Daily Lumina News 061422

Marck L. Beggs has been teaching English at Henderson State University since 1997. He grew to love the small, liberal-arts institution in rural Arkansas. It’s also where he met his wife, Carly Cate, who taught in the English department.
Fast forward to 2022. Enrollment at the university has declined, and its financial situation has worsened. The pandemic happened. Beggs and Cate knew cuts were coming. Still, they had no idea how dramatic they’d be.

Community colleges can be a game changer for today's students, putting adult learners, students of color, working students, and others on a pathway to success.
On this podcast, Lumina Foundation's Kermit Kaleba discusses some of the key challenges facing community colleges and the strategies that can help them improve student outcomes and boost skill attainment.

To capture the essence of life at one of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities, eight Howard University photography students document a meaningful part of campus culture.
Their images highlight everything from academic life, to student activism, to the power of dance and its ability to create solidarity between students.

A new program intended to graduate more nurses in Mississippi may create more student debt and do little to fix Mississippi’s mounting nursing shortage this year, financial aid experts say. It could also put the state on the hook for tracking down nurses who default on the loans they’ve borrowed.
Mississippi is lacking some 3,000 nurses, about one-fifth of the state's entire nursing workforce, according to a recent survey by the Mississippi Hospital Association.

The question of how to draw more teachers into a profession defined by high stress and low pay has become increasingly difficult for administrators like Dave Slothower to answer.
Some rural Colorado schools are now turning to paraprofessionals employed in their schools, parents who may have never finished college and are intrigued by a career in teaching, high schoolers who show early promise in one day managing a classroom, and other prospective candidates eager to teach while earning their certification.

Delgado Community College’s chancellor grew up with a single mother. She saw firsthand struggles, triumphs, disappointments, and resilience.
In this essay, Larissa Littleton-Steib shares how her college responded when the pandemic pressured students who are also single mothers.