Cover Story

Teach For America recruits recent college graduates and working professionals to teach in low-income, inner-city schools. In Missouri, several MU graduates are working to improve education in St. Louis.

For the past 10 years, the city and county fire departments have shared responsibility for calls in those parts of the city governed by the territorial agreement. But the city says it can no longer afford the agreement, and some city residents object to getting county fire service for their city tax dollars.

Taser use has become a hot topic in Columbia, and in response, a 27-member team of reporters worked on special assignment for the Missourian to compare Columbia's experience to that of other jurisdictions around the nation and world.

French vintners imported Missouri rootstocks around the turn of the 20th century, only to find that Missouri grapevines sheltered a pest called phylloxera.

The MU Institute for Continental Climate Viticulture and Enology is spearheading research that could spur a Missouri wine renaissance and put the growing industry on the global map.

Although Americans can read at roughly the same level they could in the early 1990s, the demands of work, family and civic life require higher levels of literacy than they did before.

David Sallee, the 57-year-old backhoe driver and Vietnam veteran, is trying to build Sallee Post-Service Sanctuary, a 5-acre trailer park outside Hallsville that would shelter veterans who are homeless or have disabilities in seven new three-bedroom mobile homes.

Luke Pickett, an 18-month-old boy with a beaming smile and a frequent laugh, left for China on Oct. 4 with his father. There, he is scheduled to receive a donated umbilical cord blood stem cell transplant. With luck, it could reduce his symptoms of cerebral palsy. It's a long way to travel, and it's expensive, but the Pickett family says it's worth it.

The prairie can tell you many things, but it takes time to learn its language. Eighty-six-year-old Clair Kucera has been listening to the voice of Tucker Prairie for more than half a century.

The story of Albert-Oakland Park is complicated. But at the most basic level, it involves a family's legacy and one man's drive to preserve it.

Clara Miles' vision paved the way for a community like no other in its time — an upscale subdivision for black families in Columbia. Nearly 50 years later, Miles Manor is still going strong.

In Columbia Public Schools, “gifted” means an IQ above 130, though throughout the rest of Missouri the bar rests around 125. Less tangible characteristics of gifted students include a keen sense of humor, persistent intellectual curiosity, superior reasoning powers and vocabulary and a wide range of interests, according to the district, which last year served 1,271 gifted students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

A look at K-12 and higher education in Columbia, past and future.

People in Columbia post their photos on Flickr as a way to connect with other photographers about shared interests.

Anne Gamboa was living in Florida when her family discovered her squalid living conditions. They made the decision to bring her back to Missouri, which required buying a new house and moving to Ashland.

The terms that swirl around foreclosures and mortgages can often be more complicated than the process itself. Here’s a glossary to help make sense of the convoluted situations.

Homeowners who are confused, troubled or even just wondering about their status have options in securing their residential future.

Adjustable-rate mortgages, or ARMs, are complex because rates can differ from year to year, leaving homeowners confused and often troubled about how to move forward.