In the past, Southern California's library access services professionals in higher education had to travel across the country for professional development and networking opportunities, but this is no longer the case. Now, through California Library Access Services South (CLASS), Southern California's Access Services professionals can network,…

In central Texas and regions across the country, community leaders are calling for university-community engagement, including development of structures for community-based research and service learning. Including the community in decision making regarding continuing professional education serves as a link between universities such as Texas A&M…

Developing an Open Access, multi-institutional, multilingual, international digital library requires robust technological and institutional infrastructures that support both the needs of individual institutions alongside the needs of the growing partnership and ensure continuous communication and development of the shared vision for the digital…

Mainstreaming Environment and Sustainability in African Universities Partnership (MESA) is a programme which grew out of the coming together, in 2004, of a number of African universities met with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), UNESCO and several African regional environment and education projects to assess the status of…

The United Nations University-Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) has launched an initiative to build academic alliances among leading universities in the Asia-Pacific area to promote the sustainability paradigm in postgraduate education and research. The initiative, still in its formative stages, is called ProSPER.Net, which stands for…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce the case of the cross-border RCE Rhine-Meuse established as the first Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE) on Education for Sustainable Development in Europe. RCE Rhine-Meuse is an initiative of two institutions of higher education in the South of The Netherlands, but reaching out to the German and…

In Japan, environmental education partnerships among citizens, businesses and local government increased since new legislation was introduced in 2003, but there was little evidence of cross-sector collaboration until recently. Nagoya Open University of the Environment is a highly innovative, multi-sectoral citizen learning system founded in 2005…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the role that the University of Toronto has had in helping to establish a Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE) on Education for Sustainable Development in Toronto, Canada. The way in which the RCE initiative has helped to move forward the university's own five-year plan will also be discussed.…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and RCE-Barcelona in the context of two organisations with a strategic aim to further Education for Sustainable Development. A special emphasis is put in the role that UPC has had in the creation and development of this project,…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the unique collaborative process initiated at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada, to develop a Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE) on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) through the United Nations University-Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS). Design/methodology/approach:…

The papers presented in this paper accompany a core report about the Appalachian Math Science Partnership (AMSP) entitled "The Appalachian Math Science Partnership: A Multi-State Umbrella Partnership Promoting Local Mathematics and Science Reform Report." Each of them focuses on an especially effective strategy or component of the AMSP…

The Appalachian Math Science Partnership (AMSP) is a project within NSF's (National Science Foundation's) Math Science Partnerships (MSP) initiative. Funded at $23 million over five years, the AMSP involved 51 school districts and nine higher education institutions in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. The AMSP faced two significant challenges in…

The authors discuss the joining of 12 Virginia community colleges from the Appalachian region of southwestern Virginia with Radford University to form the Regional Technology Education Consortium (RTEC), a three-year project funded by the National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education program and designed to develop articulation…

In the context of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), United Nations University (UNU) initiated the creation of a network of Regional Centres of Expertise (RCEs) for Education for Sustainable Development. This paper describes the philosophy behind the activities performed by one of those RCEs, RCE Rhine-Meuse, an RCE…

The mission of the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) was to build a long-term capacity that would improve the educational structures of the rural communities it served. The major strategy ARSI used to create improvement communities across Appalachia was to identify, embrace and educate individual teachers, who became ARSI Teacher…