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Section: Opinion

Community Colleges

Roueche Center Forum: The Human Side of Transformational Change

Historically, U.S. community college leaders have faced calls for reform. Specifically, higher education researchers and reform leaders have urged community colleges to commit to renewing themselves for student and workforce success while considering the immediate and future demands of the country.

May 28, 2021

If We Want Equitable Representation, We Need More Diverse Congressional Interns Like Me

It was always my dream to be a Congressional intern. Last summer, despite the pandemic, I was able to intern with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. The experience was eye opening, as I was one of the few Latinas in the program.

May 27, 2021

Rap Music Didn’t Cause Inner-City Violence…Poverty & Broken Homes Did

Hip-hop often faces a substantial amount of blame for the inner-city violence that occurs in communities across the country. This ideology has been perpetuated by politicians, media personalities, journalists and scholars alike. The genre has been heavily scrutinized for its influence and impact on Black youth for decades. The polarizing genre’s criticism dates back to the “Gangsta Rap” protests headed by National Political Congress of Black Women chair C. Delores Tucker, and the mass protests against rap group N.W.A.

May 26, 2021

Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys Can Be a Railroad for Best Practices

As the country marks the one-year anniversary of the killing of George Floyd by former police officer Derek Chauvin, questions about where the movement for social justice will go from here continue to abound. Legislative progress in directly addressing the plight of Black men like Floyd, has been an uphill battle. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act has been passed by the U.S. House of Representatives but has not yet been voted on in the Senate.

May 25, 2021

It Takes a Team, Not Superheroes, to Support College Success

Too often we celebrate an incredible high school teacher or school counselor when what we really need to do is take a broader approach to helping students apply and go to college, especially during a pandemic.

May 25, 2021

Lest We Be Fooled, As We Reflect on the One-Year Anniversary of George Floyd’s Murder

As critical scholars and DEI strategists, the one-year anniversary of the egregious and pernicious lynching of George Perry Floyd, Jr., committed directly by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, but indirectly, by centuries of systemic racism that has historically targeted Black bodies and communities of color, is an opportunity for us to take a bold stance within this op-ed.

May 24, 2021

How Can We Increase Diversity in STEM? Support Students

As college students graduating in a world defined by climate crisis and public health emergencies, we strongly believe that supporting talented young people from underrepresented groups in STEM (like us) is essential for our generation to tackle the challenges ahead.

May 21, 2021

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Zoom Gave My Teaching New Life

When all our interactions suddenly shifted from in-person to virtual in Spring 2020, I suspected it would stress-test our comfort with being seen and seeing others in a new way, but something else happened that I hadn’t anticipated: This experience over the last year-plus has made me a better, more confident teacher.

May 20, 2021

Extending Respect and Resources to International Students

The higher education sector in the United States benefited for years from the financial pockets of the international community with minimal accountability and consideration for those students, making terminology such as ‘cash cows’ notoriously synonymous with international student enrollments. Historical demand for a U.S. education rose from ideals of versions of the American dream, decades of soft-diplomacy, and as the current academic and economic hegemony. However, last spring proved that the demand can quickly dissipate.

May 18, 2021

Connecting Today’s Course Activities to Tomorrow’s Career Possibilities is Key to Student Re-Engagement

To say that education and learning has been significantly disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic would be an understatement. Students have had to adjust to a new form of being educated while instructors were learning new methods on the fly. It was a patchwork process at best, but it caused a reexamination of existing practices.

May 17, 2021

New Poll Data Puts Biden At Odds with Most Americans on Student Loan Forgiveness

President Joe Biden’s ambitious new plan to expand access to higher education has a key missing piece: it leaves millions struggling with student loan debt to carry that burden alone. As a president who frequently speaks of his working-class upbringing in Scranton, Biden is stuck on incorrect assumptions about loan forgiveness and class—a blind spot in his education policy that is both unpopular and misinformed.

May 17, 2021

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What Could University Statements Convey as a Response to Incidents of Racial/Ethnic Violence?

What exactly do campus constituencies need at crucial moments when incidents of racism occur? Campus constituencies need a combination of compassion and action to address structural racism. Actions need to be sustained; they cannot occur in fits and starts. That is university leaders need to be proactive in fighting racism and not reactive to specific occurrences of racial or ethnic racism.

May 14, 2021

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Community Colleges

Roueche Center Forum: Involving All Faculty in the Guided Pathways Work Is Key

Guided pathways is a reform movement that aims to help community college students graduate, transfer to four-year institutions and attain jobs with value in the labor market by reframing the entire student journey.

May 11, 2021

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Asian American Pacific Islander

AANHPIHM “Poster Boy” Is Accused Student Who Stands Up to Dartmouth

Sirey Zhang is the new higher ed poster boy for Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month. He is blasting away at the negative stereotype of the AANHPIHM person who lacks the courage and good sense to speak up. Zhang’s showing some guts standing up to the bullying of Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine.

May 10, 2021

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African-American

Can HBCUs Capitalize on the Hemp Rush?

The landscape for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) is rapidly changing amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and new proposals on the horizon at the national level from the Biden administration. It will be incumbent on institutions to adapt their programming to meet the changing needs of the economic environment. They will need to be economic engines as well as learning institutions.

May 6, 2021

One Year After the Shutdown: Education Lessons from COVID-19

A year ago, K-12 classrooms and college campuses across the country shuttered; many still remain closed. As the panic of the pandemic spread, students and teachers stayed home and shifted to “emergency” mode – delivering curriculum in whatever ways they could. This was not online learning; this was emergency remote teaching.

May 5, 2021

Black Male Teachers Should be the Norm, Not the Exception

Our education system, as we know it, is systematically racist. How did we get here? We haven’t been thinking about what is best for kids. Kids perform better in school when they are with teachers of the same race or ethnicity. There are approximately 8 million (15%) Black students in America’s public schools, yet only 7% of teachers are Black. By not providing enough teachers of color for our students we are exacerbating a form of racism in the field; we don’t take that seriously enough.

April 30, 2021

Through Perseverance, North Carolina A&T Journalism Major Lands Coveted Internship at The Washington Post

Lauren Mitchell could become a case study for how to successfully navigate the demands of college life. She also could serve as a reminder, especially to her fellow HBCU colleagues, that it is important to take advantage of every learning opportunity your university offers while also learning to believe in yourself, although every once and a while you might need a little nudge from a friend.

April 29, 2021

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