Tag: Higher

This piece is the last blog post I will write for Inside Higher Ed that Scott Jaschik will edit. As was announced earlier this month, Scott’s last day at IHE is today.

I’ve been working with (and for) Scott for 14 years. He has been a near-daily constant in my professional life. I can honestly say that Scott is the best higher ed boss I’ve ever had.

If you know Scott—and everyone knows Scott—then I’m sure you can add to a list of things we’ve learned from him. A list of what I’ve learned from Scott, and what I think that every higher ed leader can learn from Scott, would include:

1. Be Patient With Your People

It has taken me years to find my blogging voice. Scott recruited me to IHE when I was midcareer (so I had something to say) but a newbie blogger (so I didn’t know how to say it). Over the years, Scott has been patient as my writing (slowly) improved. 

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For university jobs, we put too little emphasis on long-term growth and too much focus on talent. Professional development budgets are uneven and almost always too small. We need to make the sort of long-term investments in our people that Scott was willing to make in me. We should also be ready to hire people early in their careers and stick with them as they develop their abilities.

2. Encourage Your People to Grow and Change

The focus of my writing for IHE has changed over the years. In the early years, I mainly wrote about educational technology. As my work began specializing in online education, my writing shifted to exploring university/company partnerships and organizational leadership issues. Along the way, Scott was supportive as I began to write book reviews from the lens of what books can teach us about universities. And Scott encouraged me to do more interviews (my “3 Questions” series) with nonfaculty educators.

If you invest in people for the long term, you also need to make room for them to grow and change. Interests will evolve, and careers need to accommodate growth. Universities often don’t know how to encourage career growth for alternative academics. There is no clear professional path. Too often, nonfaculty educators must move institutions to advance their careers. 

Scott enabled me to stay with IHE as he encouraged and supported me in changing what I wrote about over the years. Every higher ed leader should be creating that sort of running room for the people at their schools.

3. Be Available

Scott has been consistently available, accessible and present. When I email Scott, I always get a (fast) answer.

Being this available to the people who work at a university is a hard thing for university leaders to pull off. University leaders are super busy. Their days are made up of endless meetings and other responsibilities.

I don’t know how Scott could be so present and accessible, given everything else his job entailed. But he prioritized being available to the people who worked for him. Maybe just making availability a leadership priority is what it takes.

4. Put Values First

Scott and his partner, IHE co-founder Doug Lederman, are both old-school. Old-school in the sense that journalism is a civic responsibility, with ethics at the heart of the news operation. This orientation to running IHE means keeping the organization’s editorial content and business concerns separate. 

Every decision I ever saw Scott (and Doug) make about what goes in IHE has been based on journalistic, not business, concerns. The questions are always about if a story or opinion piece is accurate, fair and well supported.

IHE has always been the news and opinion source accessible to everyone in higher education. It is where those with the least power and the least money can get the same information and analysis as the most senior (and privileged) people in our industry.

In our digital age of social media and advertising-driven content, running an old-school, digital-first news operation must not be easy. Writing for IHE has always felt like being part of a way of thinking about news and opinion that has roots in journalism’s past. Scott, Doug and all the people they work with at IHE have been trying to bring these old-school journalism values into a digital-first future.

Like the news, the future of higher education will also be primarily digital. How can universities stay true to their values as everything about higher education changes? A values-based approach seems to have worked pretty well for IHE.

5. Take Risks

Scott and Doug took a considerable risk when they started IHE. Who in their right mind leaves established and secure positions to bring something entirely new into the world?

We tend to take IHE for granted. IHE has been part of our professional academic lives for so long that it is difficult to remember what things were like pre-IHE. A freely accessible source of professionally reported news and expert opinion covering the breadth of higher education was unavailable before IHE.

Starting IHE was a risk. How many big risks do established colleges and universities take? If we want to do something big—as big as what Scott and Doug have done — we must take some big swings.

6. Prioritize Relationships, Reputation and Trust

Scott’s most important asset has always been his reputation. That reputation has been built on decades of building trust with those in our higher ed ecosystem. Trust requires candor, transparency, modesty, listening, expertise, consistency, empathy and compassion.

What I’ve learned from Scott is that what matters most in our higher ed world is our long-term relationships. Meeting short-term goals is never worthwhile if they come at the expense of long-term relationships. One’s reputation in higher education is built over decades. There are no shortcuts. The only game that matters in higher ed is the long game.

7. Have Good Partners

As wonderful as Scott is, he has not done it alone. While Scott has been my day-to-day boss at IHE, it has always been both Scott and Doug Lederman that I work for. Many people have helped raise IHE, but IHE is Scott and Doug’s baby.

Even the best higher ed leaders can’t do it alone. We all need partners.

8. Go Out on Top

Finally, Scott is showing all of us in higher ed how to say goodbye. For Scott, IHE is not a business but a legacy. Scott leaves IHE at a time of strength and stability. The fact that Doug is staying is vital. If IHE were not in good shape and in good hands, Scott would have never decided that now was the time to retire.

Too many higher ed leaders stay too long. They don’t take the time to cultivate other interests and passions beyond their academic leadership roles. They don’t know how to be useful and valuable outside their jobs. The time to leave is when things are at their best.

Thank you to Scott for giving me the professional opportunities you have provided. Thank you to Scott for the mentorship, guidance and friendship over the years. You will be missed.

Occidental College will no longer give admissions preference to children of alumni, citing the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action.

“In the past, an applicant’s familial relationship to the College’s alumni could be considered as a factor in the admission decision if the student was otherwise a qualified applicant,” Occidental president Harry Elam wrote in a statement announcing the decision Wednesday. “To ensure we are removing any potential barriers to access and opportunity, Occidental will no longer ask applicants about alumni relationships as part of the application.”

The small liberal arts college in Los Angeles is just the second private institution to eliminate legacy preferences in the wake of the June 29 Supreme Court decision, following on the heels of Wesleyan University, which announced an end to its legacy policy on July 19. The University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, a public institution, also ended legacy preferences earlier this month.

Occidental made the announcement the same day that the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into Harvard University’s use of legacy preferences in admissions, and amid growing pressure on institutions to abandon the practice as part of a broad response to the affirmative action ban.

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A man was arrested last week for second-degree threatening, second-degree breach of peace and second-degree failure to appear, and he had visited Brown University and the University of Connecticut to plan mass shootings there, authorities said, according to The Hartford Courant.

The failure to appear charge against Dennis “D.J.” Hernandez relates to a charge he faces stemming from a missed court appearance on July 7. He was scheduled to answer to a charge tied to an arrest in March after he took an Uber to ESPN’s headquarters on Middle Street in Bristol, Conn., and allegedly threw a brick onto its campus with a note attached that said it was about time the company realized the effect “media has on all family members,” police wrote in the incident report.

Instead of attending court earlier this month, a person close to Hernandez told police, he allegedly drove to UConn and Brown to “map out the schools,” according to Bristol police reports. The person who shared the texts “surmised” that he was planning to commit a shooting, police wrote.

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“UConn program is going to pay unless I have a package deal and I get my estate and every single thing I have worked for,” Hernandez allegedly wrote in text messages that were reportedly shared with police. “The coaches and university officials want to be selfish and selective about [expletive], well I am too. Very. They are going to get surprised. Love you, I would recommend remaining away from there because when I go I’m taking down everything And don’t give a [expletive] who gets caught in the cross fire [sic]. I’ve died for wears [sic] now and now it’s other peoples [sic] turn. I’m prepared to give my life.”

“Despite reports of an alleged visit to Providence, our investigation to date indicates that Hernandez has not been on Brown’s campus in recent weeks,” a spokesperson for Brown said Tuesday. “Given the nature of the alleged threats, we remain in contact with law enforcement partners in Connecticut taking the lead on the investigation.”

Hernandez was the quarterbacks coach at Brown for one season during the 2011–12 academic year, the spokesperson said, adding that police at the university “implemented protective measures immediately” upon being made aware of the alleged threats.

Michael Enright, a spokesperson for UConn, said the UConn Police Department was aware of initial information related to the subsequent arrest of Hernandez by the Bristol Police Department.

Hernandez is in custody. He is the the brother of former National Football League player Aaron Hernandez, who died by suicide while in prison for murder. 

Student parents make up around 22 percent of all learners in higher education, and over half of them are single parents. As single parents, students often require additional support and resources to juggle both their academics and their responsibilities to their child or children.

Making spaces on campus for student parents to feel like they belong and can be connected to their peers is important, Rachel Kubczak, director of the Student Parent Success Program at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee told Inside Higher Ed.

“When we empower our parenting students to graduate and pursue not only their academic goals but also professional and career goals, they are improving the outcomes for not just themselves, but their whole family, as well as future generations,” Kubczak says.

Inside Higher Ed compiled three examples of campus spaces that prioritize and accommodate student parents.

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1. Lactation stations

For new parents, finding a space to feed their baby or pump can be a struggle, so some institutions have created lactation spaces throughout campus.

West Virginia University added a lactation space at the campus basketball stadium in February, the 12th lactation space on campus for community members to nurse in private. The space allows nursing students and other WVU fans to enjoy game day without worries about pumping.

The University of Nevada at Reno has a Lactation Advocacy Subcommittee, which maintains 10 lactation rooms on and off campus for students and employees, growing facilities on campus since 2011. Lactation spaces are available in the student union, the continuing education building and the university health center, among others.

2. Childcare facilities

The high cost of childcare can be a barrier to pursuing higher education and completing a degree. Colleges and universities can ease this strain by offering financial support for outside care or by supporting their own childcare facilities.

A March survey from Generation Hope found 71 percent of student parents in the Washington, D.C., region rely on informal or unpaid childcare, and 92 percent do not have access to or are unaware of on-campus childcare options.

The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee reserves over 100 spots in its Children’s Learning Center for student parents and uses grant funding to keep care costs low.

Utah Valley University houses its Wee Care Center within the Women’s Success Center, offering care for children from 6 weeks to 6 years old. The Wee Center also has two outdoor play areas and a mothers’ room for nursing.

3. Kid-friendly spaces

Creating a campus environment that is supportive and inclusive of family lifestyles can also improve retention and belonging among parents.

Howard Community College in Maryland opened a family-friendly study space in March, offering computers, whiteboards, comfortable seating, a TV, a DVD player, an interactive touch table, books, games and magazines for parents and their children.

Onondaga Community College, part of the State University of New York system, created a Parent and Adult Learner Suite in December 2022 in Mawhinney Hall, a central building on campus with a café and a collection of classrooms. Inside the room, parents can find a study space, lounge space, playroom, changing and nursing room, school supplies, and children’s clothing exchange.

Do you have a success tip that might help others encourage student success? Tell us about it.

Lasell University will eliminate majors in global studies, sociology, English and history, all in the liberal arts. The university will also eliminate its major in fitness management, The Boston Globe reported.

Four faculty members have been told their contracts will not be renewed for the 2024–25 academic year, and several open faculty positions will not be filled, former president Michael Alexander said in a June 28 email to the university community. An additional 12 staff positions have been eliminated. (Alexander left office July 1.)

“These decisions are the most difficult that the Board of Trustees and I ever have to make, because they affect our valued colleagues and friends,” wrote Alexander, who led the university for 16 years. “Yet, they are essential to prepare us for the demographic changes we know are coming, to position us for sustained growth, and to protect Lasell’s long-term financial future.”

The university, in Massachusetts, enrolled 1,236 undergraduates and 392 graduate students in fall 2022. Undergraduate enrollment fell 15.4 percent between fall 2011 and fall 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

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This episode of the Pulse podcast features an interview with Cameron Stoker, founder and CEO of SpeechCloud, a teaching platform. In the interview with Rodney B. Murray, host of The Pulse, Stoker discusses how instructors can use the platform to keep students engage. Learn more about The Pulse here.

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Nearly three-quarters of all college students, regardless of their political affiliation, believe professors who make comments the students find offensive should be reported to the university, according to a new report.

A similar rate of students would also report their peers for making insulting or hurtful remarks.

The report by the Sheila and Robert Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth at North Dakota State University is based on a survey of 2,250 students from 131 public and private four-year institutions across the country and was released Wednesday.

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Over all, the percentage of students who said they would report a professor was higher among self-identified liberal students (81 percent) than among self-identified conservative students (53 percent). Sixty-six percent of liberal students and 37 percent of conservative students said they would also report peers who made offensive comments.

John Bitzan, author of the report, said the survey findings are troubling and reflect continuing challenges on college campuses to encourage students to think critically and engage in healthy debates—with each other and with faculty members—over issues on which they disagree.

“Of any place, a university should be a place that is open to a variety of points of view, and traditionally the universities have been,” said Bitzan, who is also director of the institute and a professor of management. “To me, it’s alarming that students are saying, ‘You can’t have an opinion on something that differs from the correct or appropriate opinion without being reported to the university.’”

In an attempt to identify exactly what kind of statements by professors students would report—be they opinions with which students disagree, or strictly racial slurs, sexual harassment or personal attacks—the survey provided 10 examples of comments the students would report as offensive. The options included “It is clear that affirmative action is doing more harm than good and should be eliminated” and “A civilized society doesn’t need guns.” Sean Stevens, director of polling and analytics at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a campus civil liberties watchdog group, said in his view most of the statements prompted would be “very reasonable statements to make.”

He said several of the example statements, while potentially controversial, are supported by data, have been published in peer-reviewed literature or have been debated and ruled upon in court. Others may reflect more of a professor’s personal opinion but are opinions held by “plenty of people.”

“I don’t think any of those are necessarily that unreasonable, albeit they may be offensive to some people,” Stevens said.

The likelihood of reporting instructors was higher among conservative students when the statements provided were liberal-leaning and higher among liberal students when the statements were conservative-leaning.

The findings on students’ likelihood to report offensive comments were part of a larger annual survey assessing student perceptions about campus culture and viewpoint diversity. About 60 percent of the students surveyed identified as liberal and 20 percent conservative, according to the report. These demographics are similar to those represented in a national analysis of free speech on college campuses by FIRE.

Stevens, director of polling at FIRE, said the survey findings on students’ level of comfort speaking on campus about controversial subjects are similar to results FIRE has seen in its student polls since 2020. He noted that FIRE has seen even lower rates of comfort, likely because its polls specifically asked students about their comfort discussing “controversial political topics.”

Although the survey questions were written and analyzed by Bitzan and the Challey Institute—a conservative-leaning interdisciplinary institute housed in North Dakota State’s College of Business—the poll was conducted by an independent survey group, College Pulse, in May and June. Its margin of error was plus or minus 2.4 percentage points. (College Pulse also conducts polling for Inside Higher Ed, but Inside Higher Ed was not involved in the Challey Institute polls.)

“I’m very confident that the results are accurate,” Bitzan said. “I do think that there are definitely differences between the way liberal students and conservative students view the campus climate in terms of openness to different points of view.”

Some of the poll answers suggest that a majority of students perceive their campuses as being generally open to the sharing of controversial or unpopular ideas. About 70 percent say they feel at least somewhat comfortable sharing their opinions on a sensitive topic.

But of the students who felt at least somewhat comfortable with the campus climate, about half said it was because they believe their views align with most other students’ and professors’.

“They say the campus climate is open to a variety of points of view,” Bitzan said of students surveyed. “But it could be a signal of, ‘I think that the campus climate agrees with my point of view. If there’s something that I view as unacceptable, or not aligning with my point of view, then I’m not tolerant of that.’”

“Students are saying you can’t have an opinion on something that differs from the correct or appropriate opinion without being reported to the university.”

Stevens, director of polling at FIRE, said the survey findings on students’ level of comfort speaking on campus about controversial subjects are similar to results FIRE has found in its student polls since 2020. He noted that the reported rates of comfort were likely even lower because students were specifically asked about discussing “controversial political topics.”

Jonathan Friedman, director of the free expression and education programs at PEN America, a free speech advocacy group, said the survey results align with what he’s heard is happening on many campuses across the country. The frequency with which students are reporting professors “is scaling up in a way that universities haven’t really dealt with before.”

Institutions lack “good, clear processes or apparatuses” to receive, process and investigate the reports, Friedman said, and as a result many faculty often feel like they’re “teaching on eggshells.”

“You do have to do some work to explain to students what might meet the bar for being reported, teaching some of the distinctions between speech that offends versus speech that harms, or the difference between disagreement and discrimination,” he added.

A few months ago, I published an op-ed titled “Who Can Really Teach Ethnic Studies?” After its publication, I received numerous emails from scholars asking me to reconsider my position, since my main criterion for teaching ethnics studies was training in the field. I realized then that I hadn’t really explained what I meant by “training.” Ironically, the question of needing “training” or not isn’t often asked when dealing with disciplines like English, philosophy, math, chemistry and others.

I am using this opportunity, then, to expand on what I meant by “training” in ethnic studies. In my view, it can mainly be gained in one of two ways: 1) by getting a degree in ethnic studies and 2) by being hired to teach in an ethnic studies program or department (regardless of degree).

But exactly why is training important? What makes ethnic studies different from other disciplines that teach (about) race?

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To begin to answer those questions, we must turn to the discipline’s genealogy, which I divide into three parts.

History. The main difference between ethnic studies and other disciplines is that it wasn’t born out of abstract thinking, literary criticism or science. Rather, it sprang from the activism of students, which yielded results at the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State College in 1969. It emerged when Ronald Reagan was governor of California and sent the National Guard to deal with students of color asking for courses that reflected their histories and their and their parents’ living conditions. But the students fought back, and because of this activism and in spite of state efforts to repress it, a department of ethnic studies was created at Berkeley and a whole college at San Francisco State.

Thus, the circumstances that lead to the creation of ethnic studies, along with the relatively recent time in which it was created, makes it both a contested discipline and a relatively new one. It also makes ethnic studies a discipline born out of systematic and historical exclusions.

Institutionalization. After 50 years of institutionalization and academic practices, ethnic studies has acquired different tones, angles, foci and subjects of study. The first scholars appointed to positions in ethnic studies were trained in other disciplines, so the field learned early on to “borrow” from those discipline—most notably history, sociology, psychology and philosophy, among others. But major tweaks were needed. Sometimes the “borrowing” was to point out where the discipline had failed communities of color by not addressing racism, discrimination and inequity and inequality in meaningful ways. Also, the emergence of group-specific fields that also stand as separate disciplines—Black studies, Latinx studies, API studies, South Asian studies and so forth—has created a healthy number of specialties and subspecialties, all under the umbrella of ethnic studies. Still, after decades of ethnic studies in all its forms being taught in academe, a few general principles have emerged.

Principles and purpose. Going back to the discipline’s contested origins, in the beginning, those who studied and taught ethnic studies spent the majority of their time calling out specific disciplines like anthropology (for taking advantage of and making careers—thus profiting—from Indigenous communities without giving back), criminal justice (for perpetuating the mess the criminal justice system is in), political science (for pandering to a political system that was built on and perpetuates inequities), and so on. That calling out took most of the effort.

Then, as ethnic studies developed, scholars began to finally envision ways of building it in ways that extended beyond critiquing what others were doing. As such, ethnic studies now focuses on:

• Racism. Although we do talk a great deal about race as a social construction, the main point is to talk about how the meanings we attach to racial groups and the individuals who belong to those groups are tied to racism as both a historical legacy and a contemporary social practice. That is, for ethnic studies scholars, documenting racism in the workplace, politics, the educational system and the like is only the first step—whereas for other disciplines such documentation of an issue, trend or phenomenon is usually the be-all and end-all of their research. With ethnic studies, there has to be room for envisioning alternatives and calling for them within institutions, even if the call remains unanswered and goes into the ether.
• Systems of inequity inextricably tied to racism. Although we acknowledge that all systems of inequities are interconnected, we also presume that most (if not all) are closely connected to and complicated by racism. This, as you can see from the way I worded it, is different from the intersectional theory that women’s and gender studies uses (and which white women in that field particularly love after appropriating it from Black feminist Kimberlé Crenshaw, who developed it, and the other women of color who worked on it). Ethnic studies is a way of looking at systems of inequality that places race at the front and the center of any analysis.
• A history of racism still with us in this country. This history has had a massive impact on the construction of race, the positioning of racial groups within social systems and structures, and race relations today. Chattel slavery, Indian wars and Indian reservations, exclusion acts of all sorts targeting different Asian groups, and legislation managing Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans and other Latin American groups have all created a reality that influenced their trajectory and affect us all today—regardless of race and/or ethnicity.
• Ending social inequities by any means necessary. It is this that sets ethnic studies apart from other disciplines, as it scares the people who want to hide behind the veil of objectivity within the walls of academe. The point is that ethnic studies extends beyond the mere presentation of facts into advocacy and social change—and not a theoretical social change, but an actual one—with the aim of addressing social injustice.

The bottom line is that those of us who teach ethnic studies do not just teach about race—which is why folks who teach about race in other disciplines are not necessarily ethnic studies scholars and why being trained in the discipline matters. Anyone in an ethnic studies classroom should know the disciplinary genesis and history that I’ve outlined above— know where the discipline comes from and where it’s been—and understand their impacts, including the fact that that ethnic studies has continued to grow and expand.

A person teaching ethnic studies should also be able to embrace and maneuver through the interdisciplinary aspects that have been a staple of the discipline since its tumultuous beginnings. In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision and the increasing attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion, disciplines like ethnic studies increasingly become a bastion against these assaults, and appropriately training scholars to teach within the discipline becomes more urgent than ever before.

Florida State University has fired Eric Stewart, a professor of criminology, for “extreme negligence” in research, The Tallahassee Democrat reported.

The charges against Stewart followed a full investigation into his research.

A letter to Stewart from James Clark, the provost, said, “You demonstrated extreme negligence in basic data management, resulting in an unprecedented number of articles retracted, numerous other articles now in question, with the presence of no backup of the data for the publications in question.”

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Justin Pickett, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Albany, of the State University of New York, said Stewart allegedly made racism seem more common than it is through his data and surveys that altered sample sizes in five co-authored research papers where he was responsible for data and analyses.

Repeated attempts to reach Stewart for comment were unsuccessful. But he denied any fraud and instead said that the problems resulted from “analysis errors that included coding mistakes and transcription errors,” according to withdrawal letters he wrote to the journals that published the studies.

In a response to the intent-to-terminate letter in March, Stewart stated that the investigation and process to terminate him were “arbitrary, capricious and discriminatory in nature.”

The University of Minnesota–Twin Cities will no longer consider applicants’ ties to alumni in admissions decisions, The Star Tribune reported.

The decision came in “an exceptionally deep review of our context factors,” said Keri Risic, executive director of admissions. The university will also no longer favor applicants who are the children of faculty members.

“It was not adding additional insight into enrolling academically prepared students,” Risic said.

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Across higher education, Black and Latino men are underrepresented in the classroom and less likely than their peers to complete a degree. In response, campus leaders are promoting stronger pipelines from high school to college graduation to support men through their degree progression.

A new partnership between College for Every Student (CFES) Brilliant Pathways and the University of Vermont will prepare students for the workforce as they work toward a college degree. Young Men of Talent will launch in fall 2023, aiding 100 college Black and Latino men in the first seven years.

“YMT centers on the fundamental challenge that Black and Latino males are falling further and further behind their peers in terms of education and opportunity,” says Jon Reidel, director of communications for CFES Brilliant Pathways. “We need to help others understand the magnitude of this crisis and the need to deploy resources and develop strategies to level the playing field.”

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The program’s primary goal is to ensure every student graduates and launches into a career in their desired field.

What’s the need: In January, CFES chief executive Rick Dalton took a sabbatical to investigate gender imbalance at the University of Vermont, where the student population is 33 percent male, seven percentage points lower than the national average.

After interviewing 120 faculty members, staffers, students and local campus community and business leaders, Dalton established YMT to address gender inequality with a non-cost-exorbitant or complex solution.

CFES established a task force made up of business, government and academic officials to guide program development and secure funds. UVM leaders, including President Suresh Garimella, Provost Patricia Prelock and Vice Provost of Enrollment Management Jay Jacobs, also supported program development.

How it works: CFES will partner with high schools to run programming around college and career preparation. From this group, UVM and CFES leaders will identify program participants, drawing on feedback from leaders at the high schools and the YMT task force, Reidel says.

During the pilot, YMT will support 100 students at UVM: 20 in fall 2023, 40 in fall 2024 and 40 in fall 2025. The pilot will run for seven years, assisting participants through graduation.

Each student will join a career development cluster based on industry aspirations, such as health care, teaching, technology or entrepreneurship. An industry professional will lead the cluster, serve as a mentor to participants and facilitate regular in-person and virtual meetings with cohort members.

“There will be five to six career clusters to start based on workforce needs, emerging careers and interests of students,” Reidel says. “There will be four students per cluster in year one, with an expansion to roughly 12 clusters as the program expands.”

YMT participants will also complete training modules by CFES to support their success at UVM and prepare them for the workforce, as well as fulfill a paid internship, assisted by their cluster leader.

Black and Latino male students who are currently enrolled undergo training at UVM and work with faculty to serve as peer mentors to program participants. Professors will also provide academic support, counseling and other services to YMT participants.

The university president and provost will also hold regular meals with YMT students throughout the year.

Next steps: Beyond graduation and career placement, UVM’s research office is developing program performance indicators around happiness as well as involvement in the university and community.

“The YMT program will partner with UVM’s Office of Research, which will collect and organize data on the program that we will use to guide the program’s evolution as we adapt and expand upon the strategies identified as most effective,” Reidel says.

Over the next five years, CFES hopes to launch another 10 YMT programs at colleges across the U.S.

“We have a lot of college partnerships across the Northeast, and beyond that we will continue to consult with throughout the first year,” Reidel says. “We want to base it heavily on need and fit.”

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A federal suit filed by 11 former faculty members at Emporia State University charges that they lost their jobs because they had tenure, The Kansas Reflector reported.

The suit is against top administrators and members of the Kansas Board of Regents.

“These defendants saw tenure as an impediment to terminating tenured faculty who were ‘problematic’ concerning issues disfavored by the ESU administration,” the lawsuit says. “These issues included being members or former members of the faculty senate committee, being perceived to or having friction with the administration, policy sticklers, liberals, advocates, unionizers, and department or campus leaders.”

Emporia State has said the faculty members, and others, lost their jobs for financial reasons.

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The University of Idaho will not demolish the house where four of its students were killed in November until this October.

Scott Green, president of the university, announced the delay Wednesday.

“We know that every action and decision around this horrific incident is painful and invokes emotions. That is why every decision we have made this far is with the families of the victims and our students in mind,” Green said. “While we look forward to removing this grim reminder of this tragedy, we feel holding until October is the right thing to do.”

Crews began the preliminary work in recent weeks.

Both the prosecution and defense in the upcoming murder trial of Bryan Kohberger, who is accused of the killings, have said they do not object to the demolition.

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Writing in The New York Times last month, Sara J. Winston, the coordinator of the photography program at Bard College, described the upheaval of having various unpleasant bodily sensations diagnosed as symptoms of multiple sclerosis. She soon began a course of treatment that sounds effective and encouraging, but the condition itself is chronic. Even in remission, the illness sets the pace of her life, requiring her to travel every 28 days to receive infusions. 

Accompanying the essay are Winston’s photographs of her visits to the clinic: part of a series of portraits of the artist as a young patient. Each of us “exists on a spectrum of illness,” she writes, “often dipping in and out of it,” but also prone to avoiding the topic. But “in a culture where it is taboo to talk about being sick … the taboo can allow shame to fester among those who are chronically ill.” Her creative work might be called therapeutically shameless—a public acknowledgment that her own well-being is precarious and contingent. Losing access to ongoing care would place her, she writes, “at risk of severe disability.”

Winston has allies on the other side of the seemingly impenetrable barrier between “the two cultures,” with the arts and humanities on one side and the sciences on the other.

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The contributors to Uncharted: How Scientists Navigate Their Own Health, Research, and Experiences of Bias—a collection of 32 personal essays edited by Skylar Bayer and Gabi Serrato Marks, published by Columbia University Press—come from an array of STEM fields and write about their firsthand experiences of chronic illness or disability. While one contributor estimates that people with disabilities represent 20 percent of the world’s population, they are, the editors say, “highly underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.”

The editors note their surprise at finding “how many authors (including ourselves) had shared common experiences despite having vastly different diagnoses.” Winston’s observation in her Times piece about how the taboo on candor “allow[s] shame to fester” is echoed by a number of contributors. As a graduate student in geology, Jenn Pickering kept her diabetes a secret from her peers, dreading that someone might think she’d only been accepted into her program by “help[ing] the university attain some disability quota.” She experienced a potentially fatal “severe hypoglycemic event” while in transit to Bangladesh on a research expedition. “I remember fumbling desperately with a brownie wrapped in an impenetrable plastic wrapper,” she writes, “probably cursing at it while somebody or everybody noticed and stared.” Extracting it, Pickering “dutifully chewed [the brownie] like a robot, my mouth dry, no joy in the experience because my taste buds had been cut off by my brain minutes before to preserve more important bodily functions like breathing and circulating blood.”

Crisis averted, Pickering and her colleagues pursue their research. And with time and experience, she learns to live with her condition—to manage it without feeling compromised in the eyes of her colleagues. She is able to refer to shame in the past tense. Various contributors express an aversion to being called “brave” or a “warrior” or to “overcoming” their disability. Such expressions tacitly accept what the editors call “the typical deficit-focused narrative of disability” and, however well-meaning, do little to allay feelings of stigmatization beyond covering them with a saccharine glaze. The editors prefer to frame the personal essays in their collections as narratives of “driving ourselves forward as whole people, including our disabilities.”

One of the memorable instances of this is Daisy Shearer’s account of her autistic nervous system’s navigation of the route between her front door and her physics laboratory. The sidewalks and railway train are a blooming, buzzing confusion even on an ordinary day, or especially then.

“My brain is in overdrive,” she writes, “trying to process everything, desperately attempting to predict everyone’s movement to make sure I don’t bump into anyone and cause an unexpected sensory experience that I know could push me into a meltdown or shutdown. My brain craves certainty and control, so being around so many people can be a challenge unless I’m very focused on my objective.” At the end of her quest is “a split-coil superconducting solenoid with optical access from all four sides … basically a huge magnet that you can shoot lasers into.” Her first encounter with it (“so many knobs and valves and gauges to keep track of”) was terrifying, but familiarity led not just to confidence but what sounds like a kind of affection for the device.

The inner drama in a large majority of these personal essays unfolds in a higher ed environment, often experienced as a zone of conflict. Seldom are academic institutions or their personnel depicted as any more welcoming than the Americans With Disabilities Act makes absolutely mandatory. And sometimes less, as emerges from Alma C. Schrage’s memoir of her conference-going and research fieldwork as a young, deaf biologist (one of the two or three best pieces in the volume, in my opinion).

Attending her first academic conference as an undergraduate leaves her unable to “read or look at a screen because of eyestrain from lipreading,” despite sitting on the front row of every session she attends. Shortly before another conference, she writes, “the hosting university realizes that I am a student visiting from another institution, and it immediately retracts its previous offer of providing interpreters.” This second conference tale has a better outcome: a conference organizer (“a leading scientist in our field”) rallies together a team of volunteer note takers.

“Her action means a lot,” writes Schrage. “My advisors and hearing mentors always treated accommodations as something they could not be bothered with beyond sending a couple of emails or turning on captions. When these failed, they shrugged and gave up, leaving me to struggle on my own.” Other essayists write about the toll of ruthless professionalization on their colleagues’ capacity for meaningful empathy—a topic Schrage does not pursue, but which certainly comes to mind in reading her narrative.

Alternating with Schrage’s conference experiences are short accounts of remote fieldwork with her colleagues, in small groups. “In a matter of weeks, my coworkers gradually adjust to my deaf tempo; sometimes grudgingly, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes intentionally, they become aware of communicating with someone whose perception of the environment is different from theirs.”

A Columbia University free speech group sued Texas governor Greg Abbott and other officials Thursday, contending that the ban on using TikTok on state devices and networks is an attack on academic freedom.

Calling the ban “unconstitutional,” the lawsuit said that the Texas restriction on the app, which applies to public universities, is “seriously impeding” faculty research on TikTok. The ban prevents faculty from using the app in class, either to teach about TikTok itself or use app content to teach other subjects, the lawsuit said.

The Knight First Amendment Institute filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, a group of researchers and academics that advocates for studying the impact of technology on society. Texas is among more than two dozen states that have banned TikTok on official devices.

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“This ban is an assault on academic freedom, and it’s compromising vital research,” said Ramya Krishnan, senior staff attorney at the Knight institute, in an interview with Inside Higher Ed. She added that the popular platform’s reach, spanning over 115 million Americans and two-thirds of American teens, makes it imperative to study.

“It’s incredibly important that researchers are able to study the platform and inform the public how this platform is impacting public discourse and society more generally,” she said.

How do we teach media literacy for an app we’re not allowed to use?”

—Jacqueline Ryan Vickery

The lawsuit points specifically to the example of Jacqueline Ryan Vickery, a University of North Texas professor who had to suspend and alter her research projects because of the ban. Vickery is the director of research for UNT’s Youth Media Lab and studies how young people use social media for informal learning, activism and self-expression.

Vickery said she was in the midst of two research papers focused on TikTok—one studying the intersection of the app and school shootings and the other focused on generational identity—when the ban forced her to stop her work.

“I don’t think a lot of people recognize when this ban went into place it’s not just accessing an app you use for entertainment, but it shut down ways we teach,” Vickery said in an interview.

She previously utilized TikTok to teach students about misinformation and media literacy and to compare community guidelines and standards to other apps.

“How do we teach media literacy for an app we’re not allowed to use?” she said, adding it has “left students on their own to navigate.”

The lawsuit was filed against multiple Texas officials, including Abbott, University of North Texas chancellor Michael Williams and the nine members of UNT’s Board of Regents.

Citing concerns about cybersecurity and privacy, a growing number of governments around the world have banned TikTok. Congress and more than half of U.S. states have banned the app from official devices.

Government officials, including FBI director Chris Wray, have voiced concerns about TikTok’s parent company, China-based ByteDance, and its access to user data. TikTok has insisted it does not give U.S. data to the Chinese government.

The Texas governor first issued an executive order banning TikTok among state employees in December 2022, prohibiting the app’s download onto any state-issued device. In January, Abbott issued a ban on the app on campus Wi-Fi networks. Abbott signed the ban into law in June.

“The security risks associated with the use of TikTok on devices used to conduct the important business of our state must not be underestimated or ignored,” Abbott said in a February statement. Abbott’s office declined to comment to Inside Higher Ed about the lawsuit.

But Krishnan, the attorney at the First Amendment institute, said faculty research could help alleviate security concerns.

“This is impeding faculty from pursuing research that relates to TikTok,” she said. That includes “research that would help us better understand and respond to the privacy and security risk Texas purports to address though the ban.”

The lawsuit suggested a compromise could be made by giving faculty that specifically study TikTok dedicated laptops and Wi-Fi networks to access the app. It also suggested passing privacy legislation restricting TikTok from gathering users’ information.

Montana was the first state to ban TikTok entirely, a restriction set to go into effect in 2024. On July 5, TikTok asked a U.S. judge to file a preliminary injunction to block the ban.

Krishnan said she hopes the lawsuit against Texas, which she calls an “unprecedented move,” sets a standard for other states that have also enacted bans on college campuses.

“The hope out of this litigation is we want to ensure whatever state employee bans there are include adequate breathing space for teaching and research on TikTok,” she said.

She added she is not against some restrictions for state employees that deal with sensitive information, “but this ban sweeps far more broadly.”

It’s well documented that nonprofit organizations have seen a sharp decline in donor counts in the past decade.

Higher education has not been spared. “‘Donors down, dollars up’ is a key trend in our philanthropic world right now,” Brian Gawor, vice president of research at the enrollment management company Ruffalo Noel Levitz, wrote in March.

The traditional logic of leadership at nonprofit organizations is that communications, events, education and volunteering—usually listed in that order, of increasing importance—form the basis of a sound donor pipeline. While donor dollars are easiest to measure, often more enigmatic to fundraisers are the numbers behind those earlier engagements and what is making them shift.

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Mailchimp and Zoom and their like have enabled colleges to produce no shortage of the first three engagement types (communications, events, short-form courses). But the most psychologically profound and potentially impactful channel—volunteering—has always proven harder to scale effectively.

Now, new research from the University of Maryland’s Do Good Institute reveals that nonprofit volunteerism has not rebounded post-pandemic, as organizations report difficulties recruiting volunteers and decreased volunteer workloads, even as demand for their services has increased.

While it’s universally acknowledged now that technological advances in customer and constituent management have given the for-profit world enormous marketing leverage over the nonprofit world (e.g. Salesforce.com came first, Salesforce.org for nonprofits years later), not enough attention is being paid to the technological changes disrupting routine volunteerism. I suspect that these technological changes may be behind drops in donor numbers.

The changes are both obvious and subtle.

Look, for instance, at the typical college advancement office’s student caller program. Not only have call-completion rates dropped precipitously since the advent of smartphones and robocalls, phone carriers are bundling nonprofit outreach calls as spam, the same catchall term they apply to credit card scams. For alumni interested in volunteering as callers, this conundrum certainly makes the proposition less appealing.

Look, also, at college admissions. The near ubiquity of software solutions integrated into admissions and advancement shops large and small is bound to have serious impact on volunteer structures and functions moving forward. Take the traditional role of alumni admissions interview volunteers, which COVID certainly forced into a virtual space in 2020.

Even in the decade before 2020, admissions volunteers I knew and worked with often questioned the weight of their input in the face of big data analysis. And as growing awareness of and training about implicit bias made admissions directors rightly squirmy about alums’ opinions of a candidate’s fit, software solutions also filled the void of anxiety.

“We are with you every step of the way,” one vendor promises, “from collecting and centralizing (or consolidating) impactful data to analyzing it to translating it into strategic decisions that move the needle.”

Admissions volunteers used to do some of that work.

At Emory University, the admissions office decided in 2022 to redirect its alumni volunteer corps of interviewers towards another role: supporting newly admitted students. Why the change?

“An evaluative alumni interview in the college admissions process is often considered a micro-barrier,” Emory explains in a FAQ on its website. “By providing a safe and low-risk environment for admitted students to explore the Emory experience through casual alumni conversations, we have removed a micro-barrier in the admissions process, supporting a more equitable process.”

The big question will be whether Emory’s former alumni gatekeepers will continue their volunteerism in service to a stronger yield—and whether software algorithms will do a better job at breaking down microbarriers to admission.

Colgate University and other institutions have also limited the weight of alumni interviews. On its advancement site, Colgate alums are told that “volunteers will connect with prospective students virtually through Colgate Admission Conversations, formerly referred to as interviews. These conversations are an informal way for students to learn more.” The conversations “are not evaluative and not required for admission.”

Another threatened role: chapter leaders.

Alumni clubs and chapters based on identity, geography or affinity have long been the tentpoles for convening a university’s population. For large universities, volunteer efforts to lead and coordinate such gatherings were a boon to advancement efforts, with events and volunteerism typically centered around university priorities, philanthropy or revenue driven by corporate sponsorships.

But witness a tool like Facebook’s birthday fundraisers, offered to users as a way to connect their philanthropic leanings to their cause activism from the comfort of their couch. Presuming the universities are liked by alums in a given region, what need do constituents have to attend local fundraisers for their alma maters anymore? The fundraisers (also offered on Instagram) do all the work for you: create the fundraiser landing page, conduct drip marketing outreach to your friends and deliver the proceeds to the university.

Finally, into this post-pandemic landscape, enter ChatGPT. We are only beginning to understand the disruptions smart AI bots like it may have on typical volunteer roles and spaces.

Consider these conversations I had:

• “I need to write a letter to my Harvard classmates from the Class of 1973 asking them to give to Harvard,” I told ChatGPT. It wrote me a flawless letter using many of the same prosaic tricks a class gift officer will deploy: “As we look back on our time at Harvard, I want to ask for your support in giving back to the university that gave us so much,” it wrote. “Your gift, no matter the size, will make a significant impact on the university … I encourage you to consider making a gift to Harvard in honor of our 50th reunion.”
• Then I asked this: “A student from my alma mater (NYU Stern) asked me for advice about interviewing at my company because I’m a corporate ambassador. Please write a response to her for me.” ChatGPT answered with a bulleted list of advice containing these items followed by techniques to approach each: research the company, review the job description carefully, practice with common interview questions, highlight your skills and experiences, ask questions, be professional and follow up. The message ended with “Go Bobcats!”
• “I need to collect class notes from Penn State classmates from the Class of 1998 for the alumni magazine,” I told ChatGPT. Fortunately, the role of class secretary is still beyond its scope—for now. Check with the alumni association, it said, or on social media, or with the university archives office.

For the first two roles above, do your alumni volunteers do better? And if not, are there more meaningful, human volunteer roles they can take? Because I don’t see much of a future in these roles.

On a positive note, I see two ways AI and algorithms might enhance volunteerism and volunteer recruitment moving forward.

1. Transparency for boards: At the highest levels of volunteerism for a nonprofit or university, volunteers are being treated to deeper dives into data than ever thought possible, along with ever more transparent insights into gaps in the nonprofit’s effectiveness or impact. Board members I’ve spoken with who have a keen appetite for data and data science love this new age of Tableau, PowerPoints and big data.
2. Volunteer rankings: At the entry level of volunteerism for a nonprofit or college, the rank-and-file constituents are getting affirmed, stewarded and rewarded with “top fan” badges from social media, often with little or no effort required by paid staff. Long before I got an appreciation pin from the Girl Scouts of the USA, I earned a “top contributor” badge from my local council’s Facebook page (don’t tell Facebook that most of my contributions were newbie troop leader questions).

Volunteering to help a cause has never been easier in history, and raw volunteer counts for many nonprofits and universities are higher than ever thanks to COVID-era trends like virtual and microvolunteering. But the traditional logic of the landscape for donors and dollars for nonprofits is clearly in flux, as are conversations about the meaningfulness and nature of work. Consequently, it’s a great time for any nonprofit to audit and address its current product line of volunteer roles.

Three private universities in California universities acknowledged to the state that in recent years they admitted some legacy students who did not meet their minimum admissions requirements, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The institutions are Pepperdine University, the University of Southern California and Vanguard University. Other private colleges, all complying with a new state law requiring them to report on legacy admits, said they did not admit anyone who failed minimum requirements. (Legacy students are the children or relatives of alumni.)

USC reported offering admission to eight students over the course of four years who were related to donors or alumni but didn’t meet admission requirements, the Chronicle reported. Two students admitted to USC in the 2021–22 academic year did not meet the university’s minimum math requirement; two others did not submit proof they graduated from high school. One of the students was a Syrian refugee and Southern Cal said, “we have no reason to believe that she did not graduate.”

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Pepperdine reported to the state that it offered admission to fewer than 10 legacy students who did not meet the university’s standards in each of the 2020–21 and 2021–22 academic years. A spokesperson said one student was admitted each year.

Vanguard reported fewer than 10 such students admitted in three of the past four academic years.

USC noted in its reports that students with ties to donors or alumni are given a “special interest tag” on their applications, and the “existence of a tag does not guarantee an applicant’s admission, nor does it shift an applicant to a fast-track admission process. Students whose files include a special interest tag are evaluated through the same rigorous process as untagged applicants.”

Every time I hang out with Melissa Kane, I learn something. Recently, she and I spent time together at an Ivy+ Leaders in Online Learning meeting at Penn. Melissa graciously agreed to answer my questions about her role at Brown and her career path and to share her thoughts about navigating an alternative-academic (alt-ac) career.

Q: Tell us about your role as senior associate director for online program development at Brown. What are the big projects you are working on that you are most excited about?

A: I lead a team of learning designers, educational media producers and learning technologists, and we have been fortunate to partner with the School of Professional Studies and the School of Public Health at Brown on the design and development of Brown’s first fully-online graduate degree program—an online master of public health. The element that energizes me most about this work is related to the program goals of providing a quality—and distinctly Brown—learning experience to a diverse, global audience at scale.

From a learning experience design perspective, this is a meaty challenge! It requires strategic decision-making around humanistic design that is inclusive to an international audience while also planning for large enrollment. I’m fortunate to be surrounded by a team of folks at the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning who care deeply about inclusive design, and so we spend a lot of time brainstorming, problem-solving and iterating on our ideas. It’s all grounded in theory, but it’s driven by innovation. It’s really fun work.

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Q: What educational and professional path have you followed in your career?

A: Like so many in this field, I’ve had a meandering professional pathway. I started my postbachelor’s career putting my communications degree to work in a midmarket TV news station in central N.Y. I worked the night newscast, and I remember having to substitute teach during the day to make ends meet. The challenges that came with substitute teaching ended up serving as a catalyst for me, and within a year at the TV studio, I was pursuing my master’s degree in secondary education and curriculum and instruction.

I eventually left TV news for the K-12 classroom, and this was potentially the most influential experience that positioned me well for the work I’m doing now with developing online graduate degree programs at Brown. I spent about a decade teaching English language arts in a public school, and many of my students were multilingual, first generation or had special needs. I saw firsthand the benefits that came with showing empathy for students’ individual needs and planning intentionally to reduce learning barriers.

I carried these tenets over to my work in higher education at Johnson & Wales University when I first transitioned from K-12. Many years later, when I was conducting research on design thinking process models for my dissertation for my doctorate of education, I was able to see so clearly the connection between human-centered design in professional design fields and its application to learning design. This sparked my interest and research in learning experience design, which I’ve carried into my various roles at Brown, from instructional designer to associate director of instructional design and now to my senior associate director role.

Q: What advice do you have for others aspiring to navigate their own alt-ac career within our higher ed ecosystem?

A: Don’t underestimate the value of varied experiences, and listen to the spark that drives you professionally. Sometimes we get stuck in the vision of our careers we thought we wanted, and that can make us lose sight of the opportunities that lie before us, or it can cause us to ignore the growth our experiences have afforded us. This happened to me at one point in my career, I admit—way back when I was a classroom teacher and could only ever envision myself in a K-12 vertical.

It was through exploring my drivers, taking risks, rolling up my sleeves in the work and leveraging my knowledge gained from my academic and professional experiences that I was able to attain a professional role that both excites me and in which I believe I can make a difference. I think anyone pursuing an alt-ac career should first engage in some reflective work around what it is in their professional world that drives them—specifically. For example, ask yourself what it is about the role that gets you excited to do the work. Think back to your past experiences and ask yourself the same question. Write it all down. Then, when you have a good idea of the work that drives you, and the type of impact you want to make on this world and with whom, go in search of opportunities that speak to that.

Elizabeth Tsurkov, a graduate student at Princeton University, is being held captive by a Shiite militia after she was abducted in Baghdad, The Washington Post reported.

She has been missing since March, but the office of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the circumstance of her disappearance Wednesday. Netanyahu said she is still alive.

She is an Israeli-Russian dual citizen who was doing research in Baghdad for her doctoral dissertation. She was traveling with her Russian passport.

“Elizabeth is a valued member of the Princeton University community,” said Michael Hotchkiss, a spokesman for Princeton. “We are deeply concerned for her safety and well-being, and we are eager for her to be able to rejoin her family and resume her studies.”

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