The United States Coast Guard Academy has integrated a successful senior-level ship design course sequence into an undergraduate engineering curriculum in order to achieve specifically desired academic and professional outcomes. The Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering (NAME) curriculum discussed is designed to allow for efficient use of…

This report is designed to pull together the data that are available on the status of blacks in undergraduate education for use in initiating methods to improve the allocation of human resources in science and engineering in the United States. The listings and tabulations used data from the CASPAR data base and the High School and Beyond…

This guide to college major fields of study informs users about the array of undergraduate majors and common features of those majors. Following a discussion of how to use the book and essays by actual college students on how they chose a major, the guide describes 151 majors grouped in the following 17 categories: agriculture; architecture and…

Mock negotiations are used as part of an undergraduate course in international business management at Lebanon Valley College (Pennsylvania) in order to introduce students to the process of negotiating for advantage in foreign countries and to emphasize the importance of an individual nation's customs, culture, and ways of transacting business in…

Focus group discussions were held to determine the perceptions of 8 male and 28 female adult students regarding the quality of their undergraduate evening program at a medium-sized public liberal arts college. The students voluntarily participated in one of three group sessions at which the following topics were discussed: whether evening students…

This proceedings contains the text or abstracts of presentations made at a conference on undergraduate psychology instruction. The following presentations are included: (1) "Good Testing: An Analysis of Classroom Context," by Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen; (2) "The Portfolio as a Teaching and Evaluation Tool," by Mary Kay Reed; (3) "Improving Student…

This paper discusses the emergence and the establishment of new educational programs in universities by describing a theoretical approach and reporting an empirical study of the development of one interdisciplinary department (the Institute for Media and Communication) at the University of Oslo (Norway). It is argued that the emergence of new…

This book addresses the problem of the future of Germanics as a field of study at colleges and universities in the United States. It is noted that the study of Germanics has been losing tens of thousands of students for the past 25 years, that this slide downward is no longer attracting enough attention from the Germanics community, and if it…

Opinions on undergraduate psychology programs were obtained from 348 psychology alumni who graduated between 1978 and 1988, and from 101 psychology faculty who taught during this same period on eight campuses of California State University. Twenty items reflecting student development and eight items measuring program quality were factor analyzed…

This book analyzes and discusses what is currently known about the benefits and costs of assessment programs for institutions of higher education. It is designed to provide a framework that can be applied by both institutional and state-level academic administrators as they consider which kinds of assessment approaches best fit their own needs and…

This paper presents the results of a study of 1,053 institutions that revealed several beliefs and trends among chief academic officers about improving undergraduate education. Among the beliefs and trends discovered are the following: (1) most commonly reported academic practices for undergraduate educational improvement were faculty recruitment,…

The writing across the curriculum movement is discussed in six articles. Barbara Leigh Smith's introductory article, "Writing Across the Curriculum: What's at Stake?" reviews the rationale for this movement, including the declining emphasis on writing in high schools and colleges. In the "Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and the…

Experiential learning has proved a useful tool in adding meaning to an undergraduate course in the problems of aging and delivery of long-term care. Sensory deprivation and institutionalization commonly experienced by the elderly can be simulated. The response to this educational process increased the students' understanding of sensory…

Designed to bridge the gap between theory and application in undergraduate social sciences, the Lila Acheson Wallace School of Community Service and Public Affairs was established in 1967 at the University of Oregon. Its program is outlined including the four professional training programs and the interdisciplinary and field instruction…

The personal teaching objectives of a national sample of college and university teaching faculty during the 1972-1973 academic year are contrasted with the goals that they attribute to their institutions. A greater emphasis on vocational and community services goals are projected for future sociological training. [Available from American…