This report describes the activities and accomplishments of Austin Independent School District's (AISD's) CARES team during the second year of implementation, school year 2019-2020. Highlights include how CARES team members were able to: maintain and in many cases exceed high-quality standards, continue progress monitoring, and provide support and…

Institutions of higher education invest time and money directing cocurricular programs that allow students to formally engage in the local community. Community-service learning is one type of program recently dubbed "high impact" (Kuh, 2008). However, it is not enough to simply refer to a program as "high impact": it is…

California, which has some 2.8 million students on its public higher education campuses, is taking steps to reduce the gap between students' need for mental health treatment and their use of mental health services. Beginning in 2011, as part of a statewide initiative to improve mental health outcomes for all Californians, the California Mental…

Leadership theory is one of the most complex groups of theories to teach management students; nevertheless, it is the one of the most interesting and often desired topics to learn from students. Many organizations are seeking soft skills that are commonly discussed in leadership theory such as building relationships with followers, taking…

Teacher preparation programs have both a desire and a responsibility to demonstrate, with affirmative evidence, that teacher education makes a difference in PreK-12 student learning. Program faculty need good data to make decisions about the progress of students, whom to recommend for state licensure, and how to improve teacher education. This…

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…

This report describes the policies and programs implemented and reported through an institutional survey undertaken by Association of American Universities (AAU) member universities to prevent and respond to campus sexual assault and misconduct. Fifty-five of the 62 leading research universities that comprise AAU's membership completed the survey,…

Program evaluation is a process of carefully collecting information in order to make informed decisions to strengthen specific components of a given program. The type of evaluation an institution decides to undertake depends on the purpose as well as on the information the institution wants to find out about its program. Self-evaluation represents…

Each year, Austin Independent School District Department of Research and Evaluation (DRE) staff develop a plan of work to describe the scope of work for the coming year. The plans that make up this document identify programs to be evaluated and services to be provided by DRE staff and provide the blueprints for evaluation that staff will follow…

What better way to engage young students in physical science concepts than to have them engineer flying toy rockets? The integration of engineering into science classrooms is advocated by the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS) and researchers alike (Brophy et al. 2008), as engineering provides: (1) A "real-world…

This paper presents the use of simple, outcome-based assessment tools to design and evaluate the first semester of a new introductory laboratory program created to teach green analytical chemistry using environmental samples. This general chemistry laboratory program, like many introductory courses, has a wide array of stakeholders within and…

"Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Constitution" is an engaged-learning activity that has been conducted in 26 classes over the past four years. The activity teaches multiple themes commonly included in a variety of courses on American politics such as federalism, congressional powers, the role of the federal courts, and the relevance of the commerce…

Each year, Austin Independent School District Department of Research and Evaluation (DRE) staff develop a plan of work to describe the scope of work for the coming year. The plans that make up this document identify programs to be evaluated and services to be provided by DRE staff and provide the blueprints for evaluation that staff will follow…

In the human services professions, cultural immersion experiences help satisfy multicultural training standards established by national accreditation bodies. Immersion in a culturally sensitive manner is necessary as we prepare professionals to work with and serve citizens of the globe. The authors describe an international cultural immersion…

Each year, Austin Independent School District Department of Research and Evaluation (DRE) staff develop a plan of work to describe the scope of work for the coming year. The plans that make up this document identify programs to be evaluated and services to be provided by DRE staff and provide the blueprints for evaluation that staff will follow…