Museum educators and instructors of English as a Second Language (ESOL) at a community college in New York reflect on their experiences facilitating a program designed to enrich the language, cultural, and visual literacy skills of adult immigrant students. The CALTA21 program brought together three stakeholders, immigrant ESOL students, language…

This article was inspired by a belief in the need to connect physical education with community-based physical activity programming in minority communities. The initial steps of this reflective narrative were described in a previous article. This article describes a program called Project Guard: Make A Splash E.N.D. (End Needless Drowning), a…

The authors of this article describe Neighbors Link, a multi-service community and worker center in suburban Westchester County, NY. This organization created "Parent-Child Together" in the belief that supporting immigrant parents' integration and social inclusion, in activities that also engage long-term community residents, would…

This article examines how the MAT [Master of Arts in Teaching] program in Earth Science at the American Museum of Natural History was conceptualized and enacted within its institutional context. We argue that the program was completely consistent with the museum's public and democratic institutional logic, as reflected in funding, staffing,…

This chapter describes the process and challenges of implementing a civic engagement graduation requirement at Kingsborough Community College.

Guttman Community College (GCC), a newly-established, urban community college, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), enrolls a largely traditional student body which is also predominantly minority. Students enter the college with an average high-school grade-point average of 75% (C average), and are required to enroll in three first-year…

This paper examines the feasibility of developing a new Master Volunteer training program to help communities adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Traditional models of volunteer training programs, such as the Cooperative Extension Master Volunteer peer-to-peer learning model, are based in part on Diffusion Theory. The existing…

Life is Precious (LIP) was developed to help reduce suicidal behavior in Latina adolescents. As part of an external evaluation of the LIP program, we conducted focus groups with adolescent participants and mothers to learn whether participants and families believe that the activities of LIP address risks for suicidal behavior. Four focus groups…

A community school is a place and a set of partnerships connecting a school, the families of students, and the surrounding community. A community school is distinguished by an integrated focus on academics, youth development, family support, health and social services, and community development. The community school strategy is central to efforts…

LaGuardia Community College has a saying: Challenge expectations. As fitting as these words are in an essay on the unique value of an honors program at a community college, they also reflect the creation, growth, and ultimate goal of LaGuardia's Community College Honors Program and its students, faculty, and staff, who embody these words every…

Teaching basic reading, writing, and critical thinking skills is immensely gratifying and vitally important work, requiring intelligence, optimism, and humanity. To be able to gain some sliver of understanding with regard to students' attitudes, behaviors, skills, and abilities; to recognize that there exists a multiplicity of possible…

The Robert Bowne Foundation for out-of-school time (OST) supports the development of quality programs that offer literacy education in the out-of-school hours to children and youth of New York City, especially young people from disadvantaged communities. The foundation's networking meetings, now in their 10th year, offer quarterly forums in which…

This technical brief describes updates to a database of dropout prevention programs and policies in 2006/07 created by the Regional Education Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands and described in the Issues & Answers report, "Piloting a searchable database of dropout prevention programs in nine low-income urban school districts in the…

The LaGuardia Community College Student Technology Mentor (STM) program demonstrates how a college's own students can become resources for the technology development of faculty, the improvement of teaching tools, and the expansion of library services. The program also illustrates how the Student Technology Mentors themselves benefit from campus…

In March 2008, The City University of New York (CUNY) Chancellor Matthew Goldstein formally launched an initiative to create the university's seventh community college. The development of the concept for this new college is informed in part by the knowledge and practices acquired through working with high school and GED students. Specifically,…