The strategies used by a variety of colleges to involve alumni in student recruitment efforts are described. These include awards programs, scholarships, talent scouting, college nights, interviewing, special events, and communication with prospective or incoming students. The importance of training and communication in the alumni-recruitment…

Identifies literacy activities that can be used by volunteers to support classroom instruction. Provides a set of guidelines that teachers may give to the volunteers who work with students in need of additional educational opportunities if the students are to meet the challenge of becoming successful, independent readers. (RS)

Responses from high school students were analyzed to identify associations among peer group orientation, voluntary service, and civic engagement measures. Specific crowd types were constructed through cluster analysis of reputational group activities and described as school, disengaged, all-around, fun, and average. Findings support the theory of…

This research project evaluated outcomes for a leadership development program utilizing adult volunteers who worked with youth to incorporate experiential learning and civic engagement opportunities. As a result, this experience exposed youth to practical skills as well as a chance to develop a sense of community connectedness. This was revealed…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of women donors who had given a significant gift to a large Midwestern university. In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 women donor participants that were not alumni, not married to alumni and had no children attending the selected university. These participants…

The purpose of this study is to investigate relevant factors in adolescents' decision-making when presented with opportunities to participate in civic and political activities. Sixty-one CA high school seniors were presented with hypothetical scenarios in which a young person is asked to give up time to participate in activities to address issues…

In 1996 President Clinton established the America Reads Challenge Act (1997), which included a commitment that every child will read independently and well by the end of third grade. This initiative was predicated on links between achievement and poverty (Riley, 1996, 2002) and that children reading below grade level in the early grades perform…

School sector and educational context seem to make a difference in civic socialization. There is limited knowledge, however, of the mechanisms through which socialization may occur in public and private schools, and the extent to which they have any lasting effect. Does the private school effect on civic socialization persist into young adulthood,…

Effectively addressing student behavior, learning, and emotional problems requires greater attention to transforming what transpires in classrooms. To this end, student support staff and others who can help need to spend more time teaming with teachers in the classroom. To support such efforts, the Center for Mental Health in Schools has developed…

Giving to charities comes in two major forms: time and money. This study explores whether donors/nondonors and volunteers/nonvolunteers can be uncovered in the Taiwanese context using demographic, socio-economic, psychographic, and attitudinal variables suggested by the interdisciplinary literature. Data were collected by a large-scale telephone…

Each year in the United States, millions of students experience suspension from public schools (Mendez & Knoff, 2003). Community service programs provide one means to address the school suspension problem. These initiatives are characterized by volunteer service placements within community nonprofit organizations for skill and personal…

Classroom volunteers such as parents, preservice teachers, or community members often help provide support to teachers and their students as a way of giving back to their community or to meet college requirements for service learning or field experience hours. Because these visitors are often unable to be present in the class daily, it may be…

At our university about 40% of the full-time faculty members are 55 years of age or older, which led me to consider what a difference they could make in this world if, upon retirement, they used their knowledge, skills, and talents to benefit others. Four dimensions that can serve to differentiate effective from ineffective educators and people…

Knowing is an enacted, communicated process that is difficult to observe, let alone manage, in organizations. Communities of practice (CoPs) offer a productive solution for improving knowledge and knowledge management, but the communicative processes that enact CoPs have not been explored, leaving CoPs as an organizational black box. This research…

Social workers in diverse community practice settings recruit and work with volunteers from religious congregations. This article reports findings from two surveys: 7,405 congregants in 35 Protestant congregations, including 2,570 who were actively volunteering, and a follow-up survey of 946 volunteers. It compares characteristics of congregation…