Education Commons^™

Paid Workers And Volunteers, Side By Side, Kevin F. Hallock

Economics Faculty Publications

Millions of Americans volunteer annually and, on average, volunteers are highly skilled individuals. With unpaid volunteers working alongside W2-paid employees, sometimes it is difficult in a workplace to distinguish one from the other. Motivations for volunteering are many and the author does not intend to fully explore the myriad reasons identified by social scientists for this behavior, including to gain experience, create a path to a paid job, offer service to others or gain personal recognition. An interesting study of volunteerism is Richard Freeman's Working for Nothing: The Supply of Volunteer Labor. Using data from a unique survey, Freeman showed …

Human Trafficking Ngos In Thailand: A Two-Site Case Study Of The Children Served In Education Programs, Robert W. Spires

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

In this qualitative case study, two Thai Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) shelters/schools working with human trafficking survivors and at-risk populations of children ages 5-18 were examined. This study takes the stance that the work of the NGOs needs to be understood through the first-hand perceptions and attitudes of NGO staff and the children they serve. Education is an intervention designed to achieve the mission of both NGOs. Education is treated as a means of preventing human trafficking and protecting human trafficking survivors from returning to exploitative situations, though the effectiveness of the intervention is unclear.

Promoting Sustainability To First-Year Students, Anna Sangree, Ashley Colón, Bree Coleman

Geography and the Environment Capstone Projects

Over 700 universities across the United States (AASHE, 2010), seeking to be progressive and containing the resources for change, have partnered together under the American Colleges and Universities President's Climate Commitment to lower their carbon footprints and increase sustainability education on their campuses (ACUPCC, 2014). The President's Climate Commitment includes 7 tangible actions, of which the University of Richmond must follow two or more. With the University of Richmond's date for carbon neutrality set for 2050, advancing these actions is crucial (ACUPCC, 2014). On the list of tangible actions are increasing use of public transportation and increasing energy efficiency on …

Promoting Sustainability To First-Year Students, Anna Sangree, Ashley Colón, Bree Coleman

Geography and the Environment Capstone Projects

The university provides transportation resources, recycling bins next to most trashcans in popular student locations, and full time staff working for the Office of Sustainability. However, the many resources provided by the university will not facilitate movement towards the campus sustainability goals if students do not participate. According to the most recent survey on campus, 42% of students at the University of Richmond believe that human activity is causing climate change (See Chapter 1). Still, students do not seem to correlate their everyday actions with rising levels of greenhouse gasses. In order to target students on campus, we have structured …

Applying Community-Based Learning In Teaching And Researching Contemporary Slavery, Monti Narayan Datta

Political Science Faculty Publications

Over the past several years, student demand for courses, research opportunities, and internships in the realm of human rights and modern-day slavery has reached a tipping point, for several reasons. First, social media have made contemporary slavery a familiar issue. MTV’s Exit Campaign (http://mtvexit.org), for instance, has informed at least 20 million people about the subject since the campaign’s launch in 2004. Second, Hollywood has taken notice. With films like 2009’s Taken, starring Liam Neeson as a father who single-handedly (even if unrealistically) rescues his daughter from the clutches of sex traffickers in Europe, students know trafficking is a moral …

Measuring Support For Climate Change Research At The University Of Richmond, Adam Forrer, Brianna Miller, Hunterr Payeur

Environmental Studies Senior Seminar Projects

This study investigated the possibility of hiring new faculty at the University of Richmond whose area of expertise incorporates climate change. The study used a survey of Richmond students to gauge interest in academic areas such as climate change classes and research with faculty. In depth interviews with faculty members from various departments within the University were also conducted. Further research showed that although 12 of the top 25 liberal arts schools in the United States offered two or more classes specifically on the issue of climate change, the University of Richmond intermittently offers one climate change class, located in …

Magnet Schools Promote Diversity, Opportunity, Equity, Achievement, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, Thomas J. Shields

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

Last spring, nearly 400 people from across the metro area came together over two days at the University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University to learn about our region’s troubled public school history … and how to move forward.

Indicative of significant and communitywide investment, conference attendees expressed interest in solutions that would promote school diversity, equity and opportunity in central Virginia. These included innovative solutions and tested strategies for addressing educational inequalities both within and across area school systems.

One of the key solutions discussed during the conference was the establishment of regional magnet schools. These programs are typically …

"A Home For Poets": The Emergence Of A Liberal Curriculum For Elementary Teachers In Victorian Britain, Christopher Bischof

History Faculty Publications

In this article I explore student culture beyond the classroom to argue that there existed an informal liberal curriculum which embraced a general spirit of intellectualism and the pursuit of a wide range of knowledge dealing with the human condition and the state of society. I also offer a new reading of the formal curriculum at training colleges by examining the formal curriculum alongside student accounts of their experiences of it, student responses to assignments, commonly used textbooks, and educationalists’ discourses about teachers’ training. While acknowledging that the formal curriculum emphasized rote memorization and was narrow, I argue that there …

Extending An Alternative: Writing Centers And Curricular Change, Joe Essid

English Faculty Publications

When our Writing Center staked its reputation and perhaps its survival on a proposal to change our first-year curriculum, we entered territory that would have been unthinkable to those in our field a few decades ago. Writing center directors and peer tutors may not like it, but the climate now is very different from the salad days of the 1980s, when scholars such as Tilly and John Warnock argued “it is probably a mistake for centers to seek integration into the established institution” (22). In both the United States and EU nations, we face curricular change driven by emerging technologies, …

Speak Out Loud: Deconstructing Shame And Fear Through Theater In A Community-Based Service-Learning Project, Karina Elizabeth Vázquez

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

The combination of theater and community-based service-learning can be a powerful tool to allow university students to meet their educational goals while connecting them with the world. The performance of children's theater in elementary schools with English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) programs, for example, has important pedagogical and social effects. For both groups of students, this becomes an opportunity to be better prepared for a level of social engagement involving bilingualism that was not necessarily available to their parents and/or members of their community. The author describes and analyzes the results of teh adaptation and performance of Alfonsina …

The Future Of Scholarship, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Digital scholarship could take many new shapes, many of which we are just now glimpsing. It seems likely to take advantage of new forms of visualization, certainly, and become more supple to the reader’s curiosity. Arguments will be tied more closely to the documents and data on which they are based, allowing readers to test ideas in real time, for themselves.

Building An Assessment Program In The Liberal Arts College Library, Lucretia Mcculley

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Now in its fourth year, the Library Assessment Committee at the University of Richmond has made great strides in establishing a sustainable assessment program within Boatwright Library. Prior to 2008, limited staff, time, expertise, and commitment were barriers to establishing an ongoing assessment program. As with many other liberal arts college libraries, most of our assessment efforts had focused on information literacy, since instruction is integral to the library and the university's mission. Library surveys and other assessment methods had only received close attention when the university was embarking on its re-accreditation process. With the growing emphasis on assessment within …