During the 2014 White House Science Fair, President Barack Obama used a sports metaphor to explain why we must address the shortage of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), particularly in the engineering and computing fields: "Half our team, we're not even putting on the field. We've got to change those…

During the 2014 White House Science Fair, President Barack Obama used a sports metaphor to explain why we must address the shortage of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), particularly in the engineering and computing fields: "Half our team, we're not even putting on the field. We've got to change those…

Due to the decrease in public funding, community colleges are in a position where they need to generate private gifts. Alumni represent the largest untapped pool of prospective donors, and the success of alumni giving at 4-year institutions illustrates the potential that exists for community colleges. To develop effective fundraising strategies,…

The New Jersey Commission on Higher Education (the Commission) is required by statute (N.J.S.A. 18A: 62-46) to prepare an annual report to the Governor and Legislature containing a compilation of the data it collected about community college students who transferred to senior public institutions of higher education in New Jersey. At its July 25,…

As jobs become more competitive and demanding of specialized training, the presence of first-generation college students will continue to be a growing reality. However, unless the needs of first-generation students are addressed by educational institutions, the motivation experienced by those students to attend college will be short-lived. Even…

The purpose of this comparative experimental project was to compare the impact of simulation-based learning experiences to traditional clinical rotations on critical thinking acquisition of associate nursing students within a maternal-child course. Innovative pedagogies have been integrated in nursing programs to augment inadequate clinical…

As the importance of a college degree climbs and federal and state grant funding remains inadequate, millions of students in the U.S. continue to take out student loans each year to help pay for their rising education costs. In October 2011, the total amount of outstanding student loan debt in the U.S. exceeded $1 trillion (Chopra, 2012),…

Transfer education centering on the liberal arts declined relatively beginning in the late 1960s with the expansion of vocational education. But the distinctions blurred as courses that matched university programs in business and health fields grew. By the 1970s more than half all associate degrees awarded were to students from occupational…

In 2010, California's then-governor Schwarzenegger signed Senate Bill 1440, called the "Student Transfer Achievement Reform Act" (Padilla, 2010), into law. This bill mandated that the state's 112 community colleges (CCCs) develop a new type of associate degree, an "associate degree for transfer," that specifically prepares a…

Wanting to elucidate the relationship between student success and employment outcomes, the authors of this study sought to devise a methodology to (a) measure the alignment between the educational/community college experience and potential careers and (b) explore factors that may inform the alignment between college and career. Data were collected…

Original research in biology, which is thought to spark student interest and bolster majors, makes its way to the associate-degree level. Through a grant from the National Science Foundation, students of biology in community colleges will have the chance to do research on open-ended, real-world questions with no predetermined answers--and…

For over a decade, the nursing profession has increased enrollments and established new education programs in response to the national nursing shortage. The profession has focused on increasing the numbers of new graduate nurses prepared to replace the nation's aging nursing workforce. Considering the expense of this educational process with close…

Nurse educators, at every level of pre-licensure nursing education, are charged with developing critical thinking skills within their students. Post-clinical conference is one teaching strategy that nurse educators can employ to help promote the development of critical thinking skills in pre-licensure nursing students. However, traditional…

Male nurses are but a small percentage of the total nurse population in the United States, and most certainly have potential to increase in numbers if the profession appeared more attractive as a career option for men. The purpose of this research was to discover the decision factors used by males that led them to enroll in Associate Degree…

This qualitative study was undertaken in order to gain an understanding of the lived experiences of adult students and how they made meaning of their journey. To that end, through in-depth interviews with twenty participants, the study inquired into the journeys to an associate's degree of adult students who were also active duty military service…