Daily Lumina News 032520

As COVID-19 spreads around the globe and the threat of a recession materializes, most people are focused properly on the immediate task at hand—preparing to teach and support students remotely.
There also will be significant longer term impacts. And the biggest shifts may occur at the intersections of K-12, higher education, and workforce learning. These areas are often treated as their own distinct silos in the education market, but the coronavirus crisis has revealed how interdependent the sectors may be.

Eleanor Murray feels both burned out and determined to help. Two weeks ago, Murray, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Boston University, had never given an interview; now she’s given many.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to claim victims and upend daily life, many epidemiologists, particularly those with expertise in infectious diseases, have found themselves suddenly in demand. They’re on TV urging governments to take further action, or on social media explaining how to interpret data about the disease. And we’re turning to them for answers about a new, daunting reality.

Community college transfer programs face challenges both at their home institutions and at the institutions to which students want to transfer. Add STEM to the equation and the challenges grow.
Xueli Wang, a professor of higher education at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, explores those challenges and the way students meet them in a new book that follows 1,670 community college students for four years as they transfer to four-year institutions. She discusses her findings and more in this interview.

Xander Christou spent most of last fall like many high school seniors: researching and applying to schools. He planned to spend the spring visiting some of the campuses he was accepted to.
But with so many colleges shutting down, all of those visits have been cancelled. More than just the visits, he's waiting on his financial aid offers, too. Money, and how his family is going to pay for college, has become even more important.