Alumni mentoring in social work allows students to connect with experienced practitioners in a nonevaluative context and for alumni to strengthen university connections. This study describes and evaluates one established student-alumni mentoring program. Pretest (n=277) and posttest (n=153) data were collected from participants across 3 years.…

Background: Youth violence is a significant problem affecting community health. Community-academic partnerships can advance youth nonviolence education by synergizing the strengths of collaborators while working toward a common goal. We describe a collaboration between an urban public middle school, community nonprofit, and university-based…

The Fit Family Challenge, a web-based healthy lifestyle program, was developed to motivate families to participate in more physical activity by tracking their behaviors and by providing them with educational materials and community events to attend with their families. This article is an account of the steps taken and the efforts needed to make a…

This article describes the Social Entrepreneurship for Poverty Alleviation (SEPA) grant-writing program at Austin College. The SEPA program provides a service-learning experience in which students spend a summer writing grants with local nonprofit agencies. In the hope that others might choose to emulate our efforts, what follows is a detailed…

Background: Participatory architecture can promote dialogue across cultures while working together to create physical outputs. A team of academics with a background in architecture, psychology and health sciences evaluated a participatory architecture workshop in Southern Italy as part of the Crossing Cultures project. The goal was to explore…

Higher education institutions are in a great position to create authentic programming to support local underfunded or underperforming public school districts. This article gives an overview of an education outreach collaborative between a 4-year public university, local schools, and a community institution and highlights lessons learned from the…

In an effort to fully understand the impact of campus-community partnerships, and the programs that compose them, our research team has conducted action research over the course of the last 10 years. In particular, we have conducted this research on the partnership we operate, Husky Sport, focused on how its programs influence the behaviors and…

Swimming is considered by many to be a significant form of physical activity with many health benefits. Few opportunities exist for African American youth to participate in programs focused on providing developmentally appropriate swim instruction, due in part to a lack of aquatic facilities and programs in urban schools and communities. In an…

This chapter describes the impact of an alternative spring break program on students at the Savannah College of Art and Design over a set of years as well as its effectiveness as a service-learning tool.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' (CMS) Parent University is an innovative, collaborative initiative designed to engage parents in their children's education. Working with community partners, Parent University offers unique courses and workshops such as Parenting Awareness, Helping Your Child Learn in the 21st Century, Health and Wellness, and…

This report serves as a legacy document for the Ford Foundation's More and Better Learning Time (MBLT) initiative. It summarizes the approaches to and outcomes and challenges of successful MBLT strategies around the country. The report includes data from a survey for Ford Foundation MBLT grantees across the country and from case studies in Denver,…

The Learning Partnership (TLP) initiated a Family and Community Engagement Strategy (FACES) initiative in three Ontario communities to foster active and responsive relationships among community partners and enhanced family engagement in transitions to school. A case study research design, grounded in participatory action research, was used to…

Service-learning has become a popular method for connecting the theory taught in undergraduate methods courses with real-world practice in the field while also promoting volunteerism. It exposes undergraduates to relevant learning experiences and provides them with an opportunity to apply their skills in the service of others who are in need. One…

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…

There is a need within health, physical education, recreation, dance, and sport programs to increase community engagement via experiential learning. The Chase Charlie Races are presented in this article as a model pedagogical strategy to engage community youths and families in a training program and running event to help promote fitness. Key…