Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.”
Her words are excellent guideposts as New England colleges and universities navigate the unknowns of educating students during COVID-19. Despite the precautions that institutions are taking, on-campus teaching and research are not totally risk-free.
Neither, of course, is life itself...
The brand of a college or university is more than its logo or tagline. It's an accumulation of experiences for students, staff, faculty, alumni and community members. Marketing is part of it, but every time someone sets foot on your campus, they are walking into your brand.
This fall, fewer students will be on campuses and they may be there with less frequency. COVID-19 won’t last forever...
For the past several decades, student engagement has been an increasingly popular subject of research in higher education. A raft of studies, surveys and op-eds have put engagement at the center of the national narrative around student success—and at the top of the priority list for institutions seeking to support an increasingly diverse generation of learners. All that research suggests that in...
With the growing number of colleges moving to online learning, I have been asked: Can online learning incorporate trauma-responsive strategies? The short answer is yes.
Before turning to specific pedagogical approaches, it is worth reiterating why trauma-responsiveness is so critical to learning at this moment. Pre-pandemic and before the current racial tensions and economic uncertainty, we wer...
Becoming chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Boston is a humbling experience and a great responsibility for me—it is indeed the opportunity of a lifetime. As a kid who emigrated from Argentina to the U.S. to escape political unrest at age 17, with just a few dollars in my pocket, I was one of millions of Americans by-choice arriving over the years, searching for a better life. Settling...
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on the labor market, with more than 40 million Americans who have filed for unemployment. Even as some states have attempted to reopen their economies, allowing 4 million people to head back to work, the unemployment rate still hovers around 16%. And we’re still in the early innings of recovery—perhaps even just batting practice. The recovery ...
About a year ago, I attended a meeting at the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) focused on reducing the cost of learning materials for college students in our region. I have been pleased since then to work with colleagues across the New England states on NEBHE’s Open Education Advisory Committee that is looking into how best to support institutions and faculty as they replace high-co...
I want to discuss the human dimensions of what I have too often treated (thinking with my instincts as a theoretical physicist) as a scientific methods problem. Experience has taught me that the human forces of a problem are often more important in determining how we meet challenges in an educational institution than the technical aspects. Indeed, management of offices that relate to such function...
Pre-pandemic, a good number of us lamented the demise of small colleges. Let’s define these here as non-elite colleges with enrollment of fewer than 1,500 full-time undergraduate students. For the most part, these institutions have few graduate programs, a handful at most.
Some of these colleges have closed; some have merged; some have partnered. Whatever the structure, it feels to me still l...
Higher education is a body that intends to be greater than the sum of its parts. The guiding principle is that college is a primary route to becoming an enlightened person capable of thriving in a society of opportunities and challenges. Over time, colleges have gone from providing only academic content to facilitating more opportunities for learning through personal engagement, systems to apply k...
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.”
Her words are excellent guideposts as New England colleges and universities navigate the unknowns of educating students during COVID-19. Despite the precautions that institutions are taking, on-campus teaching and research are not totally risk-free.
Neither, of course, is life itself... 
The brand of a college or university is more than its logo or tagline. It's an accumulation of experiences for students, staff, faculty, alumni and community members. Marketing is part of it, but every time someone sets foot on your campus, they are walking into your brand.
This fall, fewer students will be on campuses and they may be there with less frequency. COVID-19 won’t last forever... 
For the past several decades, student engagement has been an increasingly popular subject of research in higher education. A raft of studies, surveys and op-eds have put engagement at the center of the national narrative around student success—and at the top of the priority list for institutions seeking to support an increasingly diverse generation of learners. All that research suggests that in... 
With the growing number of colleges moving to online learning, I have been asked: Can online learning incorporate trauma-responsive strategies? The short answer is yes.
Before turning to specific pedagogical approaches, it is worth reiterating why trauma-responsiveness is so critical to learning at this moment. Pre-pandemic and before the current racial tensions and economic uncertainty, we wer... 
Becoming chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Boston is a humbling experience and a great responsibility for me—it is indeed the opportunity of a lifetime. As a kid who emigrated from Argentina to the U.S. to escape political unrest at age 17, with just a few dollars in my pocket, I was one of millions of Americans by-choice arriving over the years, searching for a better life. Settling... 
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on the labor market, with more than 40 million Americans who have filed for unemployment. Even as some states have attempted to reopen their economies, allowing 4 million people to head back to work, the unemployment rate still hovers around 16%. And we’re still in the early innings of recovery—perhaps even just batting practice. The recovery ... 
About a year ago, I attended a meeting at the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) focused on reducing the cost of learning materials for college students in our region. I have been pleased since then to work with colleagues across the New England states on NEBHE’s Open Education Advisory Committee that is looking into how best to support institutions and faculty as they replace high-co... 
I want to discuss the human dimensions of what I have too often treated (thinking with my instincts as a theoretical physicist) as a scientific methods problem. Experience has taught me that the human forces of a problem are often more important in determining how we meet challenges in an educational institution than the technical aspects. Indeed, management of offices that relate to such function... 
Pre-pandemic, a good number of us lamented the demise of small colleges. Let’s define these here as non-elite colleges with enrollment of fewer than 1,500 full-time undergraduate students. For the most part, these institutions have few graduate programs, a handful at most.
Some of these colleges have closed; some have merged; some have partnered. Whatever the structure, it feels to me still l... 
Higher education is a body that intends to be greater than the sum of its parts. The guiding principle is that college is a primary route to becoming an enlightened person capable of thriving in a society of opportunities and challenges. Over time, colleges have gone from providing only academic content to facilitating more opportunities for learning through personal engagement, systems to apply k...