The programs of the Rutgers' Center for Family Involvement in Schools create a partnership for learning between families and schools that promotes and enhances academic success. They also create a powerful school climate that demonstrates respect, trust, and belonging. In addition to teacher-training programs, the center conducts summer leadership…

Project "Green Footprint" is a local community environment project created by fifth-grade students to remind the citizens of their school (and Earth) to tread lightly on Mother Nature's creations. The students chose to focus on the air quality outside the school, specifically the carbon emissions produced by idling cars. Students complete Internet…

It may seem something of a paradox that in a globalised age where notions of interdependence, interconnectedness and common destinies abound, the "local", with its diversity of cultures, languages, histories and geographies, continues to exercise a powerful grip on the human imagination. The ties that bind us have global connections but…

This article describes the author's reflections on a service-learning course at Penn State Lehigh Valley, a campus of The Pennsylvania State University. The author provides background about the university, the community need, and the service-learning course. Reflections from assessing two semesters of the service-learning course are provided.

This article offers a dialogic engagement with Fielding & Moss's "Radical Education and the Common School" (2011). First, the author puts forward a critical and reflective narrative on the process in the London Borough of Waltham Forest to create a strategic children and young people plan, which she cautiously proposes is an attempt…

The National Institute on Aging created the Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research (RCMARs) to address infrastructure development intended to reduce health disparities among older adults. The overall goals of the RCMARs are to (a) increase the size of the cadre of researchers conducting research on issues related to minority aging; (b)…

Few studies have observed what teachers actually do in the classroom to encourage parental involvement in their children's education. Over the school year, the various teaching practices and strategies of two teachers in an inner-city elementary school that has had public recognition in its efforts to involve parents were gathered through…

The U.S. Census Bureau has created a Census in Schools program called 2010 Census: It's about Us. The program will provide educators with resources to teach the nation's students about the importance of the census so children can help deliver this message to their families. The program will engage America's youth to help ensure every child and…

In 1999, 36% of schools reported that they used portable classrooms and 20% reported that they created temporary instructional spaces, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Portable classrooms will most certainly continue to be used temporarily to bridge the gap between immediate need and availability of construction funding.…

In the College of Allied Health Sciences at the University of Cincinnati, John Kotter's eight stage model of organizational change was utilized as a template by faculty while focusing efforts on facilitating community-engaged scholarship. The Kotter model proved to be a beneficial tool when developing a framework for transforming service-learning…

The process of assessing and benchmarking community engagement can take many forms. To date, more than two dozen assessment tools for measuring community engagement institutionalization have been published. These tools vary substantially in purpose, level of complexity, scope, process, structure, and focus. While some instruments are designed to…

This study explored university-community collaborations by examining the workings of 1 healthy marriage initiative. An ethnographic case study research strategy was used to study the process of this initiative, specifically looking at how participants worked through and overcame traditional university-community collaboration challenges. Data…

There are increasing pressures for universities to commercialise their research and increase their contributions to their local and regional environments. For those institutions located in areas of low demand, this can lead to a low-impact equilibrium of universities working with external partners, and having relatively low impact. In such…

Broadly defined as the combination and/or integration of participation in a community service activity with formal learning and reflection (Clark, 1999; Reising, Allen, & Hall, 2006; Tucker, McCarthy, & Lenk, 1998; Yan & Rodgers, 2006), service-learning activities range from voluntary student organized initiatives to mandatory…

Engagement has evolved from concerns of "access," "diversity," and "public service" between the academy and communities. Land-grant institutions (LGI), considered the "public's universities," have represented a unique population in American higher education with their historic 150-year tradition of teaching, research, and service. Carnegie…