This collection presents essays on service-learning and its role in the education of first-year college students. Following a preface by John N. Gardner and an introduction by Edward Zlotkowski, the chapters of section 1, "Making the Case for Service-Learning in the First Year of College," are: (1) "High School Service-Learning and the Preparation of Students for College: An Overview of Research" (Andrew Furco); (2) "Service-Learning and the First-Year Experience: Outcomes Related to Learning and Persistence" (Lori J. Vogelsang, Elaine K. Ikeda, Shannon K. Gilmartin, and Jennifer R. Keup); and (3) "Service-Learning and the Introductory Course: Lessons from across the Disciplines" (Edward Zlotkowski). Section 2, "Looking at Today's Students," contains: (4) "Look Who's Coming to College: The Impact of High School Service-Learning on New College Students" (Marty Duckenfield) and (5) "A Matter of Experience; Service-Learning and the Adult Student" (Tom O'Connell). Section 3, "Learning from Practice," contains: (6) "The University of Rhode Island's New Culture for Learning" (Jayne Richmond); (7) "Institutional Strategies To Involve First-Year Students in Service" (Julie A. Hatcher, Robert G. Bringle, and Richard Muthiah); (8) "Inquiry as a Mode of Student Learning at Portland State University: Service-Learning Experiences in First-Year Curriculum" (Dilafruz Williams, Judy Patton, Richard Beyler, Martha Balshem, and Monica Halka); (9) "A Positive Impact on Their Lives: Service-Learning and First-Year Students at Le-Moyne Owen College" (Barbara Frankle and Femi I. Ajanaku); (10) "Service-Learning in a Learning Community: The Fullerton First-Year Program" (Kathy O'Byrne and Sylvia Alatorre Alva); and (11) "Writing as Students, Writing as Citizens: Service-Learning in First-Year Composition Courses" (Thomas Deans and Nora Bacon). The final section, "Summing Things Up," contains one essay: "What, So What, Now What: Reflections, Findings, Conclusions, and Recommendations on Service-Learning and the First-Year Experience" (John N. Gardner). An appendix contains profiles of 4 additional programs. (SLD).

This publication¿the latest report from AAC&U¿s Liberal Education and America¿s Promise (LEAP) initiative¿defines a set of educational practices that research has demonstrated have a significant impact on student success. Author George Kuh presents data from the National Survey of Student Engagement about these practices and explains why they benefit all students, but also seem to benefit underserved students even more than their more advantaged peers. The report also presents data that show definitively that underserved students are the least likely students, on average, to have access to these practices.

After fifteen years of teaching anthropology at a large university, Rebekah Nathan had become baffled by her own students. Their strange behavior—eating meals at their desks, not completing reading assignments, remaining silent through class discussions—made her feel as if she were dealing with a completely foreign culture. So Nathan decided to do what anthropologists do when confused by a different culture: Go live with them. She enrolled as a freshman, moved into the dorm, ate in the dining hall, and took a full load of courses. And she came to understand that being a student is a pretty difficult job, too. Her discoveries about contemporary undergraduate culture are surprising and her observations are invaluable, making My Freshman Year essential reading for students, parents, faculty, and anyone interested in educational policy.

The responsibility for college success has historically rested with the student, but since the 1980s, educators have taken increasing ownership of this, designing structures that increase the likelihood of learning, success, and retention. These efforts have included a variety of initiatives--first year seminars, learning communities, writing-intensive courses, common intellectual experiences, service-learning, undergraduate research, and senior capstones among others--that have come to be known as high-impact practices. Although first year seminars have been widely accepted as a high impact educational practice leading to improved academic performance, increased retention and acquisition of critical 21st Century outcomes, first-year seminars tend to be loosely defined in the literature. National explorations of course structure and administration demonstrate the diversity of the curricular initiatives across various campuses. In order to determine the attributes that all of these varied courses share in common that contribute to their effectiveness, the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina invited contributions for a book exploring effective educational practices within the first-year seminar. This collection of case studies represents a wide variety of institutional and seminar types. The authors describe the structure, pedagogy, and assessment strategies that lead to high quality seminars and they offer abundant models for ensuring the delivery of a high-quality educational experience to all entering students. The table of contents includes the following: (1) Structural Supports for Effective Educational Practices in the First-Year Seminar (Tracy L. Skipper); (2) The American University of Rome (Jenny Petrucci); (3) Cabrini University (Richard Gebauer, Michelle Filling-Brown, and Amy Perischetti); (4) Clark University (Jessica Bane Robert); (5) Coastal Carolina University (Michele C. Everett); (6) Durham Technical Community College (Kerry F. Cantwell and Gabby McCutchen); (7) Florida South Western State College (Eileen DeLuca, Kathy Clark, Myra Walters, and Martin Tawil); (8) Indiana University--Purdue University Indianapolis (Heather Bowman, Amy Powell, and Cathy Buyarski); (9) Ithaca College (Elizabeth Bleicher); (10) LaGuardia Community College, CUNY (Tameka Battle, Linda Chandler, Bret Eynon, Andrea Francis, Preethi Radhakrishnan, and Ellen Quish); (11) Loyola University Maryland (Mary Ellen Wade); (12) Malone University (Marcia K. Everett, Jay R. Case, and Jacci Welling); (13) Montana State University (Margaret Konkel and Deborah Blanchard); (14) Northern Arizona University (Rebecca Campbell and Kaitlin Hublitz); (15) Southern Methodist University (Caitlin Anderson, Takeshi Fujii, and Donna Gober); (16) Southwestern Michigan College (Christi Young, Jeffrey Dennis, and Donald Ludman); (17) St. Cloud State University (Christine Metzo); (18) Texas A & M University-Corpus Christi (Rita A. Sperry, Andrew M. Garcia, Chelsie Hawkinson, and Michelle Major); (19) The University of Arizona (Marla Franco, Jessica Hill, and Tina Wesanen-Neil); (20) University of Kansas (Alison Olcott Marshall and Sarah Crawford-Parker); (21) University of Maryland Baltimore County (Lisa Carter Beall); (22) University of New Hampshire (Neil Niman, Tamara Rury, and Sean Stewart); (23) University of North Carolina Wilmington (Zachary W. Underwood); (24) University of Northern Iowa (Deirdre Heistad, April Chatham-Carpenter, Kristin Moser, and Kristin Woods); (25) University of Texas at Austin (Ashley N. Stone and Tracie Lowe); (26) University of Texas at San Antonio (Kathleen Fugate Laborde and Tammy Jordan Wyatt); (27) University of Wisconsin-Madison (Susan Brantly and Sorabh Singhal); (28) Virginia Commonwealth University (Melissa C. Johnson and Bety Kreydatus); and (29) Conclusion: What Does It Mean to Be High Impact? (Tracy L. Skipper). (Individual chapters contain references.).

As academic service-learning continues to grow rapidly, practitioners are discovering a pressing need for solid empirical research about learning outcomes. Where's the Learning in Service-Learning? helps define learning expectations, presents data about learning, and links program characteristics with learning outcomes. It is the first book to explore the experience of service-learning as a valid learning activity.

This book outlines a new student lifecycle framework for practitioners together with working solutions to real problems in the form of exemplar case studies from the UK and internationally.

Service-Learning Essentials is the resource you need to help you develop high-quality service-learning experiences for college students. Written by one of the field's leading experts and sponsored by Campus Compact, the book is the definitive work on this high-impact educational practice. Service-learning has been identified by the Association of American Colleges and Universities as having been widely tested and shown to be beneficial to college students from a wide variety of backgrounds. Organized in an accessible question-and-answer format, the book responds clearly and completely to the most common questions and concerns about service-learning. Each chapter addresses issues related to individual practice as well as to the collective work of starting and developing a service-learning center or program, with examples drawn from a variety of disciplines, situations, and institutional types. The questions range from basic to advanced and the answers cover both the fundamentals and complexities of service-learning. Topics include: Determining what service-learning opportunities institutions should offer How to engage students in critical reflection in academic courses and in cocurricular experiences Best practices for developing and sustaining mutually beneficial campus-community partnerships Integrating service-learning into the curriculum in all disciplines and at all levels, as well as various areas of student life outside the classroom Assessing service-learning programs and outcomes The dilemmas of service-learning in the context of power and privilege The future of service-learning in online and rapidly globalizing environments Service-learning has virtually limitless potential to enable colleges and universities to meet their goals for student learning while making unique contributions to addressing unmet local, national, and global needs. However, in order to realize these benefits, service-learning must be thoughtfully designed and carefully implemented. This easy-to-use volume contains everything faculty, leaders, and staff members need to know about service-learning to enhance communities, improve higher education institutions, and educate the next generation of citizens, scholars, and leaders.

"College Learning for the New Global Century, published through the LEAP (Liberal Education and America's Promise) initiative, spells out the essential aims, learning outcomes, and guiding principles for a 21st century college education. It reports on the promises American society needs to make - and keep - to all who seek a college education and to the society that will depend on graduates' future leadership and capabilities." -- Foreword (p. vii).

Common reading programs are becoming a ubiquitous component of first-year experience initiatives. Sometimes controversial, these programs are designed to provide students an introduction to the intellectual expectations of college in an often-informal gathering of college faculty and peers. Yet, truly dynamic and successful programs move beyond book discussion groups to include students, faculty, staff, and the larger community in a wide range of social and intellectual activities. Laufgraben gathers examples from programs across the country to offer a concise and practical guide to planning, promoting, and assessing common reading initiatives.

The Advances in Service-Learning Research book series was established to initiate the publication of a set of comprehensive research volumes that would present and discuss a wide range of issues in this broad field called service-learning. Service-learning is a multifaceted pedagogy that crosses all levels of schooling, has potential relevance to all academic and professional disciplines, is connected to a range of dynamic social issues, and operates within a broad range of community contexts. In terms of research, there is much terrain to cover before a full understanding of service-learning can be achieved. This volume, the first in the annual book series, explores various themes, issues, and answers that bring us one step closer to understanding the essence of service-learning. The chapters of this volume focus on a broad range of topics that address a variety of research issues on service-learning in K-12 education, teacher education, and higher education. Through a wide-scoped research lens, the volume explores definitional foundations of service-learning, theoretical issues regarding service-learning, the impacts of service-learning, and methodological approaches to studying service-learning. Collectively, the chapters of the book provide varying and, at times, opposing perspectives on some of the critical issues regarding service-learning research and practice.