Posts Categorized: Schools

Squirreling Away Some Thoughts as Summer Turns to Autumn

Tidbits from the NEJHE Beat … Population studies. The population counts provided by the decennial U.S. census shape congressional and state legisla­tive districts and offer a telling picture of America's and New England's changing demography. Delayed by the pandemic, the 2020 counts came close to the legal deadlines for redistricting in some states, raising concerns about whether there would...

How Do Students Decide Which Courses to Take?

A review of formal and informal processes in course selection ... College students use both formal and informal processes when making decisions related to course selection. They often get course-registration advice through formal on-campus “institutional” resources and off-campus “non-institutional” resources. In April 2016, a student in my Data and Decisions Analysis course at S...

From #BLM to the Emergence of @Blackat___

In February 2012, a 17-year-old Black boy was shot dead in the streets of Florida by a neighbor who felt this boy looked suspicious. Carrying a can of iced tea and a bag of Skittles, Trayvon Martin became yet another name added to the list of Black lives lost to racism. What surely shattered all hope, was that even after the facts of the case were reviewed, his killer was let free by the criminal ...

Attacks on Critical Race Theory Blemish Era of Race Consciousness

When I was in elementary school, history happened like this: The world was fighting, the Civil War happened, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and then everything was happy and free, and the U.S. was the place to be. Now obviously that is a gross exaggeration of the facts. But it’s not untrue about what we as role models, educators, parents and guardians chose to disclose to children about the hi...

Will PWIs Embrace Change in a Nation at Unrest?

Ahmaud Arbery, February 23, 2020. A murder that was concealed and hidden away from this nation at unrest. Breonna Taylor, March 13, 2020. A murder, again hidden from a nation at unrest. George Floyd, May 25, 2020. A murder documented and mourned by all of America, not just those who are Black and American. As the protests began and stories began to change, this divided nation—Haitian, J...

This Recession Calls for New Playbooks

On May 11, the U.S. Department of Education released guidance for the $36 billion in emergency funding available to higher education institutions (HEIs). This new round of funding—authorized by the American Rescue Plan Act—makes $10 billion available to community colleges, $2.6 billion to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), $190 million to tribal colleges, and $6 billion to o...

Data, Decision-Making and Student Success

Which matters more, gauging the health of an institution or the success of its students? Recently, the project director and I submitted the Annual Performance Report for the second year of our university’s Title III grant, for which I serve as part-time consultant. The five-year award from the U.S. Department of Education is a competitive grant intended to strengthen the academic quality and ...

Truth, Education and Democracy in an Era of “Alternative Facts”

There has been a growing consensus among authorities, especially in the Trump era, that the U.S. is in an epistemological crisis that threatens our democracy. President Barack Obama, for example, in a recent Atlantic interview, said: "If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition, ou...

Teaching the Active-Shooter Generation

I’ve been teaching political science for about a decade now. I teach students about the international system, the functioning of government, foreign policy, national security. My teaching is based on my 12 years of higher education and shaped by my life experiences. I’m a Cold War kid. In grade school and junior-high classrooms, we had “duck and cover” drills for what to do in the case ...

Trauma, the COVID-19 Pandemic and Immigration

How these forces intersect at a community hospital focused on the underserved ... A year into the global pandemic, we are grappling with the scale of its impact and the conditions that created, permitted and exacerbated it. For those of us in the mental health field, tentative strides toward telepsychiatry pivoted to a sudden semi-permanent virtual healthcare delivery system. Questions of effic...