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Excerpt: The gurus of the first-year student experience have done it again!

Many scholars have sought to measure the effectiveness of diverse supplemental instruction programs. Nevertheless, it is difficult to generalize about supplemental instruction or compare data, given methodological and statistical incongruities and diverse approaches and student populations at various institutions. Quantitative and qualitative data suggest that supplemental instruction and embedded tutoring programs facilitate learning and success in all disciplines. We describe best practices for embedded tutoring and supplemental instruction across disciplines and course modalities, evaluate metrics used to assess community college embedded tutoring and supplemental instruction programs, and suggest mixed methods models for assessing these programs.

Embedded tutoring and Supplemental Instruction have the potential to benefit all students, helping to even the playing field in terms of college preparedness and academic skill development

Are you seeing a decline in your population of adult students? Are you wondering how to reach, enroll, engage, and retain these students? This interactive session will present a framework for recruiting adult students and will give participants an opportunity to develop their own adult student recruitment and retention plans.

Learn how to expand online offerings and to move from being regional institutions to being national and international institutions. We will discuss how to create plans involving student services, marketing, and academics to develop course and program offerings, to obtain reciprocity agreements, and to market these programs successfully.

Policy tends to be formulated at the upper level of an organization and handed down to policy actors on the frontline for enactment. Since policy can be vague, ambiguous, or send conflicting messages, it can create uncertainty about its meaning. Moreover, policy is rarely accompanied by explicit instructions for implementation. Therefore, when frontline workers, or streetlevel bureaucrats, are pressed to make sense of policy's meaning in realistic terms, they engage in what Weick describes as sensemaking (1995). Sensemaking is a cognitive process entered into during times of uncertainty or change. Streetlevel bureaucrats engage in sensemaking by drawing on cues in their environment, their prior experience, professional identity, and social interactions to understand and interpret policy. They rely upon their understanding to exercise professional discretion while incorporating the new policy into their daily work. It is their use of discretion that accounts for variations in policy implementation and outcomes (Lipsky, 1980, Mills, 1998, Spillane, 2004). This study explored how streetlevel bureaucrats in higher education institutions engaged in sensemaking during policy implementation. For this study, academic tracking initiatives were regarded as policy that academic advisors (streetlevel bureaucrats) were tasked with enacting. Historically, academic advisors have been identified as advocates for holistic student development while academic tracking has been defined as a prescriptive approach to advising aimed at accountability and efficiency. This qualitative study presents the findings from interviews with 16 academic advisors from three public institutions involved in the implementation of tracking. The study's findings suggest recommendations that may be helpful to leaders seeking to close the gap between policy and practice. Implications for practice include developing a strategic approach to implementation in which upper level administrators guide change by acting as sensegivers. As such, administrators would serve as filters for the messages received by streetlevel bureaucrats. Additionally, findings suggest the inclusion of frontline workers in decision making and the provision of planned learning opportunities for collective sensemaking during the implementation process. This study seeks to inform leaders involved in policy change about the critical role of sensemaking in initiating, guiding, and sustaining organizational change.

The purpose of this study was to determine if high school counselors' predictive opinions of freshman college academic success were reliable indicators of actual college academic success achieved by freshman students. Eleven null hypotheses were tested which involved high school counselors' opinions of college freshman grade point average and actual college grade point average achieved by freshmen in regard to the following variables: (1) sex of the counselor, (2) high school location, (3) sex of the student, (4) high school size, and (5) high school accreditation. All except one of the null hypotheses were rejected at the .05 level of confidence. The one null hypothesis retained involved male counselors' grade point average predictions for female students. Yule's Q was the main statistical method used in determining the relationship between the variables as stated in the hypotheses. Chi-square was used in testing null hypotheses when cross-analysis of data was needed. The findings indicated that counselors generally over-predict grade point averages for their students. However, female counselors predicted more accurately than male counselors for grade point average. Counselors in small schools predicted more accurately for grade point average than counselors in large schools. Counselors in high schools with a Kentucky accreditation of Standard and Basic predicted more accurately for grade point average than did counselors in high schools accredited as Comprehensive and Accredited. In regard to location, counselors In the Western Kentucky area predicted more accurately for college freshman grade point average at Western Kentucky University than did counselors in the Central and Eastern Kentucky areas. The significant differences found in this study may be the result of several factors. For example, female counselors may be more methodical and careful in making use of predictive data than male counselors. The "halo effect" may have entered into the relationship between male counselors and female students in regard to grade point average prediction. Counselors In small schools, which are generally accredited as Standard and Basic, may be better acquainted with their students' home and school situations and therefore are better able to forecast college grade point average. Counselors in the Western Kentucky area may be graduates of and/or are familiar with the academic offerings as well as the grading system at Western Kentucky University.