Daily Lumina News 041620

Elizabeth Ouanemalay's college journey has not been easy. The California native spent part of high school homeless, living in a car with her mom and working as a waitress and at other jobs to support the two of them.
Now she is facing the threat of the coronavirus, alone on a largely deserted campus and uncertain what her future at Wesleyan University will look like.
The burden of the pandemic crisis has illuminated and reinforced the staggering class divides in higher education, especially for first-generation and low-income students like Ouanemalay.

Dreama Gentry, executive director of Partners for Education at Berea College in Kentucky, worries about the impact of the coronavirus on incoming rural college students.
Students from rural areas have historically struggled with college access. Now, the coronavirus is likely to exacerbate that reality.
Through her program, which focuses on rural academic success in the Appalachian Mountains, Gentry and colleagues are taking new measures to ensure high school students keep on track to college amid a pandemic.

Dorms are empty and classroom lights are off at the vast majority of America’s colleges and universities, but that hasn’t stopped many in academia from jumping in to meet the massive need for innovative treatments, vaccines, personal protection equipment, and medical devices in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Engineers, doctors, scientists, researchers, doctors, and college students across the country have quickly shifted gears and are now applying their skills and knowledge to fighting the virus.

As the global pandemic sweeps through the country, millions of individuals are losing their jobs. To be sure, the layoffs are widespread across multiple industries, but it is clear that lower-skilled jobs are among the first to be eliminated and, more than likely, they will be the last to return.
In this podcast, Matt Sigelman of Burning Glass Technologies discusses the impact of the pandemic on various segments of the workforce—and the urgent need to retrain and upskill workers for the future.