The rise in social activism on campuses — generated by continued anti-Black violence and hate crimes against Asian Americans — has led many colleges and universities to analyze their diversity policies and practices. In many places, the conversation starts with reexamining the role of the chief diversity officer, who is often charged with helping institutions develop “cultural competency and expand the social bandwidth of their respective institutions,” says Elizabeth Moore, interim chief diversity officer at Gallaudet University.
To better prepare students for the workforce, St. Mary’s College of Maryland sought to redefine a liberal arts education. Through a data analysis of local industry needs and students’ experiences, the Learning Through Experiential and Applied Discovery (LEAD) initiative emerged. Among the initiative’s goals is the incorporation of professional career development skills such as communication, teamwork and project management within the core curriculum and in every discipline at St. Mary’s College.
As a child in rural Kenya, Dr. Esther Ngumbi helped her parents farm each day, watching as their crops sprouted from the soil, hopeful and green. But then, “insects would come and go through our crops, and sometimes what insects hadn’t taken away, drought would,” says Ngumbi, now an assistant professor of entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From a young age, Ngumbi wanted to know what the insects were and how farmers could control them. She wanted a career that could help her community grow plentiful food amid challenging circumstances and a changing climate.
The 2021 CUPA-HR Faculty in Higher Education Report found that all faculty types suffered job losses during the 2020-21 academic year. In terms of full-time faculty in specific departments, leisure and recreational activities and library science suffered the biggest job loss percentage, the report finds. As for sheer number, business, management and marketing and biological and biomedical sciences lost the most faculty, with a third to almost 50% of institutions reporting cuts in these departments.
With bipartisan support, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s tuition-free community college initiative, “Get Skilled, Get a Job, Give Back (G3),” was signed into legislation last week.
According to a recent report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), employers are projecting to hire 7.2% more new college graduates from the Class of 2021 than they did from last year’s class. This marks a rebound from Fall 2020, when employers projected hiring 0.1% less from the Class of 2021.
In this issue: Stellar advocacy for the underprivileged a leadership hallmark of California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley, the 2021 recipient of the Diverse Champions Award.
Student-athletes all have some level of investment in their particular sport. This investment can come in the form of effort, time, emotions, money, hopes, and dreams. Perhaps the most impactful investment that they make is the investment of their identity. This is the level of which one’s view of their self is defined as being an athlete in their sport. How one defines themselves and how others define them makes up their identity.
My mom let me know that she recently purchased a walking stick for when she and my father walk our dog. While they are entering an older stage in their lives, they are still in good health and have no issues walking. They bought the walking stick for the sole purpose of having something to defend themselves with in the case they are attacked. Though she didn’t say it explicitly, she is afraid that she might also become a victim of anti-Asian violence.
The hardest and most needed changes will require courage. It will require some degree of risk. It will require upsetting the status quo. It will require fearless advocacy on behalf of students even if it means that it may cause some level of institutional discomfort. Unprecedented change requires unprecedented action at the time when windows of opportunity are made available.
Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) and Johnson C. Smith University (JCSU) are partnering to offer CPCC students a bachelor’s degree pathway, WBTV reported. The program, JCSU Connect, is a 2+2 program, so students will complete an associate degree at CPCC and a bachelor’s at JCSU, the historically Black university located in Charlotte, N.C. The program […]
Last year colleges and universities were forced to temporarily close their doors as COVID-19 spread throughout the country. Virtual instruction became the norm as institutions worked to continue with classes while mitigating transmission risks, and meeting students’ basic needs became the focal point as food and housing insecurity were exacerbated by the pandemic. Finding affordable childcare also became a challenge for students working to learn with children at home.
Growing up in Southeast Los Angeles as the son of a U.S. citizen father educated in Mexico and a mother who was a Mexican immigrant, Eloy Ortiz Oakley says that he could not have imagined a journey that would take him to leading the largest higher education system in the U.S. However, Oakley says that it is the very struggles he overcame in his youth that inform his work as chancellor of the California Community Colleges system, which comprises 116 colleges serving more than 2.1 million students.
Data from the National Student Clearinghouse shows that community college enrollment in fall 2020 was down 10.6% from fall 2019 for full-time students and 9.9% for part-time students. The biggest declines were among African American males at 19.2% and Native American males at 20.1%.
Black adults who attend racially balanced mixed-race schools ended up finishing fewer years of school and were less likely to graduate than others who attended overwhelmingly white schools or predominantly Black schools, according to four researchers, the The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported. The researchers used data from the National Survey of Black Americans and looked at information […]
The Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey has created a scholarship for alumni of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) and Tribal colleges and universities (TCUs), according to Middlebury officials. Alumni of such schools – starting with students admitted for fall 2021 – will receive a $10,000 annual scholarship for a master’s […]
Northern Kentucky University will investigate – and increase nightly police patrols – after white supremacy graffiti was found on campus, the second vandalization since the year’s start, CNN reported. The graffiti, found on public space “Housing Rock” included spray-painted stencils of the words, “Patriot Front,” in reference to white nationalist hate group Patriot Front. According […]
After a series of shootings at Asian spas killed eight people in Atlanta – six of them Asian women – the country is undergoing a reckoning with anti-Asian racism. Asian American faculty and staff say campuses have a role to play in this moment.
University of California, Irvine School of Law (UCI Law) faculty has voted to adopt a graduation requirement necessitating students to complete a graded course that includes substantial content relating to “race and indigeneity, structural inequity, and the historical bases for such inequity.” They also adopted a new first-year elective that meets the race and indigeneity requirement. […]
There were rising numbers of Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) and Emerging HSIs, more HSIs offering graduate-level programs and increased enrollment by Latinos in regions not normally known for Hispanic enrollment pre-pandemic, according to Excelencia in Education’s 16th annual analysis. Excelencia did its analysis based on the latest federal data available from 2019-2020. As such, these […]
Don’t want all of your time, resources and efforts wasted on your previous diversity recruitment efforts? Join this webinar for COVID-19 specific guidelines and strategies to help ensure you continue and improve diversity recruitment efforts for faculty and staff, while maintaining your retention strategies that support your diverse faculty and staff and support the mission […]
