Youth are in the cross-fire of gun violence, and the highest rate in the nation is in Flint, Michigan. This article highlights six innovative strategies that prepare youth to solve problems at home and in their communities in peaceful ways. The Michigan Youth Violence Prevention Center (MI-YVPC) works with community groups to strengthen…

This article provides an overview of current practice and essential infrastructure of campus community engagement centers in their efforts to establish and advance community engagement as part of the college experience. The authors identified key characteristics and the prevalence of activities of community engagement centers at engaged campuses…

Given the mounting call for academic achievement gains in America's public schools--particularly urban schools labeled "failing"--the need for community engagement to tackle a host of underlying social challenges warrants the resources of the nation's colleges and universities (Harkavy & Hartley, 2009). Because colleges and…

This paper outlines a case study of an assessment development process which contrasts with more recent "top-down" trends in assessment which tend to leave assessment development processes opaque to users. This paper describes the processes of a collaborative, multi-agency project which set out to develop an assessment framework which…

Community colleges are disproportionally over-enrolled with both low income students and students of color, while four-year institutions are under-enrolled with the same groups. The vast majority of these students enter the community college with a goal of transferring to the four-year institutions they were unable to access from high school, yet…

This study explores how university students (i.e., undergraduate and graduate students) participating in a place-based outreach program practiced teaching strategies on four field trips. The outreach program, Learning in Place-Based Environments (LPBE), provided opportunities for the university students to teach fifth grade students about place,…

Youth literacy and life skills, especially for vulnerable youth who have left school or never received a formal education, should be a policy priority to secure the full participation of young people in society and to ensure peaceful and sustainable development. This document assesses the complex challenge of designing policy for vulnerable youth.…

This article describes an innovative model for teaching gerontological social work that has been introduced into the social work methods curriculum in the Department of Social Work at a college in northern Israel. The basic concept of the model is to create an alternative learning environment by including older persons as full participants in the…

In order to foster educational resilience in children who face adversity, adults need a clear grasp of which factors are most relevant and motivating for these children. This study asked 50 children (ages eight to 12) who face serious life difficulties to share their perspectives on which factors support academic performance and how those factors…

The authors explore the importance of developing professional behavior among business students and introduce a program designed to incentivize professionalism during undergraduate study. The Professionalism Recognition Program was established to promote, recognize, rate, and reward the students' professional conduct in a flexible and widely…

This article examines an ongoing university-community relationship that fuses innovative technology delivery, university-outreach research, and social work practice/research education into a unique, collaborative intervention to reduce homelessness. In doing so, we apply a social justice framework to homelessness, arguing that housing is a right…

Extension educators have new computer-assisted tools as audience response systems (clickers) for increasing educational effectiveness and improving assessment by facilitating client input. From 2010-2012, 26 sessions involving 1093 participants in six diverse client categories demonstrated wide audience acceptance and suitability of clickers in…

To remain globally competitive and increase the number of young people completing two- and four-year college degrees, America needs to expand access to higher education and focus attention on the success of those who enroll. Expertise in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) will be particularly important for maintaining a…

In the human services professions, cultural immersion experiences help satisfy multicultural training standards established by national accreditation bodies. Immersion in a culturally sensitive manner is necessary as we prepare professionals to work with and serve citizens of the globe. The authors describe an international cultural immersion…

Although the literature on institutional civic engagement within higher education is quite extensive, the community perspective on such endeavors remains an underdeveloped area of study. This is particularly true of outreach programs emanating from the university intended to support college preparation of underrepresented students. The purpose of…