Daily Lumina News 110821

With the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure deal, all eyes are now on the Build Back Better Act.
Despite significant cuts to higher ed funding, including the loss of free community college, President Joe Biden’s proposed $40 billion plan for colleges and universities—plus a big increase for national service—will help America’s students.

Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, says serving in the military equips people with skills that they may not have had before enlisting.
Pollack, a Navy reservist herself, talks about those skills in this interview—plus what can be done to help exiting service members see how military experience translates into civilian life.

Futuro Health CEO Van Ton Quinlivan is also the author of a new book on connecting work and workers with training in an uncertain economy.
On this podcast, she discusses the need to match people with the right skills at the right time. Several of the nation’s leading workforce development experts join the conversation with their insights on the future of work.

In a consumer era of higher education, the traditional ways of engaging and retaining students won’t work, contends the president of Lindenwood University.
In this interview, John Porter discusses why institutions need to think of students as customers, what it takes to create a lifelong learning model, and how microcredentials and continuing education divisions can help shape this new vision.

Thomas K. Hudson grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, where he attended and graduated from Jackson State University in 1999. Today, he is the institution's president.
On this podcast, Hudson talks about the unconventional path to the presidency of his alma mater, plans for JSU, and the critical need for Historically Black Colleges & Universities to be at the forefront of today's academic landscape.

If colleges have been among the most disrupted institutions during the pandemic, they have also been centers of hope and resilience. At Prairie View A&M University, some of that optimism has been magnified by a $50 million donation from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.
The president of Prairie View, Ruth Simmons, is using the money for initiatives to reignite the campus, including the opening a center for race and justice and reserving $10 million for a grant program from which some students are already benefiting.