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Welcome to The EDU Ledger! We’ve moved from Diverse: Issues In Higher Education.

Section: Opinion

Adapt to Advance: Community Colleges as Agile Organizations

When COVID-19 arrived in 2020, community colleges were already adapting to myriad political, economic, social, cultural and technological shifts.

February 9, 2021

African-American

Declines in Community College Enrollment Among Blacks Will Have Long-Term Consequences

Community colleges throughout the U.S. have experienced dramatic decreases in enrollment among students of color since the pandemic began.

February 8, 2021

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COVID-19 Creates Framework for Permanent Campus Culture That Supports Mental Health

Staggering loss of life, lingering effects of illness and treatment, economic instability and suffering, academic and vocational disruptions, political strife and racial disparities have become the accompanying melodies of the COVID-19 chorus.

February 5, 2021

Sharon Shapiro[144676]

Asian American Pacific Islander

I Wasn’t a Good Asian Daughter… But That Got Me into College

Holistic admissions should encourage students to celebrate different components of their unique personal identities rather than conform to what they think admissions officers are looking for.

February 4, 2021

The Rage of Silence

Two years ago, I surrendered my rage to my ancestors when academia told me I did not belong. Since then, my ancestors awaken me to document a collective story, especially during COVID-19. What is the one thing that COVID-19 and academia have in common?

February 3, 2021

Dr. Nichole Margarita Garcia

Reflections on the Life and Legacy of Dr. James Carmichael Renick

Anyone who ever met Jim Renick would have found it very hard not to like him.

February 3, 2021

Dr. William B. Harvey

Asian American Pacific Islander

Chinese American History Professors Gave Photographer Corky Lee His Calling

My friend Corky Lee, the self-described Asian American photographer laureate, has been mentioned by much of the mainstream media this past week. He died of COVID on Jan. 27.

February 2, 2021

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How Colleges Can Increase Equity Through Employability Standards

In the United States, education has long been considered a great equalizer — or, as Horace Mann put it, “the balance wheel of the social machinery.” While it is indeed a vital lever for social and economic mobility, the machinery, unfortunately, comes with a design flaw. And it is rife with inequity.

February 1, 2021

Time for Anti-Racism: A Way Forward for America and Higher Education

Anti-racism seems to have found its moment, although Classical Studies in specific has some heavy lifting to undo the role of its legacy as a bastion of white supremacy. Vassar College classics professor Curtis Dozier acknowledges this and has an online platform, Pharos, whose “first purpose is to document appropriations of Greco-Roman culture by hate groups online.”

January 21, 2021

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Accessibility Services and Moving Towards Universal Design

I wonder if we who are nondisabled teachers have become so desensitized to the realities of disabled students that the violence done unto them by the university has disappeared from the informal settings in which we express surprise and frustration to one another.

January 19, 2021

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Inaugural Week and Poetry Should Re-Kindle Our Sense of Diversity

As we celebrate the MLK holiday, the inaugural and the final days of the last four years, the assault on our norms should finally be coming to an end. The gaslight soon extinguished, let’s rekindle our sense of diversity to guide us over a more soothing, less bumpy political landscape.

January 18, 2021

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Why You Should Post Your COVID Vaccine on Social Media

“If you don’t post your COVID vaccine on social media, do you even form antibodies?” was my comical Instagram caption I posted after I received my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan. As a current 3rd year medical student at Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine, nothing elated me more than finally seeing a tangible piece of hope at the end of a very hard year of death, grief, and exhaustion. The anticipation of fellow healthcare providers in the vaccination line was greater than the joy a family experiences on Christmas morning. One by one, we filed into the hospital auditorium and one by one, we entered a new chapter of the coronavirus pandemic.

January 14, 2021

Keyontae Johnson’s Collapse on the Basketball Court Highlights Economic Injustice for College Athletes

When Keyontae Johnson, a 21 year old basketball player, agreed to play NCAA basketball at the University of Florida, he had no idea about the trauma that he would experience. Keyontae contracted COVID-19 in August and after passing physical screenings, he collapsed while playing basketball. He was then diagnosed with a rare heart disease that would impact him for the rest of his life. He was also placed in a medically induced coma as doctors fought to save his life. Luckily for Keyontae, he was able to recover and is back on the sidelines at the University of Florida while managing his heart condition. Many suspected that the heart condition was linked to COVID-19 and had concerns about NCAA athletes contracting the virus while playing sports.

January 13, 2021

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The Role of Experimentation and Medical Mistrust in COVID-19 Vaccine Skepticism

For many people in the United States, the approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines symbolize hope for the end of a virus that has plagued this country and the world. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reported 373,167 COVID-19-related deaths across the United States as of January 11, with Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) being disproportionately impacted.

January 12, 2021

Some Advice from a Rural Community College President to President-Elect Biden

What happened on January 6 is what one thinks happens only in unstable democracies, in places where poverty forces people to do things that reflect how little they have to lose. An angry, violent mob storming the capital city at the request of the sitting president who is watching as it all unfolds is not what one expects in the United States of America. Yet, that is exactly what happened. Why is that?

January 11, 2021

An Executive Order, an Outcry and an Opening

With everything that has happened since September 22, it would not be a surprise if you missed the hubbub around President Trump’s executive order on “Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping.” If you’re just catching up, the executive order “roil[ed] corporate America” and caused colleges and universities to “cancel diversity, equity, and inclusion programs” and to accuse the Trump administration of censorship . It also prompted Justice Department employees to ask Congress to investigate the “illegal and abusive government directives” in the executive order.

January 8, 2021

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Recruitment & Retention

What Will You Do to Embrace Who America Truly is in 2021?

The year 2021 promises to be one of the biggest efforts to recruit diverse talent in history. America’s top companies, nonprofits and schools have the opportunity to not only uproot systemic barriers to advancement, but also leverage diverse perspectives and experiences as a means to innovate, problem solve and provide better products and services.

January 7, 2021

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Community Colleges

Flat is the New Up: How the Year of Covid-19 Continues to Reinvent Higher Ed

Along with its persisting global presence and its surging number of victims, COVID-19 has conjured numerous challenges due to its unprecedented nature. Whether we see the vast changes around us as positive or not, we need to adapt to stay in the performance race. Higher education is facing some critical demands, and it might be useful to summarize some gripping ones, along with the ways we’re collectively addressing them.

January 5, 2021

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