Daily Lumina News 083021

In the stressful days of early 2020 as the global pandemic shut down California, thousands of community college faculty members scrambled to shift to online teaching. They reworked the curriculum, revised lesson plans, and learned new software so they could keep classes going and students learning.
Most of them were part-time instructors, or adjuncts. Many like Kwesi Wilson work at multiple colleges, where they are paid only for time spent teaching. When COVID-19 hit, Wilson had to revamp six public speaking classes spread over two East Bay colleges, much of it on his own time.

Bowdoin College is raising its minimum wage for benefits-eligible hourly workers from $15.50 to $17 an hour at the end of August—10 months ahead of schedule of a planned increase.
Like companies nationwide, Bowdoin is having trouble attracting workers. Although lawmakers and economists have been debating the underlying causes of the labor shortage, many believe that employees are weighing the health risks of working during the pandemic against wage returns.

For members of the military-connected community, the civilian workforce can prove daunting whether you’re among the 200,000 members transitioning out of the military each year or the spouse of an active duty member who has had to move frequently with new deployments.
Retail giant Walmart aims to help with a new program called Find-a-Future. It’s an online platform designed to offer veterans and military spouses support in setting goals for professional aspirations and providing the resources to achieve them.

After 18 months of confronting challenges created by COVID-19, many colleges and workforce agencies were hoping this fall would be the semester of economic recovery and renewed focus on job training.
But the pandemic has thrown yet another curveball with the Delta variant now sweeping the country. Enrollments for this fall appear stronger than they have for the past year, but many institutions from the West to the East Coast are now expecting that their workforce training initiatives won’t return to pre-COVID numbers this semester.