Daily Lumina News 040720

When the coronavirus hit, fourth-year medical students throughout the country were pulled from their rotations in hospitals and clinics just months from graduation.
David Edelman, a fifth-year medical student at Columbia University, wanted to help. He and a classmate teamed up to create the COVID-19 Student Service Corps to coordinate safe service-learning opportunities for students in nearly a dozen of Columbia’s schools and programs.

The speed at which institutions responded to the COVID-19 crisis has been fast, but was it enough? Are learners able to stay engaged with the content?
In this interview, Cathy Sandeen of the University of Alaska-Anchorage discusses her school's COVID-19 experience, lessons learned about disaster preparedness, and the future impact of remote learning on online education.

When the economy stalls, demand for college typically rises as the unemployed decide to go back to school to improve their job prospects.
In the last recession, the number of students who enrolled in college jumped by almost 2.5 million, or nearly 16 percent, from 15.6 million undergraduate students in the fall of 2007 to a peak of 18.1 million students in the fall of 2010. Most of the increase was driven by older adults.
With a new recession looming, will history repeat itself?

How can we help?
That simple question is spurring a flurry of activity among students, faculty, staff and university administrators who have looked for ways to assist health-care workers in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether it’s repurposing university-owned equipment to decontaminate N95 masks, mixing hand sanitizer in chemistry labs for use by hospitals, collecting supplies of personal protective equipment, or babysitting health-care workers’ children, professionals in higher education and the students they serve are finding all kinds of ways to help.