Daily Lumina News 080221

The long journey of the coronavirus pandemic has taken students through dimensions of online learning, social isolation, economic anguish, personal loss, and mass grief.
College leaders and faculty members are trying to address this new burnout with additional support and resources. That includes expanded in-person counseling, the use of apps to virtually connect to therapists, regular check-ins, and programs that foster social connectedness among students and the broader campus community.

Countless students would agree: The transfer process today does not work. Despite sustained efforts to fix transfer over the past several decades, the current system continues to produce dismal, inequitable outcomes and unnecessary roadblocks that thwart students’ educational goals.
In this op-ed, Lara Couturier of the Tackling Transfer Policy Advisory Board writes that policymakers and others need to "reset" the transfer process to meet the needs/demands of today’s learners—and tomorrow’s—who are seeking to receive credit for learning, work, and lived experiences along the entirety of their educational path.

Hundreds of dollars in unpaid debt to campuses can be enough to derail a student’s educational prospects. And COVID has made matters worse.
For many colleges and universities, the solution is to clear those balances. The City University of New York, Delaware State University, and Virginia State University are just a few of the institutions to take this step in recent days, a trend that experts predict will spread to even more campuses in the future.

Can giving students access to the latest technology gadgets from the first day of college make a difference in their success? Virginia Union University is counting on it.
As part of a program dubbed Mobile Learning, Mobile Life, the private liberal arts college in Richmond, Virginia, is working with Apple to outfit about 400 freshmen with an iPad Air, Apple Watch, smart keyboard, and an assortment of supporting devices. It’s a first-of-its-kind partnership between an HBCU and the tech titan.