Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the retention of African American students at predominately White colleges and universities continues to be problematic. Although many of these institutions have implemented retention programs for African American students, few have incorporated a comprehensive program that utilizes multi-program…

The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) is a nonprofit national association representing more than 2,500 individual members as well as 685 graduate and undergraduate programs of professional social work education. Founded in 1952, this partnership of educational and professional institutions, social welfare agencies, and private citizens is…

Libraries frequently apply for grants to help fund special projects and resources, such as purchases for library collections, innovative instructional technologies, and research subscription databases. Grants provide support for cultural events, professional development sessions, new construction, and building renovations. Like other library…

Community is important to many institutions of higher learning, but it is very difficult to imagine Berea College disconnected from its primary community--the Appalachian region. Since its mid-nineteenth-century beginning as a radical experiment in interracial education and coeducation centered in community, the college has been dedicated to…

At our small business college, we believe that next to serving the students, the most important thing we as librarians can do is serve as liaisons to the faculty. If the faculty is tuned in to the library, it is more likely he or she will use library resources and will teach students about them. This will provide a more effective education for the…

At the heart of Maria Montessori's philosophy is the idea of providing the child with the most supportive environment in which to develop one's potential, for the singular purpose of carrying out one's cosmic task. Montessori teachers everywhere dedicate their energies to participating in this endeavor. But do these same teachers take time to…

This essay offers (1) a brief overview of how various sociological theories articulate the relationship of the individual to society; and (2) an analysis of community and self from a symbolic interactionist perspective in which the focus lies on the "webs of interaction" that shape music schooling as a field in which networks of groups of…

Efforts to improve educational attainment are hampered by the high school dropout crisis. At a time when governors are calling for changes to improve higher education access and success, more than 1 million youth ages 16 to 19 are not enrolled in school and do not have a high school diploma. Each year, an additional 390,000 youth drop out of…

This article describes a model designed to engage very high-risk pregnant and parenting young mothers who are not traditionally served by home visiting or other young parent programs. These disengaged young mothers do not live in stable environments: they are street or gang involved, in danger of dropping out of school or have already dropped out,…

Independent schools have significantly increased their public purpose commitments over the past decade. Their initiatives carry them beyond community service to broader school engagement with their communities. Articles in this magazine by Al Adams and others, the creation of school organizations that serve the broader community, and the growth of…

A recent report points to the potential of the community school movement to concentrate resources in impoverished rural schools and build effective partnerships between the community and school. According to "The Rural Solution: How Community Schools Can Reinvigorate Rural Education," community schools might be the most economically feasible way…

Thirty-five years after independence the Mozambican illiteracy rate has been reduced from 93% to just over 50% according to official statistics. Although this indicates an enormous achievement in the area of education, the challenge of today still is to design appropriate adult basic education programmes including literacy, numeracy and life…

Access to culturally competent HIV/AIDS and substance abuse treatment and prevention services is limited for Asian and Pacific Islanders (APIs). Based on the intake data for a community outreach project in the San Francisco Bay Area (N = 1,349), HIV risk behaviors were described among the targeted API risk groups. The self-reported HIV prevalence…

This article describes the Health Sciences and Technology Academy, an outreach and engagement program by West Virginia University to encourage higher education faculty members and administrators, public school teachers, and community leaders to assume the responsibility of mentoring high school students. The primary goal is to increase the college…

The Community Outreach Centre (COC) is part of the Community Development portfolio in the Division of Student Affairs at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. It opened in fall 2007 as a resource and support centre for students who live off campus. The overarching goal of the centre is to cultivate community among off-campus students…