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.

Developing and Sustaining Successful First -Year Programs First-year programs and interventions have become critical launching pads for student success and retention in higher education. However, these programs often flounder not because of what they are trying to do, but because of the ways in which they are implemented. Developing and Sustaining Successful First-Year Programs offers faculty, academic administrators, and student affairs professionals a comprehensive and practical resource that includes step-by-step guidance for developing new first-year programs and enhancing existing programs. The book explores the key elements that contribute to sustained student success and the programs that have the capacity to continue to meet student needs while making the most of scarce resources. The authors show how to create and sustain critical partnerships, put in place the needed organizational structures, and include strategies for developing effective assessments and evaluations. Developing and Sustaining Successful First-Year Programs is filled with illustrative examples and profiles of successful programs from a range of institutions that vary in size, type, selectivity, and culture. Examples of common programs and interventions include summer bridge programs, student orientation, first-year seminars, learning communities, residential programs, developmental education, and many more. Based in scholarly literature, theory, and practice, the book highlights the initiatives that facilitate the transition, learning, development, and success of new college students.

Service learning has become an institutionalized practice in higher education. Students are sent out to disadvantaged communities to paint, tutor, feed, and help organize communities. But while the students gain from their experiences, the contributors to The Unheard Voices ask, "Does the community?" This volume explores the impact of service learning on a community, and considers the unequal relationship between the community and the academy. Using eye-opening interviews with community-organization staff members, The Unheard Voices challenges assumptions about the effectiveness of service learning. Chapters offer strong critiques of service learning practices from the lack of adequate training and supervision, to problems of communication and issues of diversity. The book's conclusion offers ways to improve service learning so that future endeavors can be better at meeting the needs of the communities and the students who work in them.

This eighth volume in the Advances in Service-Learning Research series includes eight essays selected from manuscripts submitted by participants in the seventh annual conference of the International Association of Research in Service-Learning and Community Engagement, held in Tampa, Florida, in October, 2007. The volume builds upon the theme of that conference: "Sustainability and Scholarship: Research and the K-20 Continuum," bringing together the work of scholars from K-12 and higher education to argue for the connection between rigorous and purposeful research and sustainable service-learning and civic engagement. Articles range from models for program-level assessment to examples of significant field-based research projects to approaches to advance discipline-based sustainable impacts to connections between civic education and sustainable communities. Voices of community partners, students, faculty members, administrators, and discipline-based organizations are part of the conversation, and each of the essays raises important challenges for future research that can help to shape, document, and sustain the important impacts of work in this field.

The college experience is increasingly positioned to demonstrate its value as a worthwhile return on investment. Specific, definable activities, such as research experience, first-year experience, and experiential learning, are marketed as delivering precise skill sets in the form of an individual educational package. Through ethnography-based analysis, the contributors to this volume explore how these commodified "experiences" have turned students into consumers and given them the illusion that they are in control of their investment. They further reveal how the pressure to plan every move with a constant eye on a demonstrable return has supplanted traditional approaches to classroom education and profoundly altered the student experience.