Daily Lumina News 031124

People who read college applications often lack key information on certain responsibilities or life circumstances students may have, such as caring for siblings or sick family members, working part-time jobs to help pay family bills, or living in a home without a stable internet connection.
In order to fill this gap, and signal to prospective students that these responsibilities matter, 35 colleges are experimenting with asking questions that glean information about students’ extenuating life challenges.

College students love social media. But one app especially strikes their fancy. It's called Sidechat, and it lets students gossip anonymously about all the latest campus drama. All they have to do is fork over their school email address.
Colleges, on the other hand, are not as enamored with Sidechat. And members of Congress are increasingly alarmed by its content.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled race-based college admissions unconstitutional last June, affirmative action in all forms has come under attack.
Such policies divided Americans long before President John F. Kennedy popularized the term in 1961, when he urged defense contractors to “take affirmative action” to hire workers “without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” Here’s a look at the history of affirmative action and the moments that have advanced and repelled it.

The University of Georgia hopes to establish itself as a place where deploying active-learning techniques in a thoughtful way is the norm. Active learning, an approach that aims to get students to construct rather than consume knowledge, is supported by evidence that it improves student learning overall and can also reduce performance gaps for underrepresented students.
It’s also a teaching-focused answer to the big question of how to support this generation of students, many of whom bring with them work and family responsibilities and mental-health challenges and whose educations were disrupted by the pandemic.

Basic needs services at California’s community colleges can take many forms, from help with housing and transportation to funding for utilities or textbooks.
Leaders at Antelope Valley College want to do even more to eliminate barriers that might impede student success. Thanks to partnerships with local clinics, the school is now enabling access to another essential service that’s still rare among basic needs services: dental care.

The California State University system has consistently struggled to graduate Black students. Can cultural centers help? Some campus leaders say they can.
Black college students in California believe resource centers combat a sense of alienation that comes from low enrollment rates. Eighteen of the 23 Cal State campuses and nine out of 10 UC campuses have a Black resource center.