Examines the progress that Oklahoma State University has made in its community engagement and outreach efforts in the last few decades, and discusses faculty issues that must be addressed to sustain and nourish such efforts and to illustrate the value of an integrated relationship between instruction, research, and outreach. (MSE)

Explains the benefits of pediatric literacy programs. Discusses forming partnerships, training volunteers, role of the children's librarian in building coalitions with community organizations, fundraising and free publicity, and working with doctors' busy schedules. Includes addresses and phone numbers for the "Born to Read" and "Reach Out and…

Discusses the future outlook for reference librarians, with topics including: "Technology as the Source of Change"; "Impact of the Internet"; "Defining the Virtual Library"; "Rethinking Reference"; "Out of the Library and into the Streets"; "Asking Users About Their Needs"; "Standardization and Artificial Intelligence"; "The Financial Future"; and…

This paper seeks to dispel misconceptions about home-schooled children--that they are brainwashed, poorly socialized, or receive poor education. Public libraries can serve the needs of this user group by increasing staff awareness of both the Christian and the "unschooling" philosophical camps, keeping communication lines open about…

Advocacy in illness and aging is a formidable challenge. Provides an uncommon but reasonable framework for freeing clinicians, educators, and helping professionals from their own ideas which periodically are rendered problematic in providing successful intervention. Several illustrations of these practical problems are presented. Some postures for…

Profiles a case study of a Puerto Rican community in New England to determine how natural support systems and human service organizations within the community influence substance abuse program development. Provides recommendations for community-based substance abuse programs. (SNR)

Discusses how meaningful family involvement can enhance the efforts of early childhood teachers. Presents suggestions for creating inviting attitudes and environments. Identifies how schools and families benefit from family involvement. Describes ways to fund and staff family learning centers in schools. Asserts that parent outreach is the key to…

Describes Learning Support Services at the University of Houston, which developed and conducted a training program on academic success counseling. Practicum trainees counseled students, about one-half of whom were at-risk students (under 2.0 GPA), in a learning center effort to improve retention and graduation rates at the university. The…

Peer education is a critical approach to HIV prevention. The current study evaluated 156 peer outreach educators 6 months after their 10-session training. Specifically, we examined factors associated with talking to network members about HIV-related topics as well as distributing risk reduction materials. Overall, current drug users were less…

The use of Cohort Default Rate (CDR) as the primary measure of student loan defaults among undergraduates was investigated. The study used data extracted from the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS), quantitative analysis of Likert-scale survey responses from 153 student financial aid professionals on proposed changes to present metrics and…

Parental involvement in schools is a national priority for both educators and researchers to promote the successful schooling of contemporary youth. Contemporary parental involvement research has produced some promising findings, but parental involvement efforts with inner-city African Americans are currently limited by problems of research…

A zoo outreach program led to placing animals in classrooms where those animals became foci for numerous learning activities such as writing, observing, and care. Systematic debriefings suggested uniqueness to learning outcomes connected to zoo animals. Subsequent analysis of student writing indicated that students responded to situational…

This article discusses the Hawai'i Student Film Festival (HSFF) which is more than an annual festival. It also facilitates nine, year-round, student outreach programs that are available to more than 400 public and private schools statewide. Through these programs, HSFF offers a wide array of film and video opportunities and experiences for…

The tremendous expansion of online information sources has prompted academic librarians to increase their outreach to undergraduates of the "Net Generation" in an effort to more effectively promote their libraries' resources to these students. Such outreach programs involve identifying library resources that support the…

The No Child Left Behind Act requires school districts to communicate with parents in an "understandable and uniform format ... in a language that parents can understand." But with a student population representing 131 countries and speaking 81 major languages, the Cobb County, Ga., Public School District was finding it difficult to meet…