While participation in undergraduate research has many benefits for students including increased confidence and persistence in engineering, community college students do not have the same access to research as students at four-year institutions. To address this disparity, we developed a soft robotics-focused undergraduate research lab at a…

"Pathways to Implementation" highlights innovative strategies and effective models in career pathways policy, implementation, and programming, as well as challenges states encounter in this work. This seven-part series addresses the key elements of Bellwether's framework for career pathways policy implementation. Each brief defines the…

In the United States, higher education institutions must be authorized as postsecondary education providers -- through a process known as state authorization -- to be eligible to receive federal student financial aid funds. Through state authorization policies, state governments play a key role in maintaining accountability for higher education.…

Schools of social work in the United States are responsible for training students to work with diverse clients and communities. These schools have an additional, yet often unaddressed, responsibility to prepare students to understand diversity in the workforce and to lead initiatives for diversity and inclusion in organizational settings. This…

Getting a head start on college coursework in high school has become an even more important goal for high school students in recent years, due in part to the rising costs of obtaining traditional four-year college degrees coupled with the disruptions in learning for high school and college students due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than ever,…

For the first time in U.S. history, a proposal for nationwide free community college passed through the House of Representatives in the fall of 2021. Although the provision was ultimately dropped from President Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill, its early presence suggests the political appeal of making college accessible to more Americans. These…

The evolving educational landscape of our students' needs post-Covid has highlighted that student response to intervention must be of concern to all educators. Our student population has experienced an event that is like no other in our shared educational histories and our response to the aftermath of this event and how we assist students who are…

University-community partnerships (UCPs) are increasingly utilized to address issues in education. In this article, we present reflections on best practices for child- and family-focused UCPs. These reflections emerged before, during, and after a convening that brought together representatives from five UCPs in the United States that emphasized…

Effective teaching practice focused on encouraging deep engagement helps all students learn and succeed. Considerable work by researchers and change agents, encouraged by national organizations such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Research Council, has promoted greater use of evidence-based educational practices, such as…

The Massachusetts edTPA Pilot and Field Test (2010-2013) was launched by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to evaluate the possible adoption of edTPA within that state. Guided by Cochran-Smith et al.'s (2013) Politics of Policy Framework, this mixed-methods study examines this policy initiative by analyzing the…

Health professions students can increase their understanding of how social determinants impact health equity through experiential learning opportunities. Using key informant interviews with faculty and staff familiar with experiential education programs in medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, public health, and social work, we sought to…

This article presents a case for the benefits of knowledge exchange in the academic library. The authors define knowledge exchange and use the concept as a framework for describing a peer learning experience rooted in best digital practices education. Their partnership enabled the authors to extend their professional roles while developing…

This paper asks the question: Is now the right time to consider a statewide policy initiative to support increased access for Massachusetts community college students to paid internships that can help them improve their employment and earnings trajectory? Is this something that employers, colleges, and state leaders would see as a welcome…

As part of its ongoing effort to fulfill the expectations of Massachusetts' Vision Project Agenda for its public colleges and universities, Northeast Community College collaborated with the non-profit organization, Complete College America, to develop the Academic Pathways. The Academic Pathways [or APs] are a pre-determined block of first…

This is the third paper on the topic of outcomes-based funding written by Dennis Jones for Complete College America. The first paper, "Performance Funding: From Idea to Action" (ED535356), proposed a set of design and implementation principles to help states develop and implement their own outcomes-based funding models. The second paper,…