Describes the positive mental, physical, and social growth impacts that the camping experience had on the author, and urges camp program evaluation to plan and implement such changes. Sidebar lists steps of effective evaluation: program goals and objectives, goals of evaluation, implementation of evaluation, data analysis, and findings and…

Individual differences shape the needs and characteristics of proteges, the processes through which mentoring may influence proteges' developmental trajectories, and the social networks into which the mentors enter. The literature on the influences of gender, ethnicity, and age on mentoring is reviewed and discussed as examples of how mentoring…

Peter Senge's (1990) theory of organizational change includes teams that perceive the whole of the organization; grow professionally; navigate short- and long-term organizational experiences through exposed mental models; share a vision; and hear each voice in an ongoing communal learning process. The Margaret Sue Copenhaver Institute for Teaching…

Community participation in program decision-making and implementation is an ideal that community and academic stakeholders aspire to in participatory research. This ideal, however, can be difficult to achieve. We describe lessons learned about community participation from a quasi-experimental trial aimed at reducing the uptake of smoking among…

This article reports on school staff's and occupational health nurses' development project (2001-2004), which aimed to promote school staff's occupational wellbeing by activities to maintain the ability to work in 12 comprehensive schools in Finland. The effects of the project were evaluated based on a follow-up study questionnaire presented to…

Objective: At the University of California, Davis (UCD), the authors sought to develop an institutional network of reflective educational leaders. The authors wanted to enhance faculty understanding of medical education's complexity, and improve educators' effectiveness as regional/national leaders. Methods: The UCD Teaching Scholars Program is a…

This chapter describes a model that can serve as a lens for examining community college partnerships with a host of organizational collaborators, the overall potential for achieving intended outcomes, sustainability, and partner benefits. (Contains 1 figure.)

Because children who are deaf or hard of hearing are being identified at birth, fitted with advanced hearing technology, and enrolled in early intervention programs, families increasingly seek professionals who can provide services that support their choice of listening and spoken language. The increased demand for these services and shortages of…

The John Tracy Clinic (JTC) has a long history in the development and implementation of distance education courses for parents. It began with the founder of JTC, Louise Tracy, who personally corresponded with parents of young children with hearing loss around the globe to provide them hope, guidance, and encouragement. Mrs. Tracy's correspondence…

This paper describes early outcomes of a Sacramento, California, elementary school that participated in the Accelerated Schools Project. The school, which serves many minority and poor students, began training for the project in 1992. Accelerated Schools were designed to advance the learning rate of students through a gifted and talented approach,…

Clemson University is addressing the related issues of: (1) how to integrate writing in courses throughout the curriculum; and (2) how to assess students' writing ability as well as the impact of assessment programs on that ability. Since 1990, the responsibility for addressing these two goals has been assumed by the Pearce Center for Professional…

These two evaluation updates cover segments of the third phase of the Apprenticeship Training Materials Clearinghouse project, which is being conducted at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon. The first update evaluates activities related to the following project objectives: conduct a field test on clearinghouse services; revise the model…

In fall 1991, a steering committee originally consisting of six senior citizens from the rural Last Mountain area of Saskatchewan coordinated the development of three extension courses designed primarily for senior citizens. The courses, which were in creative writing, computers, and the history of Saskatchewan, were developed under a grant and…

In determining a vocational program's effectiveness through a follow-up study, attention should be given to: (1) gathering data on comparison groups, (2) specifying the degree of relatedness between vocational training and employment, and (3) obtaining feedback from the employer. (Author/BP)

A practicum study was planned and implemented by a working mother for the purpose of developing a child care resource and referral agency in an eastern metropolitan area. The objective of the practicum was to increase the number of child care referrals available to working families by 10 percent over a 10-week period. Of the 110 surveys mailed to…