This document shares valuable insights from peer mentorship programs at institutions that participated in APLU's Powered by Publics initiative and serves as a comprehensive resource for other institutions aiming to develop or enhance similar initiatives. By showcasing best practices, case examples, and practical recommendations, this report aims…

Unequitable representation among students of color in higher education remains a persisting challenge. For the few racially and ethnically diverse individuals that make it into college, they are faced with numerous adversities that impede their ability to succeed academically and socially at their institutions, therefore lowering their sense of…

Classrooms nationwide welcome a diverse group of learners. A goal, and an achievable one, is to recognize this unique diversity on a whole child spectrum and to strive to customize learning to meet individual needs. Critical to this process is for teachers to have at hand research that connects factors of learning in a holistic way. It is equally…

Across the country, colleges are opening their doors to students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. At University of Rochester (UR), we coordinate one such initiative called "Transition Opportunities at University of Rochester (TOUR)." Inclusive higher education at UR is based on the philosophy that ACCESS + SUPPORT =…

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…

Classroom voting can be an effective way to stimulate student discussions. In this pedagogy, the instructor poses a multiple-choice question to the class, and then allows a few minutes for consideration and small-group discussion before students vote, either with clickers, cell phones, or a non-electronic method. After the vote the instructor…

We describe the design and implementation of an undergraduate peer mentor program that can overlay an existing general chemistry laboratory and is designed to improve STEM student retention. For the first four freshman cohorts going through the program, year-to-year retention improved by a four-year average of 20% for students in peer-mentored…

Business educators are concerned with integrating diversity-related topics and seek methods by which to teach them. This paper suggests that as classes become more heterogeneous, the opportunity to examine diverse perspectives and experiences naturally arises in the course of class assignments and activities. The differential experiences of…

This article explores the importance of social bonds in facilitating an investment in prosocial behavior amongst female prisoners working as HIV peer educators. Female prisoners can lack strong prosocial attachments to both individuals and institutions prior to incarceration. Absent this bond, little prevents the female prisoner from recidivating.…

Mentors rarely receive education about the unique needs of underrepresented scholars in the biomedical and behavioral sciences. We hypothesized that mentor-training and peer-mentoring interventions for these scholars would enrich the perceived quality and breadth of discussions between mentor-protégé dyads (i.e., mentor-protégé pairs). Our…

Self-esteem is vital to a law-abiding lifestyle and serves to promote successful rehabilitative and reintegrative outcomes, particularly for female offenders often plagued by low levels of self-worth. Prison-based program administrators have the opportunity to achieve their intended programmatic goals while offenders are incarcerated, in addition…

The Peer Enabled Restructured Classroom (PERC) is an instructional innovation developed to address gaps in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in urban high schools. The PERC model changes instruction from teacher led to peer led by bringing peer students into the classroom to lead small-group work. Our study sought to provide…

Good mentoring of graduate students influences their perseverance and success to completion, whereas bad mentoring can result in negative outcomes, including delayed degree completion or non-completion. What the authors refer to as the gray zone is that which falls between good and bad mentoring. Examples are partial mentoring or changes in…

Remedial mathematics at the college level has evidenced strikingly low retention and passing rates. It has been shown that at least 25% of the variation in student performance is explained by students' affective variables such as attitudes, study skills, and mathematics anxiety. This study endeavored to address affective variables by: (a)…

This mixed methods counterbalanced study compared the gain score means of two different approaches to vocabulary acquisition--Vocabulary Theater (VT) and Teacher Directed Instruction (TDI) for 8th grade students from three schools in New York. The purpose of the study was to explore the effects of a peer teaching approach on students' vocabulary…