JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Ohio State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Ohio State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

This study estimated separately the unique effects of three dimensions of good practice and the global effects of a composite measure of good practices on the cognitive development, orientations to learning, and educational aspirations of students during their first year of college. Analyses of longitudinal data from a representative sample of colleges and universities were conducted, and net of a battery of confounding influences, measures of good practices were positively related to a number of first-year outcomes. The magnitude of the effects of these good practices differed by the pre-college characteristics of the students and by the type of institution attended.

The impacts of community service participation on college student development are extensive and well-documented. The characteristics of students that predict volunteerism, however, are not well understood. The purpose of this study is thus to estimate the differences in first-year students' plans to volunteer while in college (i.e., 'Done,' 'Plan to do,' 'Do not plan to do,' or 'Have not decided') by their background characteristics and by the characteristics of the institutions that they attend. Study results suggest changes to several campus policies and programs that may remove barriers to successful community service participation among firstyear students. 3Educating people for responsible citizenship has been a part of the missions of colleges since their inception in the United States. The founding of the first institutions of higher education in this country was for the purpose of educating a new generation of civic and religious leaders for the communities of the new world. It was within this spirit that colleges came of age, and it is a tradition that has stayed with them up to the present, as evident in their current mission of teaching, research, and service (Rudolph, 1977;Terenzini, 1994).Modern ideas about the integration of service and learning in higher education were shaped by the work of John Dewey, who proposed ideas about hands-on learning and practical education (Curti, 1965). Dewey asserted that better learning occurs when students have the opportunity to put into practice the ideas that they are learning in the classroom. As further research has been done on this concept of service-learning, scholars (e.g., Astin & Sax, 1998;Astin, Sax, & Avalos, 1999;Eyler & Giles, 1999;Eyler, Giles, & Braxton, 1997; Gray, Ondaatje, Fricker, Geshwind, Goldman, Kaganoff, Robyn, Sundt, Vogelgesang, & Klein, 1998; have found that not only does student volunteerism promote the civic engagement that universities have historically tried to foster in their students, but community service also offers a host of educational and extracurricular benefits to the students.The impacts of volunteerism on college student development are extensive and welldocumented. These benefits can be distilled into thee broad categories -educational/scholastic, career/vocational, and personal/social -and each of these categories represent areas of student development that are highly valued by universities and educators. Educationally, students who participate in community service receive better grades (e.g., Tartter, 1996), demonstrate greater educational gains (e.g., Eyler & Giles, 1999), and increase their critical thinking skills (e.g., Eyler, Root, & Giles, 1998). Vocationally, community service by college students is associated with a stronger likelihood to participate in both future community service (e.g., Astin, Although the benefits of community service to the student volunteer are welldocumented, information from a recent survey of college students illustrates that 36% of graduating seniors at baccalaureate degree-g...

Researchers estimated the net effects of liberal arts colleges on 19 measures of good practices in undergraduate education grouped into seven categories. Analyses of 3-year longitudinal data from five liberal arts colleges, four research universities, and seven regional universities were conducted. Net of a battery of student precollege characteristics, whether or not a student was enrolled full-time and lived on campus, and the academic selectivity of the institution attended, liberal arts colleges evidenced stronger positive impacts on a broad range of empirically vetted good practices in undergraduate education than did either research universities or regional institutions. The impact was most pronounced in the initial year of postsecondary education.