. This article…

Service-learning has the potential to create mutually beneficial relationships between schools and communities, but little research explores service-learning from the community's perspective. The purpose of this study was to (a) understand how community-based organizations (CBOs) benefited from partnering with students and (b) examine whether…

There is an urgent need to increase K-12 science knowledge and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) preparedness for college. State and national data suggest a strong correlation between student performance in STEM subjects and student socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity. Queensborough Community College (QCC) is situated…

This paper presents an innovative two-course, laboratory-based, and design-oriented robotics educational model. The robotics curriculum exposed senior-level undergraduate students to major robotics concepts, and enhanced the student learning experience in hybrid learning environments by incorporating the IEEE Region-5 annual robotics competition…

This paper documents the findings of a case study of one K-10 urban expeditionary learning (EL) school. Drawing on theoretical perspectives consistent with the sociocultural theory, data were collected from a variety of sources that included a survey, interviews, field notes from classroom observations and other school activities. Thematic…

Project Coach is an after school program developed and directed by the authors. The program, which is set in a high-need urban community in Springfield, Massachusetts, teaches high school and middle school students to be sport coaches and then to run youth sport leagues for elementary-aged youth in underserved neighborhoods in their own community.…

The University of Maine at Farmington (UMF) has undertaken a commitment to establish a culture of environmental sustainability. With two new Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified buildings on site, a green building curriculum has been developed. This multidimensional curriculum involves university faculty, students, K-12…

This manuscript reports on efforts to introduce beginning college students to the modern nanoscience field. These include: implementing selected experiments into sequencing core first-year and second-year chemistry laboratory courses; providing students with a first research experience; and engaging them in service learning and outreach programs…

Community gardening provides many benefits for students like outdoor physical activity, an understanding of plant life cycles, food production and healthy eating (Blair, 2009; Whiren, 1995). Gardening also provides hands-on learning opportunities to draw parallels between what is needed for plants to grow and what students need to be healthy. When…

Yes We Can: Improving Urban Schools through Innovative Educational Reform is a empirically-based book on urban education reform to not only proclaim that hope is alive for urban schools, but to also produce a body of literature that examines current practices and then offer practical implications for all involved in this arduous task. This book is…