To assist college business officers in developing a distance education approach, addresses four questions: (1) Why pay attention to distance education? (2) How might distance education be structured at your institution? (3) What role should you play in distance education? (4) What risk do you take by not becoming involved? (EV)

Discusses how an employee services manager could not find qualified applicants to serve as temporary supervisors in Mead's manufacturing plant during the busy season. Describes the challenge Mead faced in its internship program, the corporation's commitment to education, the program, outcomes of the program, unanticipated benefits, and elements…

Explores possible causes of low durability and impact for minority mentoring programs. Recommends designing such programs with a conceptual base to ensure meaningful goals and practices. Emphasizes designing programs based on a cogent definition of mentoring, reflection on roles within mentoring relationships, and consideration of cultural and…

How do you make something better? This is a fundamental question of professional development the national network of Young Audiences (YA) undertook to answer about its artist residency programs. The basic question assumes that those asking the question know what the "something" is, how effective it is in its current state, and what "it" is…

This case study outlines an approach to design a career development program for university students using an adaptation of "the wheel" (Amundson & Poehnell, 2004). Ten elements of the model are listed and some of the key questions, tools and strategies that support each element of the model are highlighted. Its application in a variety of group…

Research on mentoring in higher education is increasingly widespread. This article aims to provide insight into different kinds of mentoring programs and the research conducted to determine the effectiveness of these programs. A review of the literature revealed multiple definitions of what mentoring means, how programs operate, and types of…

In the spring of 2005, the author designed and taught a graduate-level course on digital game-based learning primarily for teachers. Teachers cannot be expected to embrace digital games as a tool for learning unless they have a sound understanding of the potential as well as the limitations, and are confident in their ability to use games…

After-school education programs for at-risk students are often implemented to increase academic performance and college readiness. This article explores the terms "out-of-school" and "after-school" related to college preparation programs and suggests that these programs should consider attendance, participation and intensity to impact a student's…

Tying teachers' pay to their classroom performance should, says Victor Lavy, improve the current educational system both by clarifying teaching goals and by attracting and retaining the most productive teachers. But implementing pay for performance poses many practical challenges, because measuring individual teachers' performance is difficult.…

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Graduate Education Initiative (GEI) provided funding to 54 departments in the humanities and related social sciences during the 1990s to improve their PhD programs. This article estimates the aspects of PhD programs the GEI influenced and how these aspects influenced attrition and graduation probabilities. It uses…

Joseph Zins was a forerunner in empirically demonstrating the interrelationship of SEL interventions and school success. This commentary highlights his perspectives on the accumulating body of evidence for the academic gains that have been associated with various SEL interventions and aims to show how new research methodologies can further extend…

A recent report published by the National Center on Performance Incentives (NCPI) presents findings from the second-year of a multi-year evaluation of the Texas Educator Excellence Grant (TEEG) program, a statewide educator incentive program that operated in Texas. As part of this larger study, evaluators examined how participation in the TEEG…

This volume reports on innovative, useful evaluation work conducted within U.S. college foreign language programs. An introductory chapter scopes out the territory, reporting key findings from research into the concerns, impetuses, and uses for evaluation that FL educators identify. Seven chapters then highlight examples of evaluations conducted…

In this report, the author shares her perspective on ten years of science-rich programming for high school youth at the American Museum of Natural History. This report includes: (1) A discussion of the theory of action and the rationale that underlies the AMNH youth programs; (2) A description of three of the programs that have been offered and…

This chapter considers the design of incentive pay systems for teachers and principals and the challenges facing policy makers who seek to design them. The author argues that policy makers must direct the efforts of teachers and principals toward schools' mission--the acquisition of skills and knowledge among children--and must find ways to link…