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This paper details a non-tenured faculty peer mentoring program piloted at Uuuuu University. The Thinking, Writing, Inquiring and Learning (T.W.I.L.) pilot was modeled after a similar peer mentoring program, Support Network for Assistant/Associate Professors (S.N.A.P.), at the University of Xyyyy. The faculty development program offered structured support for non-tenured junior faculty to become more comfortable and prolific in research and scholarly writing. This paper details the process, the product, and advice garnered from the T.W.I.L. pilot.

Purpose: The public expects school leaders to be moral exemplars, yet prior research indicates that teachers and, more recently, school principals may score lower than other career groups on a widely used measure of moral reasoning, the Defining Issues Test. Moreover, little empirical research has been conducted on educators during leadership preparation in graduate school. The purpose of this research was to create a baseline profile for moral reasoning in educational leadership/administration graduate students in one Southern state and to compare their scores with a composite national average for graduate students across disciplines to see if educational interventions are needed. Research Design: In the summer of 2012, the updated Defining Issues Test-2 was offered via e-mail as an online questionnaire to 539 master's, educational specialist, and doctoral students in the five advanced-track schools in the study state. The questionnaire also gathered data on the students' demographics and the virtual test-taking environment. Findings: Complete data for 113 respondents (a 21% response rate) show that the educational leadership/administration graduate students prefer a maintaining norms schema when solving moral problems. In fact, participants scored significantly lower (M = 30) on postconventional (advanced) moral thinking than the national norm for graduate students across disciplines (M = 41) and a historical average for graduate students (M = 53) on the Defining Issues Test. Conclusions: Researchers urge evidenced-based educational interventions for this group--specifically, Rest's four-component model, which addresses all four moral psychological processes: sensitivity, judgment, motivation, and character. They also recommend beginning ethics instruction with professional identity development. Classification: This is an empirical study.

For this quantitative study, we used a multiple logistic regression technique to investigate the relationship between the number of meetings with an academic advisor and retention of first-generation students, as represented by enrollment status and academic standing at a large, public research institution in the Southeast. Consistent with previous studies and student retention literature, the number of advisor meetings (independent variable) was a significant predictor of student retention. Findings from this study suggest that for every meeting with an academic advisor, the odds that a student will be retained increase by 13%.

This article describes an educational leadership course in which students perform action research. The assignment, along with its structure, restraints, directions, and outcomes is described. Student topics are presented in detail, along with the data source used for each project. The authors argue for the utility of action research on school sites, as well as its benefits in this university setting. The course, Field Project in Educational Leadership, is described in such depth that colleagues across the country are invited to create courses based on this model. Throughout this article, the action research assignment is evaluated, both its strengths and complications, in the context of literature on organizational change, as well as literature on general research and on action research specifically.

Aspiring school leaders rarely emerge from their principal preparation programs fully ready for the challenges that await them as new administrators, with much evidence revealing the need for continued mentoring and professional development. The author developed graduate course content that taught students the knowledge, skills and dispositions of protegeship in a principal preparation program, encouraging them to develop a mentoring mindset. A framework for protegeship, derived from several sources in the mentoring literature, is described. The author required students to approach individuals to formally mentor them. Student responses to this assignment indicated their acknowledgement of mentoring needs, awareness of the need for preparation and recognition of the benefits of seeking a mentor. This research contributes to the thin region of literature on protege preparation for mentoring. The protegeship framework and protege preparation activities can be adapted for mentoring programs in the United States or internationally. (Contains 1 table.)

This paper presents the findings of a mixed methods study regarding students' perceptions of mentoring in a cooperative education (co-op) program. Specifically, content analysis of student interviews suggested a lack of understanding of the mentoring process as characterized by unexamined assumptions and inadequate preparation for the co-op experience. It was noted that the STEM pipeline continues to shrink through decreasing student enrollment and increasing rates of retirement in industry. Cooperative education and internship programs can provide institutions and employers with a unique opportunity to recruit and retain students for a highly skilled and technically proficient workforce. This paper identifies key skill sets, knowledge and dispositions that undergraduate students in the STEM fields need to become successful proteges within a cooperative education or internship placement.

Female administrators in comprehensive research universities were surveyed to gain their perceptions on their mentoring experiences. The females affirmed they had informal mentors in roles of sponsor, counselor, coach, and teacher, and they are also mentoring others. The findings both confirmed and contradicted former studies on females in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]