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

Section: Opinion

A “Green” Approach to Education Reform

During recent celebrations of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, I could not help but think about the condition of the American education system as I listened to the alarming message from environmental experts about how “the world is in greater peril than ever” due to concerns about climate policy, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. […]

April 29, 2010

Ugly Resistance Against the President Continues

Read the following examples: On April 15 (income tax day), more than 10,000 members of the recently formed tea party group converged on the nation’s capital to voice their resentment and erratic anger at government and at President Obama in particular. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell initially announced that the state had proclaimed April as confederate […]

April 28, 2010

Curtailing Free Speech Due to Safety Concerns: Ploy or Reality

I am a lover of ideas. Old interesting ideas applied to new conditions, new fascinating ideas applied to old or new dynamics — I love them all. Most ideas form ideologies, which are usually located in this day and age along the ideological line that extends from the far left to the far right. Even […]

April 26, 2010

The End of Something …

Well, my semester has finally ended, culminating the end of my first year at Lincoln. While I should write about how the 2009-10 academic year went, I figured I’d write about something else that happened on the same day my grades were due: my mother’s passing. Part of the reason why I came to Lincoln […]

April 25, 2010

The Importance of K-12 Preparation

I received a call this week from the NAACP leadership in Chesterville County, Va., regarding the disproportionately low numbers of minority students enrolled in advanced placement, honors, gifted and other forms of advanced high school coursework there. The man I spoke with has a daughter who entered college with STEM aspirations only to be discouraged […]

April 21, 2010

It is High Time for a Black Woman on the High Court: Part II

Am I the only one who finds it troublesome that of the three people widely reported as likely finalists for Justice John Paul Stevens’ soon-to-be vacant seat on the Supreme Court — all White, two of whom are women — there is not one African-American among the trio? This is hard to understand, particularly since, […]

April 19, 2010

Crude Sexist Phrase From Cornell Professor Proves Intolerable

A disturbing, appalling, and revealing incident that occurred at Cornell University two months ago is finally receiving the spotlight and shame it so utterly deserves. Professor Grant Farred, a professor of English and Africana Studies from South Africa, invited two of his advisees, both African-American female graduate students, to a conference in early February on […]

April 15, 2010

No (Black) Justice, No Peace?

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation…want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” –Frederick Douglass, 1857 This weekend, […]

April 15, 2010

Gearing for the Stretch Run

One of the quirky aspects of being at Lincoln is that there is no spring break. As a result, the semester is an intense four months beginning in January and ending in mid-April. With just over two weeks until the end of the semester, many of my students are already looking ahead to their summer […]

April 15, 2010

Refusing To Define Quality by Anything but Test Scores: Why?

Last night I was at a dinner party. The small gathering included eight Ivy League tenured faculty members. Although we were gathered to talk about another matter, the subject of test scores and college admissions surfaced. I won’t go into the details of the discussion, but, as you might expect, I had to say something. […]

April 11, 2010

Mis-Prioritization of Diversity Leading to Cuts

More than 200 students, faculty and staff gathered at the University of Maine’s Fogler Library to publicize their opposition to the cuts. Dr. Ray Pelletier, chairman of the department of modern languages and classics, said the anticipated cuts that may curtail his department were not well thought out. “I don’t think they understand the harm […]

April 8, 2010

Leading by Example

This past week, I participated in a two-day summit on STEM diversity at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In addition to the host campus, the meeting included representatives from 14 other highly selective research institutions, including Harvard, Stanford, Georgia Tech, UC Berkeley, and UT Austin. MIT convened these campuses to openly discuss respective challenges […]

April 6, 2010

William & Mary: Larger Financial Steps Needed to Atone for Slavery

The College of William & Mary recently announced the formation of a panel to study how the college’s history is tangled with African-American history. This announcement follows a resolution the college adopted last spring, acknowledging it owned slaves and exploited slave labor from 1693 until the Civil War and discriminated against African-Americans during the Jim […]

April 4, 2010

Using Good Customer Service in the Higher Education Marketplace

I have often said that people don’t want to know how much you know until they know how much you care. Students today have more choices than ever before on what to do when they graduate from high school. If their choice is college, then what will they and their parents be looking for before […]

April 1, 2010

Faculty & Staff

STEM Careers and 21st Century Academic Racism

This week, I came across a study that found that a significant number of women and AALANAs (African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans) were discouraged from pursuing their STEM careers. In “Facts of Science Education XIV,” the research firm Campos surveyed 1,226 women and AALANA members of the American Chemical Society—particularly chemists and chemical engineers […]

March 25, 2010

Helping Lincoln Students Find Opportunities

Over the past few months, I’ve had almost two dozen students come to my office expressing concern about their future. Some are graduating seniors who now see the error of not having an internship in their fields of choice. Others are underclassmen who read the news and see the bleak prospects for employment in the […]

March 24, 2010

Competition Has Its Place

According to a 2005 U.S. Government Accountability Office report, there are just over 200 STEM education programs funded by 13 federal civilian agencies. The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health support roughly half and cover approximately $2 billion of a $2.8 billion total programmatic investment. While much of this funding is […]

March 23, 2010

Stopping Hate Before it Starts

On March 20, as U.S. Rep. John Lewis walked to a meeting on Capitol Hill, Tea Party protestors hurled racial slurs at him. They also yelled homophobic comments at and spat on U.S. Rep. Barney Frank. These cruel actions toward two people who have endured much discrimination brought tears to my eyes. Of course I […]

March 21, 2010