Daily Lumina News 020723

Jimmie Conner is an undergraduate at California State University, Fullerton, who lives in a house designed specifically for individuals like him: formerly incarcerated students.
Colleges and universities are expecting an influx of students like Conner soon. Designing supportive housing for these individuals could be key to ensuring they graduate.

Colorado’s higher education system ideally would ensure students get jobs, as well as pave the way for them to earn back what they spent on their education and increase their lifetime earnings. That's according to a new strategic plan released last week.
The plan prods Colorado to focus on the value higher education can bring to individuals and the state—rather than only on whether Coloradans are earning a degree.

As Modesto Junior College’s new interim president, Chad Redwing inherits a myriad of entrenched challenges that could use some divine intervention. Among them: Low graduation rates and the highest presidential turnover of any community college in the state.
Redwing knows these issues well. With nearly two decades of experience at MJC, he has worked as a professor, a faculty representative, and a co-chair on the college’s accreditation committee. In this interview, he highlights his future plans for the school and its students.

Anyfern González, an undergraduate student at Bentley University near Boston, switched her major four times before settling on a relatively new degree program. Her chosen course of study is one offered at few other institutions: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI.
But participants and advocates say these degrees make perfect sense in a society rife with identity-related conflict and ripe with opportunities for professionals trained in bridging divides.

Busy dorms and student apartment complexes are hubs of campus life at four-year colleges throughout the state. Soon, residential campus life will be a reality at a growing number of California community college campuses, too.
The state plans to spend $2.2 billion on student housing over three years, and a dozen community colleges have already been awarded construction grants totaling more than $500 million to build new dorms or expand existing ones.

ChatGPT has been in the headlines for months. At the University of Texas at El Paso, professors and students are not sure if it is useful technology or a threat—or both.
One of those professors, who characterizes ChatGPT as a tool that can be abused, plans to explain and demonstrate its proper use when he integrates it into his course this semester.