Find Best Colleges 2017 by U. S. Report in Paperback and other formats in Study Aids > College Guides.

Historically Black colleges and universities play a vital role in the education of African Americans in the United States. For nearly 150 years, these institutions have trained the leadership of the Black community, graduating the nation s African American teachers, doctors, lawyers, and scientists. Despite the wealth of new research on Black colleges, there are topics that remain untouched and accomplishments that go unnoticed by the scholarly community. The chapters in this edited volume focus on topics that deserve further attention and that will push students, scholars, policymakers, and Black college administrators to reexamine their perspectives on and perceptions of Black colleges.

This book employs a socio-cultural approach to study the organizational dynamics and experiences of self-formation that shape community college life. The authors use case studies to analyze both the symbolic dimension and practices that enable the production of educational experiences in seven community colleges across the U.S. Levin and Montero-Hernandez explain the construction of organizational identity and student development as a result of the connection between institutional forces and individual agency. This work emphasizes the forms and conditions of interaction among college personnel, students, and external groups that were enacted to respond to the demands and opportunities in both participants local and larger contexts. The authors acknowledge both the collective and individual efforts of community college personnel to create caring community colleges that support nontraditional students.

The importance of benchmarking in the service sector is well recognized as it helps in continuous improvement in products and work processes. Through benchmarking, companies have strived to implement best practices in order to remain competitive in the product- market in which they operate. However studies on benchmarking, particularly in the software development sector, have neglected using multiple variables and therefore have not been as comprehensive. Information Theory and Best Practices in the IT Industry fills this void by examining benchmarking in the business of software development and studying how it is affected by development process, application type, hardware platforms used, and many other variables. Information Theory and Best Practices in the IT Industry begins by examining practices of benchmarking productivity and critically appraises them. Next the book identifies different variables which affect productivity and variables that affect quality, developing useful equations that explaining their relationships. Finally these equations and findings are applied to case studies. Utilizing this book, practitioners can decide about what emphasis they should attach to different variables in their own companies, while seeking to optimize productivity and defect density.

Find You Didn't Miss It! by Wendy Griffith in Paperback and other formats in Religion > Christian Living - Family & Relationships.