Daily Lumina News 070221

The official accounting will record the vote as 9 in favor and 4 against, but that won’t begin to tell the story of what happened this week when the board of trustees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill voted to award tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones.
The politics surrounding Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and lead author of The New York Times Magazine‘s politically charged “1619 Project,” make her tenure case about much more than procedure. Students, professors, alumni, and community members have come to see this drawn-out tenure approval process as emblematic of a polarized national moment in which race is inescapably central.

Driven by a strong purpose to help people change their lives, Cynthia Teniente-Matson brings a unique perspective to her role as president of Texas A&M University-San Antonio. As a first-generation college graduate, she knows firsthand the challenges these students face—and the supports they need to succeed.
On this podcast, Teniente-Matson reflects on what inspired her higher education journey and career—plus how she tackles disparities on her own campus.

In Chicago's Little Village, high school senior Leonel Gonzalez can't sleep. He's troubled by stubborn what ifs. What if one of the panic attacks that dogged him during the COVID era creeps up on him at college? What if he didn't pick the right school? What if he fails to graduate and go to college at all?
In Chicago and across the country, there is growing evidence that this pandemic-fueled year has hit Black and Latino boys—young men like Gonzalez—harder than other students. But in this period of upheaval, educators and advocates also see a critical moment of opportunity to rethink how schools serve boys of color.

Ankur Gopal is the founder and CEO of a technology company called Interapt. As a businessman, he knows that innovation is a key to success in business. That was true before the pandemic and even more so now.
Gopal is determined to make the most of middle America's untapped potential by putting a new twist on a very old business model: the apprenticeship.

An innovative effort by a group of Detroit-area colleges is proving that even modest student-debt relief can have a big impact, especially if it’s coupled with a second shot at college completion for those who have discontinued their studies.
Programs like Wayne State University’s "Warrior Way Back" and Eastern Michigan University’s "Eagle Engage Corps" are offering former students a combination of loan forgiveness with a chance to finish their degrees. It’s a smart—and purposeful—approach to student-debt relief that could benefit hundreds of thousands of students nationwide. Most importantly, it won’t cost trillions, and schools don’t need to wait for Congress to act.

North Carolina’s community college system took control of the state’s apprenticeship programs from the Commerce Department four years ago. The apprenticeships have since become a national model, with 91 percent of employers citing a positive return on their investment.
How did they do it? In large part it happened by leveraging on-the-ground connections that the state’s 58 community colleges have, but that the Commerce Department lacked. Participating employers report getting back $1.70 for every dollar they spend on apprenticeships, and students are attracted by clear career pathways and the opportunity to have the cost of their education covered.