Undergraduate seniors at a residential liberal-arts college reflected on their experiences attending on-campus cultural events. These focus groups were transcribed, coded, and analyzed using a grounded theory-derived approach to understand how these events shaped their college experience. The resulting communication artifact revealed a variety of…

For business schools, AACSB and Middle States' call for more experiential learning is one reason to provide study abroad programs. Universities must attend to the demand for continuous improvement and employ metrics to benchmark and evaluate their relative standing among peer institutions. One such benchmark is the National Survey of Student…

Seattle University has an industrially sponsored, yearlong, senior design program that has been in existence for more than 20 years. Students work in teams of three or four under the guidance of a liaison from the sponsoring agency and a faculty advisor. The students prepare a proposal in the fall quarter detailing their plan and a design report…

When the AACSB/EBI Undergraduate Business Exit Survey (Survey) is administered to graduating business students, the results tend to be similar for all participating institutions. Of the 14 areas measured through the Survey, "placement and career services" receives the lowest ratings from students. Because the Survey ratings for graduating College…

The founder of "Teach for America," a nonprofit organization to recruit capable but undirected college seniors for a two-year commitment to teaching, has successfully brought in a corps of graduates with a high level of commitment, academic excellence, varied skills, and a better minority representation to teach in difficult-to-staff…

St. Norbert College's participation in an American Council on Education project on the use of student data for institutional planning and decision-making, and its use of student survey results to make administrative and academic policy changes for program improvement, are outlined and discussed. (MSE)

The use of cognitive social learning theory to help students plan independent study projects is examined and illustrated in the context of a Manchester Metropolitan University (England) senior project program. The theoretical model drawn from the theory focuses on self-regulated learning, and its application emphasizes students' development of…