Daily Lumina News 061721

By his own account, Oscar Tendilla was a horrible middle school student, unmotivated, and indifferent. Last month, he became his family’s first college graduate. He now has plenty of career options, no debt, and a diploma from Cornell University.
Tendilla credits his turnaround to a high school network known as Pathways in Technology Early College High School that directly links students from historically underserved backgrounds to colleges and careers with paid internships and intensive mentoring.

A student takes a class on astronomy while living in a van, balancing her Zoom-based coursework with her job on a goat farm. A recently minted literature Ph.D., unable to find work, becomes a nurse instead—and reflects on his new career as the hospitals are bracing for COVID. A professor cries onscreen, mourning the suicide of a student.
Students and professors share their personal stories of hope, isolation, and loss from a period of time already receding—with luck, for good. Whatever normalcy emerges this fall will be a “new” normal, chipped and splintered by the experiences of the last year and a half.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced almost every college or university to make do without a physical campus at some point in the last 15 months. Yet, many students and employees yearned to return, and most institutions anticipate resuming at least quasi-normal in-person operations this fall.
But changes in how students learn and employees work will almost certainly compel college leaders to reassess the importance of the physical campus and the link between mission and place.

The nation’s jobs market stands at a somewhat puzzling juncture. There are still 7.6 million fewer people working than before the pandemic. But job openings are at record high levels, too.
Helping people land good jobs with career paths takes more than skills training, labor experts say. Coaching, mentoring, and other assistance are also needed.

When Verda Tetteh moved from Ghana to Fitchburg, Massachusetts, as a small child, she learned to take nothing for granted. Her mother, Rosemary Annan, started pursuing a degree at a local community college at age 39 while working two jobs and taking care of the family.
Tetteh thought about her mother's hard-fought journey as she decided to turn down a $40,000 scholarship so it could help others in greater need of the prize.

Education is a door, and recruitment, admissions, and enrollment policies and practices dictate how wide that door is open, concludes a new study from the Institution for Higher Education Policy.
IHEP hopes the report's recommendations ultimately become "the North Star” for colleges seeking to intentionally center equity in enrollment, allowing them to finally open the door to opportunity for all of today's students.