AGWARA, Nigeria (Reuters) -Martha Mathias, her husband and two children were asleep at home when gunmen arrived at St Mary’s Catholic School campus, in central Nigeria, in the early hours of Friday.
“They asked my husband to come out, when he went out, they tied him,” said Mathias, a teacher at the school where more than 300 children and staff were abducted in one of the country’s worst school kidnappings in a decade.
The commotion terrified their youngest daughter who saw her father lying on the ground and started crying.
“They told my daughter if she does not keep quiet, they will shoot her. They put the gun in her mouth telling her to keep quiet.”
Mathias’ husband was taken by the gunmen and is among the 12 staff members and around 253 students still in captivity since the November 21 attack on the school.
The Christian Association of Nigeria said on Sunday that 50 students managed to escape from their captors.
Nigeria’s government says security forces are searching for the missing children and staff.
Emmanuel Bala, chairman of the school’s parent-teacher association, said he had not seen any of the children that escaped.
Another parent, who gave her name as Njinkonye and whose 10-year-old son was among the missing, said she went to the school on Monday.
“I came to the school, I am here, searching and looking whether I will see any child that returned, but I have not seen any child,” she said. The attack happened during the same week that 25 girls were abducted from a boarding school in northwest Kebbi State and 38 people were taken by gunmen during a church service in Kwara, central Nigeria.
President Bola Tinubu announced on Sunday that the 38 people taken in Kwara had been released, as he vowed not to relent in efforts to rescue students still held by their captors.
Tinubu has ordered the hiring of 30,000 more police officers to improve security in the country. Mass abductions for ransom have plagued Nigeria since Islamist militants kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in 2014. Criminal gangs now target remote schools, forcing closures across several states in northern Nigeria.
(Writing by Ben Ezeamalu; Editing by Alex Richardson)
MYAKKA CITY, Fla. — Melissa Spencer made a career change 18 years ago and has never looked back. She was in accounting but then she went back to school to become a teacher.
“It’s what I wanted to do when I switched careers was to be able to make a difference and be that teacher, like the teachers I had,” said Spencer.
What You Need To Know
Melissa Spencer teaches fifth grade made at Myakka City Elementary
She helps her students relate to the material by applying what they’re learning to life
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She teaches fifth grade math at Myakka City Elementary. She helps her students relate to the material by applying what they’re learning to life.
“A lot of times I try to relate anything to money and earning and spending because they are like, ‘oh you’re talking about money I know that.’ It’s a tangible thing to them so it makes sense to them,” said Spencer.
Spencer is teaching in the school she attended growing up.
“This is also my home school. I was a student here so I’ve been here a long time and this actually used to be my mother-in-law’s classroom,” said Spencer.
Before coming to this school four years ago, she taught middle and high school students. Spencer says that helps her prepare her students for what’s to come.
“I remember being that sixth grader coming from Myakka City that was bussed into town and it was very overwhelming and very daunting. And I don’t want them to feel that way. I want them to be prepared,” said Spencer.
A trial has been set for August 2026 in a lawsuit seeking to block the transfer of a parcel of prime Miami real estate to be used for President Donald Trump’s presidential library.
The decision Monday by Circuit Judge Mavel Ruiz in Miami will further delay Miami Dade College’s plans to formally transfer the sizable plot of land to the state of Florida, which intends to gift it to the foundation for the planned library.
Miami activist Marvin Dunn, a retired professor and chronicler of local Black history, filed the lawsuit arguing that the college board violated Florida’s Government in the Sunshine law by not providing sufficient notice for its special meeting on Sept. 23, when it voted to give up the nearly 3-acre (1.2-hectare) property.
Last month, Ruiz sided with Dunn and granted a temporary injunction that bars the transfer of the property, at least for now.
Attorneys for the college had asked the judge to stay the trial proceedings pending an appellate court’s review. Instead, Ruiz scheduled the trial to begin Aug. 3, though she acknowledged that could change, depending on how the appeals court proceeds.
The property is a developer’s dream and is valued at more than $67 million, according to a 2025 assessment by the Miami-Dade County property appraiser. One real estate expert wagered that the parcel — one of the last undeveloped lots on an iconic stretch of palm tree-lined Biscayne Boulevard — could sell for hundreds of millions of dollars more.
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Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Last February, Northeastern University student Ella Stapleton was struggling through her organizational behavior class. She began reviewing the notes her professor created outside of class early in the semester to see if it could guide her through the course content. But there was a problem: Stapleton said the notes were incomprehensible.
“It was basically like just word vomit,” said Stapleton.
While scrolling through a document her professor created, Stapleton said she found aChatGPTinquiry had been accidentally copied and pasted into the document. A section of notes also contained a ChatGPT-generated content disclaimer.
Stapleton believes her adjunct professor was overworked, teaching too many courses at once, and was therefore forced to sacrifice his quality of teaching with a shortcut from artificial intelligence.
“I personally do not blame the professor, I blame the system,” said Stapleton.
NBC10 Boston
NBC10 Boston
Ella Stapleton
Stapleton said she printed 60 pages worth of AI-generated content she believed her professor utilized for the class and brought it to a Northeastern staff member to lodge a complaint. She also made a bold demand: a refund for her and each of her classmates for the cost of the class.
“If I buy something for $8,000 and it’s faulty, I should get a refund,” said Stapleton, who has since graduated. “So why doesn’t that logic apply to this?”
Stapleton’s request made national headlines after she shared her story with The New York Times.
The moment on Northeastern’s campus encapsulates a larger issue that higher education institutions are grappling with across the country: how much AI use is ethical in the classroom?
NBC10 Boston collaborated with journalism students at Boston University’s College of Communication who are taking an in-depth reporting class taught by investigative reporter Ryan Kath.
We took a deep dive into how generative AI is changing the approach of higher education, from how students apply it to their everyday work to how universities are responding with academic programs and institutional studies.
With its widespread use, we also explored this question: what is AI doing to students’ critical thinking skills?
A degree in AI?
While driving along a highway in rural New Hampshire, a billboard caught our attention.
The message advertised a Bachelor of Science degree in artificial intelligence being offered at Rivier University in Nashua. We decided to visit the campus to learn more about the new program.
“The mission of Rivier is transforming hearts and minds to serve the world, and that transformation means to change,” said President of Rivier University Sister Paula Marie Buley.
NBC10 Boston
NBC10 Boston
Sister Paul Marie Buley
At Rivier University, students pay almost $40,000 for a bachelor’s degree in artificial AI, which will prepare them for a field with a median salary of roughly $145,000, according to the institution.
Upon graduating, the aim of Rivier’s undergraduate program in AI is for students to hold professional practices that allow them to strengthen their skills in the dynamic field.
Master’s degree programs in artificial intelligence have begun to pop up in universities across New England including Northeastern University, Boston University, and New England College. The first bachelor’s degree in AI was created in 2018 by Carnegie Mellon University, according to Master’s in AI.
“We want students to enter the mindset of a software engineer or a programmer and really haven’t an idea of what it feels like to work in a particular industry,” said Buley. “The future is here.”
In a 2024 survey from EDUCAUSE, a higher education advocacy nonprofit, 73% of higher education professionals said their institutions’ AI-related planning was driven by the growing use of these tools among students.
At Boston University, students can complete a self-paced, four-hour online course to earn an “AI at BU” student certificate. The course introduces the fundamentals of AI, with modules focused on responsible use, university-wide policies, and practical applications in both academic and professional settings, according to the certificate website.
Students are also encouraged to reflect on the ethical boundaries of AI tools and how to critically assess their use in coursework.
BU student Lauren McLeod said she doesn’t understand the resistance to AI in education. She believes schools should focus on teaching students to use it strategically. In lieu of clear institution-wide policies, AI usage policies differ from professor to professor.
“Are you using [AI] in a productive way, or using it to cut corners? They just need to change the framework on it and use it as a tool to help you,” said McLeod. “If you don’t use AI, you’re gonna fall behind.”
Despite rising awareness, colleges are slow to develop new policies. Only 20% of colleges and universities have published policies regarding AI use, according to Inside Higher Ed.
AI and critical thinking
AI is becoming an everyday tool for students in the classroom and on homework assignments, according to Pew Research Center.
Earlier this month, we stopped students along Commonwealth Avenue on BU’s campus to ask how much AI they use and if they think it’s affecting their brains.
BU student Kelsey Keate said she uses AI in her coding classes and knows she relies on it too much.
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NBC10 Boston
Kelsey Keate
“I feel like it’s definitely not helped me learn the code as easily, like I take longer to learn code now,” said Keate.
That is what worries researchers like Nataliya Kos’myna.
This June, the MIT Media Lab, an interdisciplinary research laboratory, released a study investigating how students’ critical thinking skills are exercised while writing an essay with or without AI assistance.
Kos’myna, an author of the study, said humans are standing at a technological crossroads—a point where it’s necessary to understand what exactly AI is doing to people’s brains. Three groups of 54 students from the Boston area participated in the study.
NBC10 Boston
NBC10 Boston
MIT researcher Nataliya Kos’myna
“This technology had been implemented and I would actually argue pushed in some cases on us, in all of the aspects of our lives, education, workspace, you name it,” said Kos’myna.
Tasked with writing an SAT-style essay, one student group had access to AI, one could only use non-AI search engines, and the final group had to use their brain alone, according to the project website.
Recording the participants’ brain activity, Kos’myna was able to see how engaged students were with their task and how much effort they put into the thought process.
The study ultimately concluded the convenience of AI came at a “cognitive cost.” Participants’ ability to critically evaluate the AI answer to their prompt was diminished. All three groups demonstrated different patterns of brain activity, according to the study.
Kos’myna found that students in the AI-assisted group didn’t feel much ownership towards their essays and students felt detached from the work they submitted. Graders were able to identify an AI-unique writing structure and noted that the vocabulary and ideas were strikingly similar.
“What we found are some of the things that were actually pretty concerning,” said Kos’myna.
The paper for the study is awaiting peer review but Kos’myna said the findings were important for them to share. She is urging the scientific community to prioritize more research about AI’s effect on human cognition, especially as it becomes a staple of everyday life.
After AI discovery, tuition refund rejected
In the wake of filing a complaint, Stapleton said Northeastern was silent for months. The school eventually put the adjunct professor “on notice” last May after she had graduated.
“Northeastern embraces the responsible use of artificial intelligence to enhance all aspects of its teaching, research, and operations,” said Renata Nyul, vice president for communications at Northeastern University in response to our request for comment. “We have developed an abundance of resources to ensure that both faculty and students use AI as a support system for teaching and learning, not a replacement.”
In addition to the AI-generated content being difficult to understand and learn from, Stapleton said it doesn’t justify the cost of tuition. In her complaint, Stapleton asked that she and all of her classmates be reimbursed a quarter of their tuition for the course.
Her refund request did not prevail, but Stapleton hopes the attention her story received will provide a teachable moment for colleges around the country.
“In exchange for tuition, [universities] grant you the transfer of knowledge and good teaching,” said Stapleton. “In this case, that fundamentally wasn’t happening, because the only content that we were being given was al AI-generated.”
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NBC10 Boston
Grace Sferrazza, Megan Amato and Dahye Kim report from the field.
The story was written by Amato, Kim and Sferrazza and edited by Kath
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Ryan Kath, Megan Amato | Boston University, Dahye Kim | Boston University and Grace Sferrazza | Boston University
The mass kidnapping of children in Nigeria caught the world’s attention over a decade ago when 276 high-school students were abducted from Chibok, sparking the #BringBackOurGirls campaign on social media. The phenomenon returned to the limelight this month with another mass abduction and President Trump’s threats to intervene over what he said was the persecution of Christians in one of Africa’s most strategic nations.
The reality is, the kidnappings never really abated.
This week is Thanksgiving in the United States, a time when many of us come together with family and friends to express gratitude for the positive things in our lives. The holiday season can also be a challenging time for those who are far from family and grappling with the prevalent loneliness of our modern era.
Perhaps worse than missing the company of others over the holidays is being with family who hold different views and beliefs from your own. The fact is, though, that when we come together with a large, diverse group of people at events we are bound to find a variety of viewpoints and personalities in the room.
People are complex and messy, and engaging with them is often a lot of work. Sometimes it seems easier to just not deal with them at all and “focus on ourselves” instead. Similarly, the vast amount of information available online often leads many graduate students and postdocs to think they can effectively engage in professional development, explore career options and navigate their next step on their own. Indeed, there are many amazing online tools and resources to help with a lot of this but only by engaging other people in conversation can we fully come to understand how various practices, experiences and occupations apply to us as unique beings in the world. Generic advice is fine, but it can only be tailored through genuine dialogue with another person, though some believe they can find it in a machine.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology has accelerated since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 and now many people lean on AI chatbots for advice and even companionship. The problem with this approach is that AI chatbots are, at least currently, quite sycophantic and don’t, by default, challenge a user’s worldview. Rather, they can reinforce one’s current beliefs and biases. Furthermore, since we as humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize things, we perceive the output of AI chatbots as “human” and think we are getting the type of “social” relationship and advice we need from a bot without all the friction of dealing with another human being in real life. So, while outsourcing your problems to a chatbot may feel easy, it cannot fully support you as you navigate your life and career. Furthermore, generative AI has made the job application, screening and interview process incredibly impersonal and ineffective. One recent piece in The Atlantic put it simply (if harshly): “The Job Market is Hell.”
What is the solution to this sad state of affairs?
I am here to remind readers of the importance of engaging with real, human people to help you navigate your professional development, job search and life. Despite the fear of being rejected, making small talk or hearing things that may challenge you, engaging with other people will help you learn about professional roles available to you, discover unexpected opportunities, build critical interpersonal skills and, in the process, understand yourself (and how you relate with others) better.
For graduate students and postdocs today, it’s easy to feel isolated or spend too much time in your own head focusing on your perceived faults and deficiencies. You need to remember, though, that you are doing hard things, including leading research projects seeking to investigate questions no one else has reported on before. But as you journey through your academic career and into your next step professionally, I encourage you to embrace the fact that true strength and resilience lies in our connections—with colleagues, mentors, friends and the communities we build.
Networks enrich your perspectives, foster resilience and can help you find not only jobs, but joy and fulfillment along the way. Take intentional steps to build and lean on your community during your time as an academic and beyond. Invest time, gratitude and openness in your relationships. Because when you navigate life’s challenges with others by your side, you don’t just survive—you thrive.
Practical Tips for Building and Leveraging Networks
For graduate students and postdocs, here are some action steps to foster meaningful networks to help you professionally and personally:
Tip 1: Seek Diverse Connections
Attend seminars, departmental events, professional conferences and interest groups—both within and outside your field.
Join and engage in online forums, LinkedIn groups and professional organizations that interest you. Create a career advisory group.
Tip 2: Practice Gratitude and Generosity
Thank peers and mentors regularly—showing appreciation strengthens relationships, opens doors and creates goodwill.
Offer help, such as reviewing your peers’ résumés, sharing job leads or simply listening. Reciprocity is foundational to strong networks.
Tip 3: Be Vulnerable and Authentic
Share struggles and setbacks. Vulnerability invites others to connect, offer advice and foster mutual support.
Be honest about your goals; don’t feel pressured to follow predefined paths set by others or by societal norms.
Tip 4: Leverage Formal Resources
Enroll in career design workshops or online courses, such as Stanford University’s “Designing Your Career.”
Utilize university career centers, alumni networks and faculty advisers for information and introductions.
Tip 5: Make Reflection a Habit
Set aside time weekly or monthly to review progress, map goals and consider input from your network.
Use journaling or guided exercises to deepen self-insight and identify what you want from relationships and careers.
Focus not just on professional “résumé virtues,” but also on “eulogy virtues”—kindness, honesty, courage and the quality of relationships formed.
These provide lasting meaning and fuel deep, authentic connections that persist beyond job titles and paychecks.
Strategies for Overcoming Isolation
Graduate students and postdocs are at particular risk for isolation and burnout, given the demands of research and the often-solitary nature of scholarship. Community is a proven antidote. Consider forming small groups with fellow students and postdocs to share resources, celebrate milestones and troubleshoot professional challenges together. Regular meetings can foster motivation and accountability. These can be as simple as monthly coffee chats to something more structured such as regular writing or job search support groups. And, while online communities are not a perfect substitute for support, postdocs can leverage Future PI Slack and graduate students can use their own Slack community for help and advice. You can also lean on your networks for emotional support and practical help, especially during stressful periods or setbacks.
Another practical piece of advice to build your network and connections is volunteer engagement. This could mean volunteering in a professional organization, committees at your institution or in your local community. Working together with others on shared projects in this manner helps build connections without the challenges many have with engaging others at purely social events. In addition, volunteering can help you develop leadership, communication and management skills that can become excellent résumé material.
Networking to Launch Your Career
Through the process of engaging with more people through an expanded network you also open yourself up to serendipity and opportunities that could enhance your overall training and career. Career theorists call this “planned happenstance.” The idea is simple: By putting yourself in community with others—attending talks, joining professional groups, volunteering for committees—you increase the odds that unexpected opportunities will cross your path. You meet people who do work you hadn’t considered, learn about opportunities before they’re posted and hear about initiatives that need someone with your skills earlier than most.
When I was a postdoc at Vanderbilt University, I volunteered for the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA), starting small by writing for their online newsletter (The POSTDOCket), and also became increasingly involved in the Vanderbilt Postdoctoral Association (VPA). These experiences were helpful as I transitioned to working in postdoctoral affairs as a higher education administrator after my postdoc. Writing for The POSTDOCket as a postdoc allowed me to interview administrators and leaders in postdoctoral affairs, in the process learning about working in the space. My leadership in VPA showed I understood some of the needs of the postdoctoral community and could organize programming to support postdocs. I have become increasingly involved in the NPA over the past six years, culminating in being chair of our Board of Directors in 2025. This work has allowed me to increase my national visibility and has resulted in invites to speak to postdocs at different institutions, the opportunity to serve on a National Academies Roundtable, and I believe helped me land my current role at Virginia Tech.
I share all this to reiterate that in uncertain job markets, it’s tempting to focus on polishing résumés or applying to ever more positions online. Those things can matter—but they’re not enough. Opportunities often come through both expanding your network and engaging with people and activities we care about. They can present themselves to you via your network long before they appear in writing and they often can’t be fully anticipated when you initially engage with these “extracurricular activities.” A good first step to open yourself up to possibilities is to get involved in communities outside your direct school or work responsibilities. Doing so will improve your sense of purpose, help you build key transferrable skills, increase your connections and aid in your transition to your next role.
Your training and career should not be a solitary climb, but rather a collaborative, evolving process of growth and discovery. A strong community and network are critical to your longterm wellbeing and success. And, in a world where setbacks and uncertainty are inevitable, connection is the constant that turns possibility into progress.
Chris Smith is Virginia Tech’s postdoctoral affairs program administrator. He serves on the National Postdoctoral Association’s Board of Directors and is a member of the Graduate Career Consortium—an organization providing a national voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.
Eastman, GA – A nationwide air traffic controller shortage has put new attention on a growing training option the FAA now approves for certain colleges.
The recent federal government shutdown highlighted how thin staffing has become, especially as delays and reroutes stacked up across the country.
The FAA says it wants to hire at least 8,900 new controllers by 2028. According to FAA workforce data analyzed by USAFacts, about 3,000 controller positions were vacant nationwide as of late 2024 — though not every facility is equally understaffed.
That shortage is driving interest in a newer FAA-approved college pathway designed to streamline controller training at a small group of universities — including Middle Georgia State.
Training ramps up in difficulty as students learn to manage more aircraft at once on radar.(Fox News)
The Enhanced AT-CTI program allows students to train to the same standard as the FAA Academy, and if hired and meeting FAA requirements such as passing the Air Traffic Skills Assessment (ATSA), medical and security clearances, they can go directly to a facility instead of completing the full academy in Oklahoma City, which can involve long waitlists and multi-month courses.
Graduates still undergo facility-specific training and must be certified on-the-job before becoming full controllers.
Only about nine schools nationwide have been approved to offer the new Enhanced AT-CTI program as of 2025, according to Kemarie Jeffers, the department chair of aviation science and management at Middle Georgia State.
Inside Middle Georgia State’s tower simulator, air traffic control student Brooke Graffagnino says the job’s intensity is what drew her in. “It kind of gets your chest beating, because with how much traffic there is, sometimes it is intense,” she said.
Students also train inside the on-campus control tower, gaining experience with real airport operations.(Fox News)
She says students quickly find out whether they’re suited for the job. “You can kind of tell who does not [love it]. There have been quite a few, and they are no longer here. It takes a lot to get through it,” she said.
Graffagnino says the importance of the work became clearer as she learned how controllers keep busy airspace organized. “Once you get in the airspace that is super crowded or approaching the larger airports like Atlanta, you need someone to help coordinate and keep everything separate and safe,” she said.
Middle Georgia State was approved as an Enhanced AT-CTI school in mid-2024. Jeffers says the impact was immediate.
“Before our program had maybe about 17 to 20 students. Right now we have 54. So we have already, in that short amount of time, almost tripled in size the amount of students that we have,” he said.
An instructor helps a student navigate radar-based air traffic training during an advanced simulation.(Fox News)
To earn the enhanced designation, Jeffers said the school had to update its curriculum, overhaul parts of its simulator setup, and install new audio and video systems.
“We’ve upgraded a lot of our equipment… we had to install audio and video equipment upstairs in our tower sim,” he said.
Those upgrades allow the FAA to remotely review or spot-check training sessions and ensure they meet federal standards.
The program’s biggest distinction is what happens after graduation. “Enhanced CTI eliminates your requirement of going to the academy. You will graduate here and you can go straight to work,” Jeffers said. “So it saves you time and effort — again, it gets you to work sooner and making money quicker.”
The FAA requires enhanced programs to employ instructors with controller experience and maintain simulator equipment comparable to FAA standards.
A comparison of the traditional FAA route to becoming an air traffic controller and the newer Enhanced AT-CTI pathway.(Fox News)
As students advance, the simulations become more complex, requiring trainees to manage more aircraft at once.
“As we get more comfortable and confident, we are able to allow more aircraft into the airspace at a time,” Graffagnino said.
Before finishing the program, every student must pass a final simulation that mirrors the FAA Academy’s evaluation process.
“Our instructors will then run a scenario and they will be graded… the exact same way in which they will be graded at the academy,” Jeffers said.
According to the FAA’s FY 2025 Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan, the agency anticipates about 2,000 hires in FY 2025, 2,200 in FY 2026, and incremental increases through 2028, though retirements are expected to offset much of that growth.
Olivianna Calmes joined Fox News in 2024 as a Multimedia Reporter based in St. Louis, Missouri.
Fifty of the 303 schoolchildren abducted from a Catholic school in north-central Nigeria’s Niger state have escaped captivity and are now with their families, the school authority said Sunday, bringing relief to some distraught families after one of the largest school abductions in Nigeria’s history.
The schoolchildren, aged between 10 and 18, escaped individually between Friday and Saturday, according to the Most Rev. Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria in Niger state and the proprietor of the school. A total of 253 schoolchildren and 12 teachers are still held by the kidnappers, he said in a statement.
“We were able to ascertain this when we decided to contact and visit some parents,” Yohanna said.
People stand near a display local newspapers on the street of Lagos with headlines on gunmen abducting schoolchildren and staff of the St. Mary’s Catholic Primary and Secondary School in Papiri community in Nigeria, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.
Sunday Alamba / AP
The pupils and students were seized together with their teachers by gunmen who attacked the St. Mary’s School, a Catholic institution in Niger state’s remote Papiri community, on Friday. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the abductions and authorities have said tactical squads have been deployed alongside local hunters to rescue the children.
It was not immediately clear where the Niger state children were being held or how they managed to return home. Nigeria’s military and police did not immediately respond to an Associated Press inquiry.
“As much as we receive the return of these 50 children that escaped with some sigh of relief, I urge you all to continue in your prayers for the rescue and safe return of the remaining victims,” Yohanna said.
Pope Leo XIV called for the immediate release of the schoolchildren and staff of the school, saying at the end of a mass in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday that he was “deeply saddened” by the incident.
“I feel great sorrow, especially for the many girls and boys who have been abducted and for their anguished families,” the pontiff said. “I make a heartfelt appeal for the immediate release of the hostages and urge the competent authorities to take appropriate and timely decisions to ensure their release.”
All schools in Niger state were ordered to close on Saturday in response to the kidnappings, reported BBC, a CBS partner. Dominic Adamu, whose daughters are students at St. Mary’s School but were not abducted, told the outlet that the attack “took everybody by surprise.”
“Everybody is weak,” Adamu said, according to the BBC.
Another woman, who was not identified by name, told the outlet that her 6- and 13-year-old nieces had been kidnapped from the school, adding: “I just want them to go home.”
People stand near a display local newspapers on the street of Lagos with headlines on gunmen abducting schoolchildren and staff of the St. Mary’s Catholic Primary and Secondary School in Papiri community in Nigeria, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025.
Sunday Alamba / AP
The Niger state attack happened four days after 25 schoolchildren were seized in similar circumstances in neighboring Kebbi state’s Maga town, which is 106 miles away.
Both states are in a northern region of Nigeria where dozens of armed gangs have used kidnapping for ransom as one way of dominating remote communities with little government and security presence.
Satellite image shows that the Niger state school compound is attached to an adjoining primary school, with more than 50 classrooms and dormitory buildings. It’s located near a major road linking the towns of Yelwa and Mokwa.
School kidnappings have come to define insecurity in Africa’s most populous nation, and armed gangs often see schools as “strategic” targets to draw more attention.
Niger state hurriedly closed down all schools after Friday’s attack, while some federal colleges in conflict hotspots across the region were also closed by the Nigerian government.
“I will not relent”
The kidnappings are happening against the backdrop of President Trump’s claims of “Christian persecution” in the West African country. Attacks in Nigeria affect both Christians and Muslims. The school attack earlier this week in Kebbi state was in a Muslim-majority town.
Arrests are rare and ransom payments are common in many of the hot spots in northern Nigeria.
Confidence McHarry, a security analyst at Lagos-based consultancy SBM Intelligence, said that while there’s little evidence that Trump’s comments might have inspired the gunmen to launch more attacks in the hope that more attention would bring higher ransoms, “the absence of consequences is what is fuelling these attacks.”
In a statement welcoming the freedom of some of those kidnapped in Niger state and Kebbi state, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said his government will not relent until every hostage is freed.
“Let me be clear: I will not relent. Every Nigerian, in every state, has the right to safety — and under my watch, we will secure this nation and protect our people,” he added.
When viewers first see her, Rose, a Native American woman in her 60s, is inside her second-hand shop in the town of Derry, Maine, in 1962.
She speaks with another character about the woman’s son. The scene ends with Rose staring after the woman with an unreadable expression.
The role of Rose in “It: Welcome to Derry” is more than the next acting gig for UC Riverside professor Kimberly Guerrero.
It’s another important step by a Native American actor in a Hollywood that has seen few significant Native characters in movies and TV shows.
UC Riverside professor Kimberly Guerrero portrays Rose in “It: Welcome to Derry,” an HBO Max series. (Courtesy of Brooke Palmer/HBO)
UC Riverside professor Kimberly Guerrero, left, is seen with Taylour Paige in “It: Welcome to Derry,” a new HBO Max series. (Courtesy of Brooke Palmer/HBO)
Kimberly Guerrero, a UC Riverside professor, plays Rose in “It: Welcome to Derry.” (Courtesy of Brooke Palmer/HBO)
UC Riverside professor Kimberly Guerrero attends the Los Angeles premiere of the HBO Max series “It: Welcome to Derry” at Warner Bros. Studios on Oct. 20, 2025, in Burbank. (Courtesy of Araya Doheny/Getty Images for HBO)
UC Riverside professor Kimberly Guerrero attends the Los Angeles premiere of the HBO Max series “It: Welcome to Derry” at Warner Bros. Studios on Oct. 20, 2025, in Burbank. (Courtesy of Araya Doheny/Getty Images for HBO)
Kimberly Guerrero, a UC Riverside professor, seen Aug. 3, 2023, has a role in “It: Welcome to Derry,” a series on HBO Max. (Courtesy of Stan Lim, UC Riverside)
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UC Riverside professor Kimberly Guerrero portrays Rose in “It: Welcome to Derry,” an HBO Max series. (Courtesy of Brooke Palmer/HBO)
For example, a 2023 USC study found that 1% of roles in top-grossing films over a 16-year period had Native American characters. Less than a quarter of them were speaking roles.
Guerrero said that, looking back at cinema through the decades, there was little Native representation — and what there was wasn’t written by Native Americans or directed by them.
Guerrero, an actor, screenwriter, producer, director and UCR professor of acting and screenwriting, is doing her part to change that.
Guerrero plays Rose, a reoccurring character in the HBO Max series that is a prequel to Stephen King‘s 1986 horror novel “It,” which has been translated to film.
She said it was a powerful opportunity for her to stand in Rose’s shoes.
The character has lived in her ancestral home in Maine all her life and is deeply linked to the history and songs of her people, Guerrero said.
“Somebody that is so intimately and powerfully connected to the land, to the water, to the air, to those who have gone before her and understanding her place in the world,” Guerrero said. “… There was an ease with playing her.”
At this point, viewers have seen the creature It, later known as Pennywise the Clown, a shape-shifting monster that has been on earth for millennia and feeds on humans in 27-year cycles. Rose, a member of the local tribe, is living through her third encounter with the creature.
Guerrero, born in Oklahoma in 1967, is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and of Salish-Kootenai descent, a 2023 UCR news release states.
Guerrero’s most well-known role came in the 1990s as Jerry’s Native American girlfriend on “Seinfeld.” In 2020, things changed when she played Cherokee Chief Wilma Mankiller in the Gloria Steinem biopic “The Glorias.” In 2021, she played Auntie B. in Reservation Dogs, a TV show about four Native American teens in Oklahoma.
Guerrero’s love of acting started well before she appeared on television. And she noticed the lack of diversity in the industry well before then as well.
As a child, a moment that stood out for Guerrero was watching “The Brady Bunch” at a time when the portrayal of her people was very much “cowboys and Indians,” she said.
In a popular story arc, the Brady family visits the Grand Canyon and meets a Native American boy, Jimmy Pocaya, played by Michele Campo, she said.
“It was just so liberating for me as a kid who didn’t really see anybody that looked like me on television,” Guerrero said.
The character was cool, she said, and talked like a normal kid. It was something she’d not seen before.
The study examined speaking or named characters in movies to understand how Native American roles were portrayed on screen. It found that less than one-quarter of 1% of all speaking roles went to Native American characters and that Native American roles did not exceed 1% of roles available in the 16 years studied.
During that time, there was one film in which a Native actor had a leading role. Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of all Native American speaking characters were inconsequential to the plot, and a third filled secondary roles, the study found.
When Native American characters did appear, more often than not they were male, at 77%. Women characters comprised 23%. In 1,581 movies of the 1,600 examined, there were no women with speaking roles. Sometimes their characters didn’t even have names.
Many shows have moved away from leaning into blatant stereotypes and characters are more well-rounded and better represented. But it is still not perfect, he said.
Shows such as “Reservation Dogs,” a 2021 comedy series “blew the lid off it” and there has been a surge in Native film companies, directors and actors in the past 10 years.
Guerrero entered the industry in the 1990s after graduating from UCLA. Coming out of college, she said casting agents didn’t know what to do with her. She filled a particular “niche” as a Native American woman.
Things had progressed and characters were given more depth when she came into the industry, Guerrero said. One huge “watershed moment” came after the 1990 film “Dances with Wolves,” starring and directed by Kevin Costner. The film employed Native American actors such as Graham Greene and Rodney Grant.
“There was some really cool things happening,” Guerrero said. “The Indigenous people that I was playing were really kind of fleshed-out human beings.”
Things were moving in a positive direction, she said. At the end of the 1990s, things changed.
“Then, all of a sudden, the door closed so hard, so profoundly,” Guerrero said.
Guerrero went back to school in the 2010s. She attended UCR, earned a master of fine arts and became a professor in 2017. Guerrero said a pivotal moment was the 2016 Standing Rock protests that fought against an oil pipeline through Standing Rock Sioux Tribe lands in North Dakota.
Millions of people watched the standoff in real time. Suddenly, it was not about explaining that Native people belonged in contemporary settings and that let the proverbial horse out of the barn, she said.
“I think you have a global audience that wants to see more Indigenous representation and not just, like, slotted into shows where we kind of make sense,” Guerrero said.
The Stephen King universe is influenced by Native history, Guerrero said. The author’s influence from growing up in Maine has given a foundation to many of his tales, something she said was an exciting part about being on the show.
“I think it’s a perfect time, you know, in Native American Heritage Month just to gently … kind of reflect on the world and the people and the cultures and the beautiful rich stories that were here before America was America,” Guerrero said.
“And that is part of American history.”
Episodes of “It: Welcome to Derry,” are being released on Sundays through Sunday, Dec. 14.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A brief pause in federal funding left early learning centers across Ohio scrambling to maintain operations, prompting school leaders in Columbus to call for more stable childcare funding to prevent future disruptions.
What You Need To Know
A federal funding pause caused closures and uncertainty at early learning centers across Ohio
School leaders said childcare should be funded like infrastructure to withstand federal disruptions
Economic losses tied to childcare shortages in Ohio are estimated at $5.4 billion annually, according to the Ohio Chamber of Commerce
During the freeze, some early childcare programs closed while others struggled to stay open. Staff at the Columbus Early Learning Center said families and educators felt the effects immediately.
Antywanna Williams, a teacher’s aide whose son attends the center, said the uncertainty would deeply affect young children if access to schools were suddenly cut off.
“How do you explain to your four-year-old that there is no school?” Williams said. “You have to wait until you’re five years old to go to kindergarten.”
Williams said the situation also raised concerns about her own job security and what a shutdown would mean for her family. She said her work is rooted in close relationships with the children in her classroom and their families, and losing that stability would affect them as much as it would affect her.
Columbus Early Learning Centers CEO Gina Ginn said the funding pause highlighted how dependent early learning providers are on federal dollars and how vulnerable families become when that support stalls. She said the instability also carries a broader economic cost.
“We are missing out in the state of Ohio on $5.4 billion a year in our economy because families can’t go to work because they can’t find affordable, high-quality childcare,” Ginn said.
Ginn said the disruption underscored the need to treat childcare as core infrastructure—similar to roads, water systems and K–12 schools—so centers can withstand fluctuations in federal support. Without stable options, she said, families face long-term barriers.
“It really is the foundation and the backbone of families being able to work. And then also create pathways out of poverty,” she said.
School leaders said they are now evaluating how local funding structures could be modernized to prevent future shocks to early learning programs.
A Texas A&M committee ruled that the university’s decision to fire a professor after a student was removed from class for objecting to a children’s literature lesson on gender identity was unjustified.
A video recorded earlier this year by a female student showed her asking Melissa McCoul, a senior lecturer in the English department, if teaching gender ideology is legal, pointing to President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at removing the subject from higher education.
The internal committee ruled that the university failed to follow proper procedures and did not prove there was good cause to terminate McCoul. The committee unanimously voted this week that “the summary dismissal of Dr. McCoul was not justified.”
The university said in a statement that interim President Tommy Williams has received the committee’s nonbinding recommendation and will make a decision after reviewing it.
The internal committee ruled that the university failed to follow proper procedures and did not prove there was good cause to terminate the professor.(AP)
McCoul’s lawyer, Amanda Reichek, said the dispute is likely to end up in court because the university appears to want to continue fighting, and the interim president is facing similar political pressure.
“Dr. McCoul asserts that the flimsy reasons proffered by A&M for her termination are a pretext for the University’s true motivation: capitulation to Governor Abbott’s demands,” Reichek said in a statement.
Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans had called for her firing after watching the video.
“Fire the professor who acted contrary to Texas law,” the governor wrote on X in September.
The video led to public criticism of university president Mark Welsh, who later resigned, although he did not offer a reason and never mentioned the video in his resignation announcement.
Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans had called for the professor’s firing after watching the video.(Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)
State Rep. Brian Harrison said in a statement to Fox News Digital at the time that the “liberal president of Texas A&M must be fired and all DEI and LGBTQ indoctrination defunded.”
The opening of the video posted by Harrison on social media showed a slide titled “Gender Unicorn” that noted different gender identities and expressions.
Students in the class told The Texas Tribune that they were discussing a book called “Jude Saves the World,” which is about a middle school student who comes out as nonbinary. Several other books included in the course also touched on LGBTQ+ issues.
After a back-and-forth dispute about the legality of teaching the lessons on gender identity, McCoul asked the student to leave the class. Harrison also posted other recordings of the student’s meeting with Welsh that showed the then-university president defending McCoul’s instruction.
President Donald Trump signed executive orders seeking to root out instruction on gender identity in higher education.(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Welsh said when McCoul was fired that he learned she had continued teaching content in a children’s literature course “that did not align with any reasonable expectation of standard curriculum for the course.” He also said the course content did not match its catalog descriptions.
“If we allow different course content to be taught from what is advertised, we let our students down. When it comes to our academic offerings, we must keep our word to our students and to the state of Texas,” he said in September, noting that leaders in the College of Arts and Sciences were found to have approved plans to continue teaching course content that was not consistent with the course’s published description.
Earlier this month, the Texas A&M Regents issued a new policy stating that no academic course “will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity” unless approved in advance by a campus president.
Fox News Digital reached out to Texas A&M for comment.
Norfolk Southern railroad worked with the state of Ohio and Youngstown State University to revive plans for a $20 million first responder training center near the site of the worst derailment in a decade in East Palestine, Ohio.
Building a training center to help prepare firefighters to deal with a railroad disaster was quickly part of the plan after the derailment on Feb. 3, 2023, that forced the evacuation of roughly half the small town near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border and left residents with worries about the potential long-term health impacts.
But Norfolk Southern said last January that East Palestine officials had agreed with the railroad as part of the town’s $22 million settlement that the training center wasn’t going to be feasible because of concerns about the ongoing operating costs. The railroad even agreed to give 15 acres of land it had bought for the center to the town.
Now the railroad is going to partner with Youngstown State to build and operate the training center to help prepare first responders to deal with the unique challenges of a train derailment that can spill hazardous chemicals being carried in railcars. In East Palestine, the derailed train cars burned for days, and officials decided to blow open five tank cars of vinyl chloride because they feared those cars might explode.
“By working together, we’ve turned this vision of an economic and educational center dedicated to enhancing community safety into a sustainable reality,” railroad CEO Mark George said.
The railroad has committed more than $135 million to help the town recover from the derailment and agreed to pay $600 million in a class-action settlement with residents, though those settlement payments are on hold because of a pending appeal and accounting problems with the first company that was distributing checks.
Local East Palestine first responders will have free access to training at the facility. Mayor Trent Conaway said this will “better prepare them to serve our village and the communities in our region.”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A total of 303 schoolchildren and 12 teachers were abducted by gunmen during an attack on St. Mary’s School, a Catholic institution in north-central Nigeria’s Niger state, the Christian Association of Nigeria said Saturday, updating an earlier tally of 215 schoolchildren.The tally was changed “after a verification exercise and a final census was carried out,” according to a statement issued by the Most. Rev. Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, chairman of the Niger state chapter of CAN, who visited the school on Friday.He said 88 other students “were also captured after they tried to escape” during the attack. The students were both male and female and ranged in age from 10 to 18.The school kidnapping in Niger state’s remote Papiri community happened four days after 25 schoolchildren were seized in similar circumstances in neighboring Kebbi state’s Maga town, which is 170 kilometers (106 miles) away.No group has yet claimed responsibility for the abductions and authorities have said tactical squads have been deployed alongside local hunters to rescue the children.Yohanna described as false a claim from the state government that the school had reopened for studies despite an earlier directive for schools in that part of Niger state to close temporarily due to security threats.“We did not receive any circular. It must be an afterthought and a way to shift blame,” he said, calling on families “to remain calm and prayerful.”School kidnappings have come to define insecurity in Africa’s most populous nation, and armed gangs often see schools as “strategic” targets to draw more attention.UNICEF said last year that only 37% of schools across 10 of the conflict-hit states have early warning systems to detect threats.The kidnappings are happening amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s claims of targeted killings against Christians in the West African country. Attacks in Nigeria affect both Christians and Muslims. The school attack earlier this week in Kebbi state was in a Muslim-majority town.The attack also took place as Nigerian National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu was visiting the U.S. where he met Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday.
ABUJA, Nigeria —
A total of 303 schoolchildren and 12 teachers were abducted by gunmen during an attack on St. Mary’s School, a Catholic institution in north-central Nigeria’s Niger state, the Christian Association of Nigeria said Saturday, updating an earlier tally of 215 schoolchildren.
The tally was changed “after a verification exercise and a final census was carried out,” according to a statement issued by the Most. Rev. Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, chairman of the Niger state chapter of CAN, who visited the school on Friday.
He said 88 other students “were also captured after they tried to escape” during the attack. The students were both male and female and ranged in age from 10 to 18.
The school kidnapping in Niger state’s remote Papiri community happened four days after 25 schoolchildren were seized in similar circumstances in neighboring Kebbi state’s Maga town, which is 170 kilometers (106 miles) away.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the abductions and authorities have said tactical squads have been deployed alongside local hunters to rescue the children.
Yohanna described as false a claim from the state government that the school had reopened for studies despite an earlier directive for schools in that part of Niger state to close temporarily due to security threats.
“We did not receive any circular. It must be an afterthought and a way to shift blame,” he said, calling on families “to remain calm and prayerful.”
School kidnappings have come to define insecurity in Africa’s most populous nation, and armed gangs often see schools as “strategic” targets to draw more attention.
UNICEF said last year that only 37% of schools across 10 of the conflict-hit states have early warning systems to detect threats.
The kidnappings are happening amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s claims of targeted killings against Christians in the West African country. Attacks in Nigeria affect both Christians and Muslims. The school attack earlier this week in Kebbi state was in a Muslim-majority town.
The attack also took place as Nigerian National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu was visiting the U.S. where he met Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday.
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — More than 300 schoolchildren and 12 teachers were abducted by gunmen during an attack on St. Mary’s School, a Catholic institution, in north-central Nigeria’s Niger state, the Christian Association of Nigeria said Saturday, updating an earlier tally of 215 schoolchildren.
The tally was updated “after a verification exercise and a final census was carried out,” according to a statement issued by the Most. Rev. Bulus Dauwa Yohanna, chairman of the Niger state chapter of CAN, who visited the school on Friday.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
I’m not quite sure why you felt the need to publish the self-indulgent “Teaching as a Sacred Life” by Joe P. Dunn (Nov. 19, 2025).
It’s great that Joe is inspired by his teaching and is so passionate about it. Of course, most faculty who chose teaching are (or were) so inspired. So what merits the article? I guess that Joe is still teaching at age 80.
Yes, some people view retirement as a goal because they don’t like their jobs. But many faculty view their profession as a vocation, so why would they retire? One reason is because of diminished effectiveness. Ossified approaches, diminished cognitive capacity and so on are the unhappy, but inevitable, results of aging. The person experiencing these declines is generally not the best at noticing them, as they creep in so slowly that they’re most visible to outsiders or when accurately comparing to yourself from long ago. (A septuagenarian Galileo, when completing Two New Sciences, his seminal 1638 work in mechanics, was disheartened to find that it was hard for him to follow his own notes and thoughts from several decades earlier.)
Another reason to retire is to give the next generation a chance. Joe talks about the plentiful faculty jobs when he was young. There are many reasons why they’re no longer plentiful, but one of them is that there is no longer a mandatory retirement age. It was legal until 1993 for there to be a mandatory retirement age for tenured faculty (later than the general 1986 ban on mandatory retirement because lawmakers felt there were several valid arguments for a mandatory retirement age for tenured professors).
Many academics pour so much into their work that they don’t develop a strong identity outside of their job. They end up like Joe, not sure what they would even do in retirement. A broader push for a better work-life balance in higher education could go a long way toward helping people develop their complete selves, and would reduce the fear of retirement among academics. Plus, there are always positions emeriti that allow you to keep your hand in the intellectual world of higher ed without continuing to draw a paycheck that you no longer need and someone else does.
Speaking of viewing teaching as sacred, clergy retire. Heck, we’ve even had a pope retire. Faculty can figure it out too.
David Syphers is a physics professor at Eastern Washington University. He is writing in a personal capacity.
After spending two college semesters in northern Thailand, Sarah Jongsma found herself back home in the rural Nevada town where she grew up, surrounded by everything familiar yet feeling strangely out of place.
“It caught me off guard,” she said. “I didn’t know what was going on.”
Only later, after a summer studying in India and while preparing to go to France for another semester abroad, did Jongsma understand what she had been feeling: reverse culture shock.
The 22-year-old’s experience shows that studying abroad can be challenging in unexpected ways. Experts say that’s why students need to study up on not only safety precautions and cultural differences, but also the emotional shifts that may come with leaving home — and returning to it.
Planning for low points and potential disappointments, experts say, can help students focus on making the most of a trip that is exciting, challenging and life-changing.
“The value and purpose of studying abroad is to learn about the rest of the world as well as learn about yourself. In fact, it is the juxtaposition of having your assumptions tested that you can gain from studying abroad and helps you understand yourself even better,” said Bill Bull, vice president of risk management for the Council on International Educational Exchange, which facilitates high school, college and faculty study-abroad programs.
Here are some tips that experts and students recommend for anyone heading off to learn in a foreign country:
Before you travel
Along with having an up-to-date passport and a visa, if their host country requires one, students need to be aware of potential risks and cultural expectations based on their ethnicity, nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation and religion.
Many countries do not recognize same-sex unions, so experts suggest being careful of open interactions with a partner of the same sex. Women may face cultural expectations around dress or hair, or find it hard to obtain birth control or feminine hygiene products they didn’t think to bring with them.
“Make plans for what you will do when things go wrong, because things can go wrong and things will go wrong,” said Bull, who recommends connecting with students who studied abroad, as well as their parents, for advice they wished they’d had. “It doesn’t mean it has to be the end of your experience. It just means that you need to be ready to manage it.”
Some study-abroad programs offer basic health coverage, but students should consider medical evacuation insurance and check whether any of their regular prescribed medications are illegal abroad. The U.S. Department of State also recommends enrolling in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, a free safety and security alert service for U.S. citizens.
Advance research also is important for students still thinking about whether to apply for a study-abroad program.
Financial and academic planning are equally important, as they are among the biggest barriers for students seeking to study abroad, said Phoebe Stears-Macauley, a Germany and Spain program advisor for the University Studies Abroad Consortium, which offers study-abroad programs for university students.
“Meet with your academic advisors, talk through the classes you will take and how those will transfer back, and meet with your financial aid office,” she said.
While a lot of the preparation and precautions are about practical needs, experts and students say it’s just as much about setting realistic expectations.
When Jongsma left for the Thai city of Chiang Mai in 2023, it was her first time traveling internationally and being away from her parents.
“When you’re getting ready to leave, you get really focused on your own personal goals and how you’re going to meet them,” she said. “I don’t think you realize that when you get there, you’ll miss your community a lot.”
Homesickness may feel even sharper around holidays like Thanksgiving, especially for students who have not spent them away from family before. Jongsma suggests bringing small reminders of home with you and keeping a journal. She also packed a small portable printer for her summer studies in Bengaluru, India, in case she wanted to print out pictures of family and friends.
While abroad
Once students arrive at their destination, experts suggest slowing down and observing their surroundings. A common regret Stears-Macauley said she hears from returning students, especially those who studied in Europe, is that they spent every weekend traveling and not getting to know their host city.
Bull advises students to think about why they are studying abroad in the first place and what they hope to get from the experience. Choosing to be present in the moment instead of constantly taking photos can make the time far more meaningful and yield cultural clues that help you fit in, he said.
“Anyone can go be a tourist,” Bull said. “You want to notice what’s going on around you. You want to look at what people are wearing and what they’re not wearing. You want to see, do people stop at the red lights or do they cross anyway?”
Programs can last anywhere from a few weeks to more than a year, and students may face mental health challenges such as loneliness, depression or language-related anxiety. Many programs offer on-site support, but experts say students should have a plan in place before those symptoms occur.
For Dominic Motter, who spent a semester in London in 2023, familiar routines helped when homesickness struck. Like Jongsma, Motter’s trip abroad was his first time away from family and friends for an extended period of time, and he was surprised when confronted with the feeling of homesickness.
“I’d never known that feeling before,” he said.
An avid runner, Motter would jog in the park whenever he felt overwhelmed, a simple ritual from back home that helped him feel more grounded. He also found comfort in decorating his room, both with items from home and new souvenirs from his travels. At the end of the day, he said it helped him feel like he was “coming home.”
“Instead of it feeling like a temporary dorm room or hotel room,” he said, it put him in the mindset that “this is now my new home.”
Upon return
Experts say many students returning home are going through a transition and may struggle with reverse culture shock without realizing it.
“You’ve had this transformative experience. You’ve changed and grown so much, and you come back to the place where you were before and it’s all different because you’re so different,” Stears-Macauley said. She suggests joining local international clubs or alumni associations from the foreign school you attended to find support.
Students can also prepare by answering the following questions, Bull said: How will you contextualize your experience? What aspects are most important to share? Which details are suitable for brief conversations, and which are better saved for deeper conversations with people who want to understand what made the experience meaningful?
For Jongsma, it helped to create new experiences in a familiar place — even something as simple as checking out a new museum, she said. Motter, who spent his first few weeks wishing he were back in London, said it helped to talk with the friends he’d made there because they actually understood what he was feeling.
As he put it: “It’ll eventually feel like home again.”
___
Mumphrey reported from Flagstaff, Arizona. Yamat reported from Las Vegas.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Trump administration has sued California for providing in-state college tuition, scholarships, and state-funded financial aid to students who do not have legal status to be in the United States.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, alleges the practice harms U.S. citizens and encourages illegal immigration. Among the defendants are the state, top state officials, and the state’s two public university systems, the University of California and California State.
President Donald Trump’s administration has filed similar lawsuits against policies in other states, including Illinois, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Kentucky and Texas. Half the country now has similar laws to California’s.
In June, after the administration sued, Texas ended its decades-old law. And Florida last year scrapped its law that allowed in-state tuition for high school graduates who weren’t in the country legally.
Supporters of the state tuition breaks argue that they don’t violate federal law if they provide the same rates to U.S. citizens in the same circumstances — meaning they are residents of the state and graduates of one of its high schools. The California Dream Act also allows such students to apply for state-funded financial aid.
Many of the students were brought to the U.S. by their parents when they were children, and supporters of the laws say they are as much a part of their communities as U.S. citizens.
It is the latest action by Trump’s administration since he issued executive orders in February directing federal agencies to stop public benefits from going to immigrants living in the U.S. illegally and to challenge state and local policies seen as favoring those immigrants over some citizens. The lawsuit argues that the Republican president’s orders enforce federal immigration laws.
“California is illegally discriminating against American students and families by offering exclusive tuition benefits for non-citizens,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “This marks our third lawsuit against California in one week — we will continue bringing litigation against California until the state ceases its flagrant disregard for federal law.”
The University of California defended its decades-old in-state tuition policy.
“While we will, of course, comply with the law as determined by the courts, we believe our policies and practices are consistent with current legal standards,” it said in a statement.
The lawsuit comes weeks after the California Supreme Court let stand a lower-court ruling that the University of California’s policy barring students without legal status in the U.S. from campus jobs is discriminatory and must be reconsidered.
University system officials had warned that the decision would put them in a precarious position as they negotiate with the Trump administration after the withdrawal of federal research funds.
The UC is dealing with federal grant suspensions and a White House demand that it pay a $1 billion fine over allegations including antisemitism and the illegal consideration of race in admitting students to its Los Angeles campus.
The California State University system is the nation’s largest and among its most diverse, with more than 460,000 students. More than a quarter of undergraduates are first-generation college students, according to the university system.
The University of California serves about 300,000 students.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
If you’re not a supporter of the progressive DEI agenda, you’re not career ready. That’s one of the messages that the National Association of Colleges and Employers, America’s leading professional association for career placement, is sending to students.
First established in 1956, NACE boasts a current membership of more than 17,000 dues-paying career services and recruitment professionals. Career counselors and others in higher education often cite NACE’s eight career readiness competencies to help students prepare for the job market and workplace.
I was planning to use the NACE competencies this semester in a class on how liberal arts education equips students for the professional world and was dismayed to find that partisan criteria had crept into this valuable resource. The list includes—alongside things like teamwork, effective communication and technological proficiency—a competency called Equity & Inclusion. According to NACE, this means that a prospective professional will “engage in anti-oppressive practices that actively challenge the systems, structures, and policies of racism and inequity.”
If you’re fully career ready, the group says, you will not merely “keep an open mind to diverse ideas and new ways of thinking.” You will also “advocate for inclusion, equitable practices, justice, and empowerment for historically marginalized communities” and will “address systems of privilege that limit opportunities” for members of those communities. In other words, you will subscribe to the view that American society is characterized by systemic racism and will work to break down America’s allegedly racist structure.
NACE defines “equity” in this light: “Whereas equality means providing the same to all, equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances.”
While these beliefs and attitudes might make someone a good fit at one of a diminishing number of “woke” corporations, they have little to do with career readiness in the ordinary sense of the term. Rather, the language NACE employs in its official materials implies a commitment to an ideological agenda that the organization has mixed into its definition of professional competence. NACE could be teaching students how to navigate the political diversity that characterizes most workplaces. Instead, through its influence in the college career counseling world, it is teaching them that acceptance of progressive orthodoxy on disputed questions of racial justice is a prerequisite for professional employment.
NACE also does a disservice to students by signaling that workplace political engagement is universally valued by employers. In fact, many companies discourage it, and with good reason. In most work environments, political advocacy is more likely to cause tension and division than it is to foster cooperation and trust.
As a college teacher and administrator, I’m especially troubled by the fact that NACE is conveying to students that their education should lead them to adopt a certain viewpoint on some of the most contentious political issues. The relationship between equity and equality, for example, is something that should be studied, discussed and debated in college, not taught as authoritative moral and political dogma.
More generally, the way NACE talks about diversity, equity and inclusion ignores—or perhaps disdains—the political disagreement that is a normal and natural part of life in a democratic society, including the workplace. The organization undermines its professed commitment to open-mindedness when it implies that all open-minded people must be capital-P Progressives on issues such as systemic racism and equitable hiring practices. Like many institutions in recent years, NACE appears to have given in to pressure from activist members and embraced the “antiracist” worldview, sidelining the principles of openness and neutrality that are, or ought to be, hallmarks of professionalism.
Notably, NACE indicates on its website that its equity and inclusion standard is under review. The organization cites recent “federal Executive Orders and subsequent guidance, as well as court decisions and regulatory changes, [that] may create legal risks that either preclude or discourage campuses and employers from using it.” This is encouraging. Better still would be for NACE to free itself from the ideological commitments that make its materials legally and politically risky in the first place. Let’s hope this venerable organization will get out of the business of DEI advocacy and focus on its core purposes of connecting students with employers and preparing students for professional life.
Andrew J. Bove is the associate director for academic advising in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Villanova University.
Higher ed, government and workforce leaders are discussing employability skills and work-based learning more than they ever have (at least, in my lifetime). So are students. Recent research shines a light on where and how students contemplate the connection between college and careers (particularly the increasingly influential role of social media) and what they expect. Marketers can leverage these consumer insights to influence both product and positioning to develop, implement and communicate work-integrated learning experience to meet student and workforce needs.
Students Get Career, College and Life Advice From Social Media
Seventy percent of young adults use social media to learn about careers,and it’s the top tool young adults use for self-discovery, despite a lack of encouragement from most adults and career navigators/counselors. Students talk about workforce skills when they talk to each other online about going to college—about 20 percent of these posts are about skills needed for jobs. They believe transferable skills are valuable to keep their career options open, particularly for those who don’t know what they want to do in their future careers. Specifically, they talk about:
Relationship-building skills like networking, persuasive speaking and small group leadership
Basic math and writing skills
Study skills
Interview skills
Forums are advice-seeking and experience-sharing platforms, and when students talk about needing workforce skills, they receive encouraging advice. Suggestions include using extra courses, academic services and resources to gain employability skills to help them find a job after graduation. Students are also encouraged to develop practical critical thinking and social skills because, in the words of those giving advice, “a degree doesn’t guarantee success.”
When students think about preparing for a job, they prioritize internships. In an analysis of over 600,000 forum conversations about college admissions Campus Sonar conducted to inform Jeff Selingo’s book Dream School: Finding The College That’s Right for You, internships were the most common form of workforce training discussed. When students make their college decision, they consider whether a campus provides them greater access to internship opportunities. Sometimes students interpret a rural campus as one without internship opportunities (which isn’t exactly true), and students consider if the campus gives them access to a connected network to find future internships and jobs. Another consideration is the value of an institution’s reputation with employers or intern hiring managers.
However, these conversations revealed that students don’t really know what happens in an internship or how to get one. So they use online forums to seek advice on obtaining an internship, leveraging it, securing a job after graduation and exploring alternative careers outside their major.
This is a storytelling opportunity for campuses. Specifically, to bridge the gap between current or recent interns and prospective and first-year students. Students who completed internships don’t have the chance to tell the students coming behind them what it’s like or how it helped them. This transition point is an excellent chance to engage recent interns to share their experiences directly with students or prospects to provide motivation and guidance in the peer-to-peer form students want. Using social media—the place where young people are seeking this advice—is crucial.
Students Need to Understand the Connection Between Curriculum, Skill Building and Careers
When considering college, students are already thinking about what comes next. Over 10 years of social listening research examining how students talk about college admissions, 62 percent of conversations focused on the postgraduation path. But when the connections between a college’s curriculum, employability skills and careers aren’t clear, students think the burden is on them to build the skills and chart their path.
This was particularly clear in Campus Sonar’s 2024 Rebuilding Public Trust in Higher Education social intelligence study, which found that 45 percent of peer-to-peer conversations about the value of college included cautionary advice that students may be on their own to make crucial connections between curriculum, skill building and careers.
Many colleges struggle to communicate these connections effectively. Here are two doing an excellent job.
Kettering University in Flint, Mich. For 100 years, Kettering has focused on work-integrated learning with a curriculum that rotates students between the classroom and co-op work placements in 12-week intervals. Ninety-eight percent of their students are employed after graduation, and the ongoing integration of students in the workforce produces valuable student feedback, enabling curriculum shifts to keep up with ever-changing employer needs.
Kettering is historically focused on STEM, but the university recently launched the School of Foundational Studies, traditionally known as liberal arts. The core curriculum emphasizes a connected, human-centered approach and integrates a STEM focus with early professional development and ethical decision-making, preparing students to navigate complexity with intellectual agility. We know the liberal arts prepares students for the workforce, but Kettering is shifting the narrative and dropping the misunderstood phrase to put relevance and impact like ethical decision-making and intellectual agility front and center.
Moravian University is another example. The medium-size, private, religiously affiliated institution created Elevate as part of its undergraduate experience. It’s a career readiness digital badging system to help students clearly see the pathways for developing and demonstrating skills in communication, critical thinking leadership and more. Elevate is part of Moravian’s distinctive and branded undergraduate student experience, which is a four-year pathway to a “successful future and a career you love.” The Elevate experience goes year by year and explains how students scaffold their experiences, learnings and badges and the support they get along the way.
Career navigation is a prevailing concept in this space right now and is critical in empowering students to truly navigate their own careers rather than expect the university to take them from A to B. Students need to become their own career navigator and be confident upon graduation that they have the navigation skills. Integrated curricula like those I’ve highlighted here achieve that outcome.
Not all campuses are equipped to develop a work-integrated curriculum independently, meaning the product offered to students may not yet be at the place where it can be positioned in a way that meets the current needs. An ecosystem of partners has developed over the last decade to help and is highlighted at workforce-focused higher ed events such as the Horizons Summit, SXSW EDU and ASU+GSV Summit.
For example, Riipen connects educators, learners and employers (particularly small businesses) to integrate short-term, paid projects into coursework—including remote work opportunities. Education at Work connects students to résumé-building, paying jobs at top national employers like Intuit and Discover to build durable skills and unlock career pathways within the organization. A strong relationship with your provost or career services office will ensure the marketing team is aware of the “product features” that are evolving on your campus to connect classroom to career.
Take Action
Tell as many individual stories as you can to help students see themselves in your graduates, develop a sense of belonging and trust outcomes achieved by a peer. Tell the types of stories (or empower students/alumni to tell their own) that would be offered as positive anecdotes in social media (e.g., TikTok, Reddit). Recognizing that resources are finite and stories from “someone like me” are nearly always more influential than polished marketing content, social listening bridges the gap to identify and amplify stories students and alumni already share.
Include program-level excellence in your brand narrative to more specifically connect curriculum and programming to careers. Support your claims with data (e.g., job placement, salaries, top employers), but don’t rely solely on statistics—always connect the data to stories.
Emphasize support structures and peer-to-peer connections such as experiential learning programs, career services opportunities, paid internship support, peer internship mentoring, etc., so students don’t feel like they’re on their own to navigate their career path.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration says its plan to dismantle the Education Department offers a fix for the nation’s lagging academics — a solution that could free schools from the strictures of federal influence.
Yet to some school and state officials, the plan appears to add more bureaucracy, with no clear benefit for students who struggle with math or reading.
Instead of being housed in a single agency, much of the Education Department’s work now will be spread across four other federal departments. For President Donald Trump, it’s a step toward fully closing the department and giving states more power over schooling. Yet many states say it will complicate their role as intermediaries between local schools and the federal government.
The plan increases bureaucracy fivefold, Washington state’s education chief said, “undoubtedly creating confusion and duplicity” for educators and families. His counterpart in California said the plan is “clearly less efficient” and invites disruption. Maryland’s superintendent raised concerns about “the challenges of coordinating efforts with multiple federal agencies.”
“States were not engaged in this process, and this is not what we have asked for — or what our students need,” said Jill Underly, Wisconsin’s state superintendent. Underly urged the Trump administration to give states greater flexibility and cut down on standardized testing requirements.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said schools will continue receiving federal money without disruption. Ultimately, schools will have more money and flexibility to serve students without the existence of the Education Department, she said.
Yet the department is not gone — only Congress has the power to abolish it. In the meantime, McMahon’s plan leaves the agency in a version of federal limbo. The Labor Department will take over most funding and support for the country’s schools, but the Education Department will retain some duties, including policy guidance and broad supervision of Labor’s education work.
Similar deals will offload programs to the Department of Health and Human Services, the State Department and the Interior Department. The agreements were signed days before the government shutdown and announced Tuesday.
Inking agreements to share work with other departments isn’t new: The Education Department already had dozens of such agreements before Trump took office. And local school officials routinely work with other agencies, including the U.S. Agriculture Department, which oversees school meals. What’s different this time is the scale of the programs offloaded — the majority of the Education Department’s funding for schools, for instance.
Yet Virginia schools chief Emily Anne Gullickson, for one, said schools are accustomed to working with multiple federal agencies, and she welcomed the administration’s efforts to give states more control.
Response to the plan has mostly been drawn along political lines, with Democrats saying the shakeup will hurt America’s most vulnerable students. Republicans in Congress called it a victory over bureaucracy.
Yet some conservatives pushed back against the dismantling. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said on social media that moving programs to agencies without policy expertise could hurt young people. And Margaret Spellings, a former education secretary to Republican President George W. Bush, called it a distraction to a national education crisis.
“Moving programs from one department to another does not actually eliminate the federal bureaucracy, and it may make the system harder for students, teachers and families to navigate and get the support they need,” Spellings said in a statement.
There’s little debate about the need for change in America’s schooling. Its math and reading scores have plummeted in the wake of COVID-19. Before that, reading scores had been stagnant for decades, and math scores weren’t much better.
McMahon said that’s evidence the Education Department has failed and isn’t needed. At a White House briefing Thursday, she called her plan a “hard reset” that does not halt federal support but ends “federal micromanagement.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers union and one of McMahon’s sharpest opponents, questioned the logic in her plan.
“Why would you put a new infrastructure together, a new bureaucracy that nobody knows anything about, and take the old bureaucracy and destroy it, instead of making the old bureaucracy more efficient?” Weingarten said at a Wednesday event.
The full impact of the shakeup may not be clear for months, but already it’s stoking anxiety among states and school districts that have come to rely on the Education Department for its policy expertise. One of the agency’s roles is to serve as a hotline for questions about complicated funding formulas, special education laws and more.
The department has not said whether officials who serve that role will keep their jobs in the transition. Without that help, schools would have few options to clarify what can and can’t be paid for with federal money, said David Law, superintendent of Minnetonka Public Schools in Minnesota.
“What could happen is services are not provided because you don’t have an answer,” said Law, who is also president of AASA, a national association of school superintendents.
Some question whether other federal departments have the capacity to take on an influx of new work. The Labor Department will take over Title I, an $18 billion grant program that serves 26 million students in low-income areas. It’s going to a Labor office that now handles grants serving only 130,000 people a year, said Angela Hanks, who led the Labor office under former President Joe Biden.
At best, Hanks said, it will “unleash chaos on school districts, and ultimately, on our kids.”
In Salem, Massachusetts, the 4,000-student school system receives about $6 million in federal funding that helps support services for students who are low-income, homeless or still mastering English, Superintendent Stephen Zrike said. He fears moving those programs to the Labor Department could bring new “rules of engagement.”
“We don’t know what other stipulations will be attached to the funding,” he said. “The level of uncertainty is enormous.”
Other critics have noted the Education Department was created to consolidate education programs that were spread across multiple agencies.
Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., the ranking member on the House Education and Workforce Committee, urged McMahon to rethink her plan. He cited the 1979 law establishing the department, which said dispersion had resulted in “fragmented, duplicative, and often inconsistent Federal policies relating to education.”
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AP education writers Moriah Balingit in Washington, Bianca Vázquez Toness in Boston and Makiya Seminera in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
