Background: Nutrition plays a vital role in children's physical and emotional health. More than half of school age children's calories are provided in the school food environment, making school interventions an opportunity to address child nutrition. Methods: The Creating Health Environments for Schools (CHEFS) program is designed to leverage…

This qualitative case study explores student and staff perceptions of whether and how participation in pre-enrollment summer transition programs influenced the sense of belonging and preparedness of first-generation and limited-income students in their first year of college. These summer transition programs are provided as part of the Kessler…

The learning journey toward sustainability requires the generation of action-oriented knowledge to understand the progress and potential adaptation of strategies to facilitate collective transformation. One integral area where advancing these strategies is essential is higher education. While efforts in the field have identified relevant learning…

Participatory evaluation tools have been shown to be effective for program development in various settings, including in higher education. Taking student perspectives into consideration is key for graduate program development, particularly in interdisciplinary programs. The current study utilizes Group Level Assessment (GLA), a participatory…

This article explores the status of student feedback channels and the role of student representatives in the quality assurance and enhancement of Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree (EMJMD) programmes. It provides an analysis of 1941 open-ended survey responses, covering 87 EMJMD programmes and involving respondents of 129 nationalities. The…

Formative assessment is considered to be an evaluation technique that informs the instructor of the level of student learning, giving evidence when it may be necessary for the instructor to make a change in delivery based upon the results. Several theories of formative assessment exist, all which propound the importance of feedback to the student.…

This chapter describes the impact that participation in the Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement had on the institutions of higher learning that applied for the classification. This is described in terms of changes in direct community engagement, monitoring and reporting on community engagement, and levels of student and professor…

The paper demonstrates and evaluates the effectiveness of a blended learning approach to create a meaningful learning environment. We use the term blended learning approach in this paper to refer to the use of multiple or hybrid instructional methods that emphasize the role of learners as contributors to the learning process rather than recipients…

This chapter is a case study of one institution's effort to institutionalize a process through which student development is promoted through active engagement with the community.

Recent decades have seen a proliferation of programs that target first-generation college students, often low-income or minority students, for recruitment to college or that aim to improve campus participation and retention among these populations. Such programs simultaneously address themselves toward academic performance and the conditions of…

This article describes the development of the Dorothy Day Social Justice Community, a sophomore, social justice-focused living-learning community at Marquette University. The authors describe the administration of the community, discuss various elements of the community, and share assessment results. They also detail lessons learned from three…

Postdeployment family reintegration and relationship breakdown among combat veterans has received considerable attention from the Department of Defense and the media. Social interventions have been developed as a family strengthening strategy. In this article, we present a university-Wounded Warrior partnership where a relationship enhancement…

This evaluation study provides descriptive information about the implementation and outcomes of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC) program in West Virginia, from September 2012 through May 2013. The report draws on information from online surveys of directors of 30 CCLC programs and from school teachers for 4,102 participating…

This single case study (Yin, 2009) compares an established urban physical education/ sport/physical activity program with two models: Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program/CSPAP (AAHPERD, 2013; CDC, 2013); and Lawson's propositions (2005) for sport, exercise and physical education for empowerment and community development to determine…

In 2004, the U.S. Department of Education's Policy and Program Studies Service contracted with SRI International and its partner, Policy Studies Associates, to undertake an evaluation of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers. The following evaluation questions informed this study: (1) What is the nature of activities in centers that are…