Daily Lumina News 013120

Earlier this week, officials at Northern Illinois University announced plans to stop using standardized-test scores in all general-admission and merit-scholarship decisions.
Many colleges have adopted test-optional policies, which allow applicants to decide whether to submit ACT or SAT scores. But Northern Illinois is going a step further. Starting in the fall of 2021, the university’s new “test-blind” policy will cut tests out of the picture on the Dekalb, Ill., campus.
In this interview, the university’s director of admissions describes the bottom-line reason for the policy change: The tests weren’t helping predict student success.

What might be the most popular communicator at Arizona State University (ASU) has sent more than 3 million texts to about 75,000 people.
Meet Sunny, an artificially intelligent chatbot that ASU uses to communicate with current and future students to help recruit and retain them on campus.
Many colleges use text messages to alert students. ASU's Sunny is different: It uses artificial intelligence to learn and respond to questions or concerns when students text back.

Many students turn to work-study programs as a way to pay for college. Too often, however, these programs involve little professional development to help students prepare for careers. Unpaid internships frequently do, but they don’t pay the bills.
What if work-study wasn’t just about paying for college? What if it was a more intentional part of a student’s education?
Colleges and universities are increasingly asking these very questions. And as a result, some are developing innovative models to make on-campus employment a path to post-graduation jobs.

For almost a decade, Mary Marcy has been president of Dominican University of California. What began 130 years ago as a religious school for women now serves about 1,750 co-ed students, many of them first-generation.
Marcy’s work to help the liberal arts college attract and serve new kinds of students inspired her to write a book about the ways other small colleges are responding to today’s economic pressures and demographic changes. In this interview, she discusses why some schools end up merely tweaking their traditions while others morph into online behemoths.