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It is long evident that college campuses have been evolving considerably. Adult learners play a key and welcome role, challenging assumptions about formal learning and its delivery, with institutions themselves re-assessing long-held beliefs and procedures, protocols and hierarchies, participation and roles of both student and faculty alike, and the reciprocal relationship between them. People in the academic community profoundly affect students and their perceptions of an institution and the faculty comprising it. Retention success or failure may be tied strongly to the co-created key student/professor relationships, but not solely those within classroom or academic advising contexts. Connecting with students from the outset and being mindful of their progress beyond the immediate concerns of course completions and degree requirements can influence goodness of fit, based as it is on a host of elements big and small, personal and impersonal. The author approaches this topic as a recent midlife student himself, but now college teacher. The author believes that fresh participation from both sides may help shed light on this potentially delicate, perhaps ignored, but nonetheless important relationship between teacher and student, prompting further thought and response.

Therapists and theorists have long sought to define and thus contain the complex constellation of people and their stories that together constitute what we call 'family.' Locating the use of metaphor in family therapy and practice within its historical context, and mindful of the ultimate limits of even the most congruent metaphor, the authors present a metaphoric reconceptualization, that of family as anthology, to propose how individual and collective voices are heard, edited, subjugated, emphasized, embellished, and assembled; to illuminate the synergistic nature of family stories, and to integrate the dualistic simultaneity within families of 'being' and 'becoming.'

Metaphor use stands as a striking example of the creative drive of humans, with its ability to render understandable that which is highly convoluted, making it a natural partner and tool of the behavioral sciences. Touching briefly on the nature and efficiency of metaphor, I explore that tenacious and fertile connection vis a vis historic and current conceptualizations and contexts, and preparation for the counseling relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion centers around Russian developmentalist Lev Vygotsky's work as applied within the context of higher education, specifically his fundamental idea that learning takes place in a social environment. To that end, scaffolding, guided participation, the zone of proximal development, and particularly the use of group tests as both valuable learning tool and teaching opportunity are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through narrative depictions of two personally influential black women (Annie Robinson, who raised the author as a small boy, and Audre horde, an ardent black feminist), the author attempts to make sense of their very different responses to institutionalized racism during the late 1940's and beyond. He, as well, seeks to reconcile the doubtless privilege afforded him as a white boy growing up in the south at that time with his current commitment to diversity and cultural awareness. This exploration is conducted by drawing on Robert Regan's (1982) meaning-making paradigm and Patricia Hill Collins's (1991) model of black feminist thought, both of which are inclusionary rather than exlusionary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]