Daily Lumina News 042420

On the coronavirus pandemic calendar, there are no dates yet for the next academic year. Just scenarios. And that unprecedented uncertainty is fueling a second wave of crisis for schools already plunged into financial distress.
Colleges and universities nationwide are gaming out whether, when, and how they can reopen campus after the abrupt shutdowns in March. Support from governors is essential but is hardly the only factor. Every prospective and returning student is hanging on the answers.

Pam MacDonald, who teaches at Northwest-Shoals Community College in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, is all too familiar with students needing remedial help. She's also familiar with the mantra that instructors should “meet students where they are.”
That phrase is taking on a literal meaning for developmental-education instructors as students who used to congregate in a college classroom may now be scattered across hundreds of miles. They’re finishing their lessons on breaks from their grocery-store shifts, between home-schooling lessons in cramped apartments, and in unreliable cars parked outside public buildings.

It’s hard to describe to outsiders the kind of effort required to move to remote teaching and learning in a matter of days. Well-run colleges are known for thoughtful planning and intentional execution. The pandemic forced the Community College of Rhode Island—the only community college in Rhode Island—to work in a new way and to do it instantaneously.

With concerns mounting over the shortage of masks and mask covers for health-care workers, Maria Varela, a fashion-studies major at Columbia College Chicago, realized that her ability to sew suddenly had new value. Varela soon joined the faculty in her department on #ColumbiaMakesMasks, a project to create covers for medical-grade N-95 masks to prolong their usable life.
The work at Columbia College Chicago is just one example of how institutions across the country are contributing to the “war effort” to contain and fight the coronavirus—and mitigate its social and financial effects.

Lorena Espinoza de Piña is one of America's front line health-care workers. Every day, she risks her personal health and that of her family in the fight against the coronavirus. She's also a "Dreamer," brought to the United States as a child by undocumented immigrant parents.
Espinoza de Piña says the possibility of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program ending is something she thinks about every day. Some 27,000 health-care workers share her concerns as they anxiously await a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court about a program that once gave them hope for a better future.

Free classes! Free parking! Prime dorm rooms! More cash!
Worried about whether students will show up in the fall, some college admissions officers are resorting to previously banned recruiting tactics to fill their classes.
“The gloves have come off,” says Angel Pérez, vice president for enrollment and student success at Trinity College in Connecticut, who laments this trend. “You’re talking about a scenario where colleges need to enroll students at any cost.”