Tag: Community

  • Reclaiming the academic community: why universities need more than metrics

    Reclaiming the academic community: why universities need more than metrics

    by Sigurður Kristinsson

    For decades, talk of “the academic community” has flowed easily through mission statements, strategy documents, and speeches from university leadership. Yet few stop to consider what this community is or why it matters. As universities increasingly orient themselves toward markets, rankings, and performance metrics, the gap between the ideal of academic community and the lived reality of academic work has widened. But this drift is not merely unfortunate; it threatens the very values that justify the existence of universities in the first place.

    This blog explores why academic community is essential to higher education, how contemporary systems undermine it, and what a renewed vision of academic life might require.

    The word “community” can be used in two different senses. One is descriptive: communities are simply networks of people connected by place, shared interests or regular interaction. From this sociological standpoint, academic communities consist of overlapping groups (faculty, students, administrators, service professionals) brought together by institutional roles, disciplinary identities, or digital networks, perhaps experiencing a sense of belonging, solidarity, and shared purpose.

    But in debates about the purpose and future of universities, “community” is often used in a normative sense: an ideal of how academics ought to relate to one another. In Humboldtian (1810) spirit, contemporary advocates like Fitzpatrick (2021, 2024) and Bennett (1998, 2003) envision academic community as a moral and intellectual culture grounded in shared purpose, generosity, intellectual hospitality, mutual respect, and the collective pursuit of knowledge. From this philosophical perspective, community is not just a cluster of networks to be analyzed empirically but a normative vision of how scholarly life becomes meaningful. This aspirational view stands in stark contrast to the conditions shaping many universities today.

    For several decades, developments in universities around the world have been hostile to academic community. While the precise mechanisms vary, academics report strikingly similar pressures: managerial oversight, performance auditing, intensifying competition, and the steady erosion of collegial structures and shared governance. Five threats to academic community are particularly worrisome:

    Organisational (not occupational) professionalism

    In her analysis of how managerial logic has co-opted the language of professionalism to justify top-down control in public institutions, Julia Evetts (2003, 2009, 2011) introduced a distinction between occupational and organisational professionalism. Occupational professionalism in academia implies membership in a self-governing community of experts committed to serving society through knowledge. Today, however, universities increasingly define professionalism in organisational terms: compliance with targets, performance indicators, and standardised procedures. The result is a hybrid system: academics retain some autonomy, but it is overshadowed by bureaucratic accountability structures that fragment communal relationships and discourage collective responsibility (Siekkinen et al, 2020).

    Managerialism

    Managerialism prizes measurable production outputs, standardized procedures, and vertical decision-making. As Metz (2017) argues, these mechanisms degrade communal relationships among academics as well as between them and managers, students, and wider society: decisions are imposed without consultation; bonus systems reward narrow indicators rather than communal priorities; and bureaucratic layers reduce opportunities for collegial dialogue. Managerialism replaces trust with surveillance and collegial judgment with quantification.

    Individualism

    The rise of competition – over publications, grants, rankings, and prestige – has amplified what Bennett (2003) called “insistent individualism.” Colleagues become rivals or useful instruments. Achievements become personal currency. In such settings, it is easy to see oneself not as part of a community pursuing shared goods but as an isolated producer of measurable outputs. This ethos erodes the solidarity and relationality necessary for any robust academic culture.

    Retreat from academic citizenship

    Academic citizenship refers to the contributions – committee work, mentoring, governance, public engagement – that sustain universities beyond research and teaching. Yet because these activities are difficult to measure and often unrewarded, they are increasingly neglected (Macfarlane, 2005; Feldt et al, 2024). This neglect fragments institutions and weakens the norms of shared responsibility that should hold academic life together.

    Troubled collegiality

    Collegiality includes participatory and collective decision-making, a presumption of shared values, absence of hierarchy, supportiveness, a shared commitment to a common good, trust beyond a typical workplace, and professional autonomy. It has long been central to academic identity but has become contested. Some experience collegial labor as invisible and unevenly distributed; others see managerial attempts to measure collegiality as just another way of disciplining staff. Efforts to quantify collegiality may correct some injustices but also risk instrumentalizing it, turning a relational ideal into a bureaucratic category (Craig et al, 2025; Fleming and Harley, 2024; Gavin et al, 2023).

    Across all these pressures, a common thread emerges: the forces shaping contemporary academia weaken the relationships required for intellectual work to flourish.

    If community is eroding, why should we care? The answer lies in the link between community and the values that higher education claims to serve. A helpful framework comes from value theory, which distinguishes between instrumental, constitutive, and intrinsic goods.

    Community as instrumentally valuable

    Academic community helps produce the outcomes universities care about: research breakthroughs, learning, intellectual development, and democratic engagement. Collaboration makes research stronger. Peer support helps people grow. Shared norms encourage integrity, rigor, and creativity. Without community, academic values become harder to realize.

    Community as constitutive of academic values

    In many cases, community is not merely a helpful means but a necessary constituent. Scientific knowledge, as philosophers of science like Merton (1979) and Longino (1990) have long emphasized, is inherently social: it requires communal critique, peer review, and collective norms to distinguish knowledge from error. Learning, too, is fundamentally relational, as Vygotsky (1978) and Dewey (1916) argued. You cannot have science or education without community.

    Community as intrinsically valuable

    Beyond producing useful outcomes, community enriches human life. Belonging, shared purpose, and intellectual companionship are deeply fulfilling. Academic community offers a sense of identity, meaning, and solidarity that transcends individual achievement (Metz, 2017). In this sense, community contributes directly to human flourishing.

    Several examples show how academic values depend on community in practice:

    Debates about educational values

    The pursuit of academic values requires reflection on their meaning. Interpretive arguments about values like autonomy, virtue, or justice in education contribute to conversations that presuppose the collective norms of academic community (Nussbaum, 2010; Ebels-Duggan, 2015). These debates require shared standards of reasoning, openness to critique, and a shared commitment to better understanding.

    Scientific knowledge and academic freedom

    No individual can produce knowledge alone. Scientific communities ensure that discoveries are evaluated, replicated, and integrated into a larger body of understanding. Likewise, academic freedom is not a personal privilege but a communal norm that protects open inquiry (Calhoun, 2009; Frímannsson et al, 2022). It depends on solidarity among scholars.

    Teaching as communal practice

    Education flourishes in relational settings. Classrooms become communities in which teachers and students jointly pursue understanding. Weithman (2015) describes this as “academic friendship” – a form of companionship that expands imagination, fosters intellectual virtues, and shapes future citizens.

    Across these cases, community is not optional; it is essential to academic values.

    Given its importance, how might universities cultivate stronger academic communities?

    Structural reform

    Universities should try to resist the dominance of market logic. Sector-wide policy changes could help rebalance priorities. Hiring, promotion, and reward systems should value teaching, service, mentorship, and public engagement rather than focusing exclusively on quantifiable research metrics. Without structural support, cultural change will be difficult.

    Cultural renewal

    A healthier academic culture requires a different mindset—one that foregrounds generosity, relationality, and shared purpose. In Generous Thinking, Fitzpatrick (2021) argues that building real community requires humility, conversation, listening, and collaboration. Community cannot be mandated; it must be practised.

    This requires academics to challenge competitive individualism, share work equitably, strengthen trust and dialogue, and reimagine collegiality as a lived practice rather than a managerial tool. Most importantly, it requires us to recognize ourselves as fundamentally relational beings whose professional purpose is intertwined with others.

    A moral case for academic community

    Academic community is not only epistemically valuable; it is morally significant. Relational moral theories argue that human flourishing depends on identity and solidarity. We become the moral human beings we are through our communal relationships (Metz, 2021).

    Applying this to academia reveals that collegiality is grounded in shared identity and shared ends. Since the moral obligations created by academic relationships remain professional, collegial community does not require intrusive intimacy. Far from suppressing dissent or professional autonomy, solidarity requires defending academic freedom and academic values generally.

    A relational understanding of morality thus implies that the ideal of academic community promises not only a more fulfilling and coherent sense of occupational purpose, but also a way of relating to others that is more satisfying morally than the current environment individualistic competition.

    Universities today face an existential challenge. In the rush to satisfy markets, rankings, and managerial demands, they risk undermining the very relationships that make academic life meaningful. Academic community is not a nostalgic ideal; it is the cornerstone of learning, knowledge, virtue, and human flourishing.

    If higher education is to reclaim a sense of purpose, it must begin by cultivating the social and moral conditions in which genuine community can grow. This requires structural reforms, cultural renewal, and a shared commitment to relational values. Without such efforts, universities will continue drifting toward fragmentation, losing sight of the goods they exist to protect.

    Rebuilding academic community is not merely desirable. It is necessary – for the integrity of scholarship, for the flourishing of those who work within universities, and for the public good that higher education is meant to serve.

    Sigurður Kristinsson is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Akureyri, Iceland. His research applies moral and political philosophy in various contexts of professional practice, increasingly intersecting with the philosophy of higher education with emphasis on the social and democratic role of universities.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • Carnegie Recognizes Colleges for Community Engagement

    Carnegie Recognizes Colleges for Community Engagement

    The Carnegie Foundation announced on Monday that more than 230 colleges and universities received its Community Engagement classification.

    The designation from the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching highlights institutions that have formed and sustained successful community partnerships. Of the 237 institutions recognized in 2026, 48 received the classification for the first time. The group includes157 public colleges and universities, 80 private institutions and 81 minority-serving institutions.

    “We celebrate each of these institutions, particularly their dedication to partnering with their neighbors—fostering civic engagement, building useable knowledge, and catalyzing real world learning experiences for students,” Timothy F.C. Knowles, president of the Carnegie Foundation, said in a news release.

    Some colleges and universities celebrated making it to the list.

    “This recognition means a great deal to the University of Houston, because it reflects who we are, and how we prepare educated, engaged citizens, while showing up for our community every day,” Diane Z. Chase, the university’s senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, said in a statement.

    ACE and Carnegie also shared the news that the University of San Diego, a Catholic institution in California, will house the Community Engagement classification for the next two cycles.

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  • Lane Community College Board Approves Budget Reduction

    Lane Community College Board Approves Budget Reduction

    The Lane Community College Board of Education voted to approve college leaders’ plans for a budget reduction on Jan. 7, despite fierce pushback from the faculty union. The latest controversy comes amid a dramatic year for the Oregon community college, marked by long, fractious board meetings and an ongoing battle between administrators and faculty over stalled labor negotiations and course cuts.

    College administrators argue the approved proposal—cutting spending by $8 million over the next three years—is a financial necessity. They say the college regularly falls short of a board requirement to maintain 10 percent of its balance in reserves. Administrators also conducted a new multiyear forecast that predicted expenses are going to grow.

    The college is expected to be “in a deficit every year … if we continue on the same trends that we have been in the last two or three years,” said Kara Flath, Lane’s vice president of finance and operations. The plan also proposes using some of the freed-up money for deferred maintenance and other projects.

    But faculty union leaders disagree with the administration’s view of the college’s financial present and future. Adrienne Mitchell, president of the faculty union, the Lane Community College Education Association, believes leadership’s projections are pessimistic and that a roughly 8 percent cut to the $104 million operating budget is excessive.

    “We don’t believe any of those cuts are necessary,” Mitchell said. “Currently, all of our funding sources—state funding, property taxes and student tuition revenue—are up.”

    The union came out with an independent report last week suggesting that the college is in a sound financial position and should invest more, not less, in faculty and the campus over all. But faculty and administrators fundamentally disagree on how much spending will rise and what tranches of money the college has at its disposal.

    The union’s perspective that the college can spend less “makes the numbers look better,” Flath said. “But as finance people, we have decades of finance experience” and such cost estimates are “not fiscally viable.”

    Mitchell also argued that Oregon Local Budget Law requires the board to follow a legal process that includes forming a committee of board and nonboard members, presenting the budget and hosting a public hearing, before formally adopting a budget. The union put out a legal memo on the matter in September.

    But administrators say their overarching plan isn’t the final budget—it doesn’t specify where exactly cuts will be made—so it doesn’t need to go through such a process yet. They said they plan to review programs, solicit community feedback and draw up a list of recommended cuts in the spring.

    Board members, initially skeptical of the plan’s lack of specificity, held multiple ad hoc budget committee meetings last week to discuss it ahead of the meeting on Wednesday, which lasted almost five hours.

    Board member Zach Mulholland said at the Wednesday meeting that he still sees “red flags and concerns with regards to unspecified cuts” but concluded, “at this moment in time, this appears to be a balanced proposal.” Mulholland and other board members on the ad hoc committee recommended the board move forward with the plan, as long as it includes annual updates and regular progress reports from administrators.

    “Now maybe as a college we can work together,” Flath said.

    Fraught Faculty Relations

    But the college is also mired in other controversies. The faculty union, which represents about 525 full- and part-time professors, has been without a contract since June as administrators and faculty clash over the details.

    Discussions have soured over disagreements about workloads, class-size limits, cost-of-living adjustments, the timing of layoff notices and the college’s efforts to strike some provisions, which Mitchell says amounts to a “net divestment” of over a million dollars in spending on faculty. The administration argued some of the issues in the proposed contract aren’t directly connected to faculty benefits, including proposals to add immigration status to the college’s nondiscrimination policy and ramp up campus safety measures.

    Grant Matthews, vice president of academic affairs, said significant progress has been made since the summer, but “really, we’re stuck on economics.”

    “We’re trying to really have a fiscally sustainable institution, and the proposals that we’re receiving at the table are not fiscally responsible,” he said. He estimated that the current contract proposal could cost the college up to $61 million.

    Professors aren’t pleased with how the process is going. In a December survey of 271 faculty members, 87 percent reported low morale, 90 percent said they didn’t trust the college’s president and 69 percent reported that they fear retaliation for expressing their views. The union has also raised concerns that faculty of color are leaving the college. On Wednesday, about 75 union members and supporters picketed outside ahead of the board meeting.

    Two more bargaining sessions are planned for this month, and mediation is scheduled after.

    Recent course cuts have also frayed relations between faculty and college leaders. Lane cut about 100 course sections for the winter and spring terms after introducing a new system that allows students to sign up in the fall for courses for the entire year.

    Administrators said this is a typical number of course cuts for the college, on par with past years, to optimize their academic offerings, and advisers are ensuring students still get the classes they need. But Mitchell described the move as a blow to part-time faculty, who lost classes that might have filled up later in the year. The union filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the Oregon Employment Relations Board, arguing the eliminated courses should have been a part of bargaining. Mitchell also worries the cuts are a roadblock for students who need to take certain courses, noting that a popular biology class—a prerequisite for many health professions courses—has a wait list of 168 students.

    Leadership Tensions

    The board, meanwhile, has had its own share of drama over the past year.

    The faculty union has accused administrators of encroaching on board responsibilities and criticized the board for failing to exercise its authority.

    “There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding the administration essentially taking over the role of the Board of Education,” Mitchell said.

    Meanwhile, in August, a third-party report concluded that Mulholland, formerly the board chair, and other board members discriminated against President Stephanie Bulger, a Black woman, on the basis of race and sex. The report described Mulholland and some other board members as displaying a dismissive or hostile attitude toward Bulger, cutting her off in conversations, and deferring questions to male staff. The report also found that Mulholland had intimidated a student. In September, the board censured the former board chair, who apologized, and the full board then came out with a joint apology.

    “We are deeply sorry for the negative impact our behavior has had on you and the college community at large,” said Austin Fölnagy, the current board chair, who was also accused of adopting a dismissive tone toward the president. “President Bulger, please accept the board’s apology for treating you badly.”

    Mitchell said the union is “very concerned about any type of discrimination, and we think it’s really important for everyone on the campus to feel safe.”

    The college’s accreditor, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, also deemed the college “substantially in compliance” with accreditation standards but “in need of improvement” in a notice last March. The accreditor recommended the college evaluate its internal communication and ensure decision-making processes are “inclusive of all constituents,” among other suggestions.

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  • Reading Sophocles in My Community College Class (opinion)

    Reading Sophocles in My Community College Class (opinion)

    I have a rule for myself in freshman English that I don’t assign readings that require much explanation. If I continually have to provide background of a work’s history and context, it means the students are awaiting a deus ex machina, AI or me to summarize and simplify. I seek out readings that feature conversational voices that create an immediate, imaginable world that my students can understand on their own—that is, read.

    Every year, though, I make one exception to this rule and assign either Sophocles’s Oedipus the King or Antigone. They don’t get any easier, no matter how many times I teach them, but they’re worth the effort because they’re sublime, and the range of topics they provide us for discussion and writing seems inexhaustible and ever relevant. In fall 2024, with the presidential election looming, I assigned Antigone.

    “Before we start … you know family trees? I need to show you Antigone’s.” I began drawing on the whiteboard the Oedipus family tree from the bottom. “Antigone and her siblings—Ismene, Polynices, Eteocles. Their parents: Jocasta and Oedipus. Up here, Jocasta’s parents: Menoeceus and Ms. Unknown. Oedipus’s parents, Laertes and Jocasta, are over here. And because they’re characters from Greek myth and legend, we can keep going back—”

    “Professor!” calls out Varna. “You made a mistake. Jocasta can’t be Oedipus’s mother, too—right? … Right?”

    “Actually …”

    “He can’t have children with his mother.”

    “Shouldn’t have. ”

    “Mm?”

    Even before the pandemic, I had given up assigning Oedipus and Antigone as homework reading. In my classes, we read Sophocles together. On paper, out loud. “Put away your devices, please. We’re going really old-school—ancient Greek school.”

    Although some of my community college students have shaky English or discomfort with speaking aloud, at some point in our halting and struggling reading we catch the play’s spirit and profundity and are knocked back on our heels. Marie, despite her thick accent, whether reading Antigone or Creon, is inspired and masterful. Is it the theatricality or simply having to communicate the words on the page that guide her into clearer enunciation?

    Bewildered Samuel, meanwhile, eventually finds his footing and delightedly embodies the comic outlook of the Sentry. Everybody reads, taking turns with the roles. We are mostly patient with one another, and we dig in as anxious Tina loses heart and her voice notches down into her shoes and her classmates cheer her on and plead with her to speak up. The students’ encouragement of and aid to one another helps me limit my interventions, though I still continually interject with vocabulary definitions or references or to explicate idiomatic expressions or pose obvious questions to check in on comprehension. I pause us after a character’s thrilling or brilliant statement and ask them to quote this or that for us to ponder in writing.

    Reading aloud in a community college classroom is less a pleasure cruise than a field trip through a museum.

    During my recent sabbatical, while working on a biography of Max Schott, an author, one of my old teachers and my friend, I was, as must happen to some professors on leave, missing the classroom. So as a supplement to or diversion from my daily notes and questions to Max, I wrote scenes for a few weeks in the form of a play of what I remembered and imagined of what it was like to teach Oedipus the King, from the first day through the next several class sessions. Max regularly expressed enjoyment over the daily installments. That was my reward, praise from my mentor. Still, at the end, I told him on the phone that it was nice to be done.

    He said, “You’re not done.”

    “Yeah, I am. I even imagined them through the essay and the drafts!”

    “But what about Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone?”

    “Oh, I’d never try to teach those with Oedipus in the same semester. It’s freshman English.”

    “Why not?”

    “Well, they’re supposed to read essays and articles, too, and in real life the students themselves wouldn’t let me.”

    “You’re making it up anyway!” he laughed.

    I resisted for a week. I had just about finished the biography and the subject of the biography, my own mentor, was encouraging me to go on, write more about my imaginary classroom. No one else was asking for more from me.

    I reread what I had, about 150 single-spaced pages, half of which, I should say, were composed by Sophocles. I can compare my contribution to the play within a play to a quirky improvisational movie in which the soundtrack is a series of movements from Mozart’s string quartets. Whatever else is going on, the music—in my case, Sophocles’s Oedipus the King—carries a lot of intelligence and feeling.

    But Max was right—the imaginary semester wasn’t over. So for Act 2, the students having finished writing their essays, the teacher character, Bob, brings in a box of stapled copies of Oedipus at Colonus. The imagined students surprise me and are much more game than I thought possible. We proceed, not unhappily, and with interesting discussions (I thought) through Oedipus’s fateful disappearance from this land of suffering. Typing up the “transcript” of my students reading Oedipus at Colonus, I occasionally felt as if I, the writer, not the teacher character, was going through the motions for Max’s sake. Each day, pen on paper, I would reread and revise the previous day’s pages and then go on, writing by hand, through another several pages, and then type and email them off to Max. He and I were still talking once or twice a week by phone about his writing and life and about books, and he didn’t complain that the quality of my made-up classes had dropped off; hence, I knew I had to continue through Antigone. By the end of a semester’s classes, I had imagined me and my students through the three plays.

    Then I started going through old emails that I had sent Max about my real-life classes. These had been written, usually, on my phone on the subway home after my day’s teaching. “Don’t explain,” Max had often told us, his writing students, back in the day. “See if you can reveal the characters mostly through what they say.” And there, in those emails, I found my unimaginary students and me, my unimaginary self, acting sort of like the ones I’d made up.

    For example (I’ve changed their names and identifying information, but not, unfortunately, mine):

    Bob: Do we need to go over the characters in Antigone again?

    Tawny: Do we? I don’t.

    Bob: Who’s Creon?

    Class: …

    Tawny: (sighs) The king!

    Bob: Thank you … Anything else about him?

    Ashley: Antigone’s uncle?

    Bob: Yes! … Remember, we talked about identities. Paul?

    Paul: No.

    Bob: We didn’t?

    Jason: We did!

    Paul: Then I don’t remember. What’s identities anyway?

    Bob: We all have different identities depending on where we are … Here, I’m a …

    Class: …

    Bob: Right! A teacher. At home I’m Suzanne’s husband. Just like you’re in a role at home and another role at work and another here.

    Tawny: And so?

    Bob: In your paper, as a character yourself, you’re going to have to talk to one of the characters as they are at the end of the play … So where are they, what are they, when the play ends?

    Marcus: Creon’s alive.

    Bob: Right! And you can’t say that for …

    Ryann: Antigone.

    Bob: Right! Or … Haemon or … Eurydice. But the play is over, and you have to talk to one of them—whether they’re dead, down in Hades, or alive in Thebes—about this same topic as my morning class did—the purpose of life.

    Marcus: But they’re dead.

    Bob: We’re just imagining it. They all do have some hard-won experience, right? Imagine yourself talking to one of them. All right? … How about Antigone? What do you remember about her?

    Tawny: She’s dead.

    Bob: Yeah … What else? … Did we really forget the play over the weekend?

    Kaylia: (nods)

    Bob: Can anybody summarize it?

    Zeina: We have to summarize it?

    Bob: No … But can somebody just say what happens—in a nutshell, a tiny summary—so that we have that magic word “context” before we write? (Bob points at the word “context” at the board, from the lesson at the beginning of class time, when the six on-time students and he read Karl Ove Knausgaard’s essay “Conversation.”) Context, anybody?

    Tawny: Her brothers died.

    Bob: Yeah. And …?

    Tawny: She buried one of them.

    Ryann: But against the law.

    Bob: Right! Remember, guys? Let’s go back to Creon’s big speech near the beginning. That’ll remind us who he is and what he thinks of himself and the world. Ryann?

    Ryann: (reads Creon’s speech about “our Ship of State, which recent storms have threatened to destroy …”)

    Bob: What is Creon asking the citizens, the old men of Thebes, to do?

    Niege: Guard the body.

    Bob: He’s got professional soldiers for that. He asks them for one thing. What is it?

    Ryann: To stick with him.

    Olya: Loyalty.

    Bob: What’s that word, Olya?

    Olya: Loyalty.

    Juan: No matter what, you back them.

    Bob: Got it! Creon doesn’t need them for service. He needs them to support him no matter what he does.

    Tawny: They’re in his corner.

    Bob: Yes. He wants that assurance from them—and they give it. Do you think he knows he’s going to violate divine law? … Yeah, Paul?

    Paul: If we’re gonna write—

    Bob: We’re going to write.

    Paul: I forgot my pen.

    Bob Blaisdell teaches English at Kingsborough Community College.

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  • She Reimagined Dolls for Her daughter — and Defied Stereotypes About Indigenous Women – The 74

    She Reimagined Dolls for Her daughter — and Defied Stereotypes About Indigenous Women – The 74


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    When Cara Romero’s daughter was 11, she became interested in dolls. Romero, who is an enrolled member of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe in Southern California, began to think about doll culture more deeply and what it can convey to the next generation. 

    Romero’s husband grew up collecting G.I. Joes, and her mother-in-law had her own Victorian-style porcelain doll collection. For Romero, though, her daughter’s doll phase reminded her of the Native American dolls she grew up seeing at truck stops along I-40.

    The dolls were often dressed in plastic pony beads and fake buckskin that parroted the Native American Halloween costumes she knew all too well as dehumanizing stereotypes. So Romero, who is a photographer and artist, set out to create a series of photos that broke down these tropes.

    Each photograph in the “First American Doll” series features a life-sized doll box that she designed and crafted, where she poses the women with objects that represent their families, traditions and unique stories. 

    She wanted her daughter to be proud of her heritage. “I come from a community where women are allowed to have a voice, allowed to be really strong,” she said. “So [I was] wanting to pass down good self esteem and a strong sense of self and identity,” she said. “That’s what we aim to do as moms.”

    She started the series with artist and powwow dancer Wakeah Jhane, who is of Kiowa, Comanche and Blackfeet descent. While the Plains Tribes that she is from are the models for stereotypical dolls and costumes, Romero’s photograph captures her intricate buckskin regalia, which was made by her family. Also on display are her moccasins and a fan.

    “You can see the stark contrast between what she’s wearing and the Halloween costumes that people portray Plains people as,” she said. “I really wanted to kind of own it and be like, “You guys even have this wrong.’” 

    She has since published nine photographs for the series, the most recent featuring Fawn Douglas, an artist, activist and enrolled member of the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, who is posed with handcrafted baskets and a gourd rattle made by her family. The box is bordered by a Las Vegas playing card motif. 

    Cara Romero (Getty Images)

    The current day symbolism and high fashion lighting communicates that these women are also contemporary, Romero said. “When artwork, and specifically photography, is devoid of modern context, it does something psychologically, it perpetuates [this idea] that we’re gone and only living in history.”  

    Naming each of the pieces after the models was also meant to humanize Indigenous women in a way that they weren’t in historical photos. “A lot of times in the ethnographic photographs, they didn’t even say their name,” she said. “We don’t know who they were.”

    Some of the photographs from the series are currently traveling the country as part of Romero’s first solo museum exhibition, titled: “Panûpünüwügai (Living Light).” They will be on display next at the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona starting in February.

    This story was originally reported by Jessica Kutz of The 19th. Meet Jessica and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.


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  • Community colleges are training the next generation of manufacturing workers

    Community colleges are training the next generation of manufacturing workers

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    The manufacturing industry has long bemoaned the decline of its workforce. Yet today’s manufacturing educational pathways look much like they did in the ‘80s, when hiring numbers began declining.

    Apprenticeship programs remain scarce, with just 678,000 apprentices registered nationwide (in comparison, Germany’s labor force is less than a third of the U.S.’ yet maintains 1.22 million apprentices). And according to one Dewalt survey, students believe that trade schools are costly and offer limited networking opportunities. 

    One underrated option may hold the most promise for workforce growth: the local community college. 

    That’s according to a series of reports by The Rutgers Education and Employment Research Center released in October, which examines the “hidden innovative structure” of America’s community colleges. 

    Community colleges excel in ways conducive to a successful manufacturing career, said Shalin Jyotishi, founder of the Future of Work & Innovation Economy Initiative at think tank New America.

    The schools are accessible, closely plugged into the local manufacturing industry and usually more affordable. For many people, Jyotishi said, a community college is the best way to enroll in a program that offers all the benefits of an apprenticeship.

    “An apprenticeship program is the closest possible coupling between education and work experience since the Babylonian times. It’s largely considered the gold standard in workforce education. The problem is, in the U.S., only 2% of our students go through apprenticeship programs,” Jyotishi said.

    Apprenticeship coursework is often exclusively aligned with specific occupations and not transferable to four-year universities. Community colleges allow students to enroll in credit-bearing courses, which can open future doors to opportunities in advanced manufacturing and beyond.

    What makes community colleges unique

    Unlike many higher education institutions, community colleges are able to develop, tailor and put specialized courses in manufacturing on offer at a quick pace. 

    Students at Ohio-based Clark State College, for example, can obtain up to 14 manufacturing certificates, which can be applied toward a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Manufacturing Technology Management. 

    President Jo Blondin said much of this is created according to the Developing A Curriculum model, which centers industry input.

    For instance, the college organized a workshop with a core group of subject matter experts representing Ohio Laser, Resonetics and GE/Unison to develop its most recent certification. This led to the Laser Materials Processing/Photonics certification, which Blondin said is “extremely important for base contractors, both inside and outside the fence.”

    Simultaneously, Blondin said, the college’s engineering tech coordinator organized another advisory meeting to “obtain key insights to evolving advanced manufacturing skills desired by industry partners.” This included participants from Amazon, American Pan, Honda, LH Battery, Rittal, Sweet, Topre and Valco.

    “If a business comes to us and says, ‘We really need this training,’ we’re going to move heaven and earth to make it happen. And I would say that most community colleges that have a strong workforce development focus take that approach,” she said.

    Maintaining excellent industry relationships isn’t just a boon for the curriculum, it also allows colleges to offer training with a degree of job placement support. 

    While still employed at Honda, Scot McLemore helped develop an apprenticeship program for manufacturing in which students could interview for and do paid work at a local advanced manufacturing employer for three days a week. 

    And while there was no guarantee, “it was the intention of both the company and the college for that student to then be employed with that company at the end of that apprenticeship,” said McLemore, who now serves as the vice president of the Office of Talent Strategy at Columbus State Community College. At worst, the student walked away with a network, real-life experience and skills tested in a live manufacturing environment. 

    Community colleges also offer something that many apprenticeships do not: following their coursework, students have the flexibility to move away from manufacturing.   

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  • How One California School Came Together to Pack 20,000 Meals for the Holidays – The 74

    How One California School Came Together to Pack 20,000 Meals for the Holidays – The 74

    When Vevian Nguyen heard the strike of a gong echo for the 10th time, signaling that 10,000 meals had been made, her school cafeteria erupted in applause, and she knew her gloves and hairnet were staying on.

    “Every time we hit the gong, it felt like a little pat on the back, like, ‘Oh, you did something good,’” Vevian said. “Now you can keep doing it.” 

    Within an hour, Vevian and more than 200 students at Laguna Creek High School, a school in the Elk Grove Unified School District in Sacramento County, packed more than 10,000 meals to be donated during the holidays, exceeding their goal for the night. But Vevian, who is a junior and president of Laguna Creek High’s service-oriented Interact Club, said she wasn’t there to simply check off her service hour requirements. 

    “We want to be involved in our community, which is having to be able to know that you’ve helped a family or at least just one person out there,” the 16-year-old said. “And, I feel like that helps your character, it builds who you are and where you stand within your school and your community.”

    The October food-preparing night was part of an international initiative called Rise Against Hunger, which is run by a coalition of student groups such as the National Honor Society and the Rotary International Club. This was Laguna Creek’s second Rise Against Hunger. During the holidays, their 20,000 meals will reach families in Vietnam that were affected by major floods and landslides this year. 

    Sandi Peterson, a positive behavior intervention support administrator and adviser for the National Honor Society, had helped Vevian prepare for the event throughout the school year. At weekly club meetings, students created infographics and posters, spread the word on social media, and promoted their goal of packing 10,000 meals to every classroom on campus. It was a student-led collaboration and a clear, ambitious objective, Peterson said, that drove hundreds of students to sign up, show up, and lock in. 

    “Not one student was on their phone; they were all talking to each other, chatting, laughing. Once we heard the 10,000 gong, it was this huge celebration, and then it started moving so fast,” Peterson said. “We were having to hit the gong for 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 (more) all at the same time. These kids, in less than two hours, assembled 20,000 meals.” 

    Like most schools in California, Laguna Creek has struggled to recover from high rates of chronic absenteeism after the pandemic’s school closures. Many of those students across the state also report a persistent feeling of loneliness and detachment from their school communities. For Cynthia Dettner, an instructor and supervising teacher for the Interact Club at Laguna Creek High, the night of meal-packing also showcased a rare school connectedness among students. 

    “After the Covid years, where students were often isolated, watching all of these students laugh and smile and build their own character by reaching out to help others, it’s a gift,” Dettner said. “It’s a joy to see them come together and befriend each other.” 

    On each side of a cafeteria table, students sporting red hairnets and plastic gloves measured and assembled nutritionally balanced portions of dried rice, vegetable protein, vitamin packets, dried tofu and protein additives into pre-labeled bags. They then rotated each bag to teams of students who stapled, heat-sealed, and counted each package to be ready for distribution worldwide. 

    “It looks almost like a Hallmark movie where you see the cookie factory in progress,” Dettner said. “It’s all kinds of hands and smiles working together, they’re all engaged and involved, and that lifts the community.”

    Students plan to pack more than 40,000 meals next year for families in need. (Sandi Peterson)

    Although Peterson had spent the year raising sponsorship funds for the event, she said the students who packed the meals soon took ownership of the initiative. 

    “Within two weeks, I had students come up to me and say, ‘Ms. Peterson, maybe if we go around and start collecting money on our own, we could do another one in a couple months,’” Peterson said. “So, now they’re trying to tag-team and do 40,000 meals in our next school year. The ticket to longevity is I know that the kids will always show up.”

    Vevian grew up in a low-income family, and after watching friends and family members struggle financially in recent months, she said she’s felt more compelled to help others. Laguna Creek’s new holiday ritual has further motivated her year-round commitment to community service. 

    “To contain the attributes of a leader, I learned that you have to actually step up and use your voice and really hold yourself accountable,” Vevian said. “If you just make one impact, it can slowly build that momentum for the rest of everyone else to stand behind you.”


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  • Open Assessment Technologies Launches the Next-Generation “TAO Community Edition”

    Open Assessment Technologies Launches the Next-Generation “TAO Community Edition”

    Empowering the Digital Transformation of the Educational Institutions through a Fair and Inclusive Education Ecosystem with Open Source and Open Standards

    Luxembourg, December 5, 2025 – Open Assessment Technologies (OAT), creators of TAO – the world’s leading open-source digital assessment platform, today announced the upcoming release of the new TAO Community Edition (TAO CE), the world’s leading open-source educational assessment platform. The new version will be available for free download globally on January 5, 2026. This milestone release marks a transformative step toward open, extensible, and community-driven innovation in digital assessment and educational ecosystem.

    The TAO CE includes an expanded suite of modular products–TAO Advance, TAO Grader, TAO Insights, and TAO Portal–providing a powerful, end-to-end integrated stack that enables institutions and developers to own, customize, and manage their assessment infrastructure fully.

    This release is part of the TAO Community Forum, a movement bringing together developers, assessment experts and institutions to co-create more effective, scalable and transparent assessment solutions. Through this ecosystem, users will gain direct access to collaborative tools, community-driven feature requests, roadmap discussions, and upcoming contribution opportunities.

    With the TAO Community Edition and its suite of modular tools, institutions and developers gain complete software ownership, free from vendor lock-in and per-user licensing constraints. The platform’s modular architecture enables users to integrate only the components they need, ensuring maximum flexibility and scalability.

    Thanks to its multilingual interface, supporting over 18 languages, TAO empowers organizations to deliver assessments globally, promoting equity, accessibility, and inclusion in education systems worldwide.

    “Digital assessment thrives when it’s open, extensible, and community-driven, not confined to proprietary systems.” said Mack K. Machida, Co-CEO, Open Assessment Technologies. “With the TAO Community Edition and our upcoming new developer forum, we’re empowering the global community to own their infrastructure, scale their solutions, and shape the next generation of learning from the inside out.”

    Built on open standards like QTI®, LTI®, and WCAG, TAO ensures interoperability and accessibility by design. Most importantly, it offers a platform for community-powered digital transformation, enabling contributors to directly influence the roadmap and functionality. All of this is orchestrated through the TAO Community Forum, offering streamlined oversight across the entire assessment ecosystem. TAO Community Edition and extended modules will be available under the Affero General Public License v3 (AGPLv3).

    How TAO Benefits Educational institutions

    Own your assessment software, not rent it

    Open-source code and transparent licensing keep you in control of your platform, roadmap and data, without black-box dependencies. Standards-first alignment (QTI®, LTI®, xAPI) ensures TAO plugs cleanly into existing LMS, identity, reporting, and proctoring ecosystems.

    Modular, end-to-end stack

    Adopt what you need–TAO Advance (delivery), TAO Grader (manual scoring), TAO Insights (analytics), and TAO Portal (admin)–including built-in, on-site proctoring. Scale capabilities at your pace.

    Community velocity & transparency

    A public developer forum (launching with TAO Community Edition) and contribution model let institutions influence features, share extensions, and accelerate fixes, turning users into co-builders.

    Equity at scale

    WCAG-aligned accessibility and a multilingual experience support inclusive delivery across regions, devices, and bandwidth conditions.

    Data portability & sovereignty

    Open standards and transparent formats simplify export, migration, and long-term stewardship to meet regulatory and archival requirements. Meet country data residency requirements by deploying TAO at the core of your infrastructure.

    About TAO

    TAO, from Open Assessment Technologies, is the leading digital assessment solution for education and career advancement. Modular, customizable, and interoperable by design, TAO empowers users to break free from proprietary constraints, eliminate costly licensing fees, and take full control of their testing resources. With its student interface available in more than 82 languages, TAO delivers over 30 million tests worldwide every year.

    Learn More: www.taotesting.com

     

    Media Contact:
    Miguel Prieto
    Vice President Corporate Strategy
    [email protected]

     

    *QTI®: Question and Test Interoperability
    *LTI®: Learning Tools Interoperability
    *WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
    *QTI® and LTI® are trademarks of the 1EdTech® Consortium, Inc. (1edtech.org)

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  • Audit slams shuttered Eastern Gateway Community College for ‘derelict accounting’

    Audit slams shuttered Eastern Gateway Community College for ‘derelict accounting’

    Dive Brief:

    • Ohio’s state auditor last week alleged “derelict accounting and controls” and “rampant financial mismanagement of public resources” at Eastern Gateway Community College during the now-shuttered institution’s final years.
    • The report from auditor Keith Faber’s office flagged $17.3 million of Eastern Gateway’s spending — the total amount of its federal student aid dollars in fiscal 2023 — as being insufficiently accounted for, due to “pervasive deficiencies in recordkeeping.”
    • The office additionally detailed dozens of instances of inadequate data, unjustified spending, poor student recordkeeping, and lack of existing or approved written spending policies, among other issues.

    Dive Insight:

    Faber issued a blunt summary of the troubled Eastern Gateway’s financial leadership during the period covered by the report, from July 2022 to June 2023. 

    “This goes beyond sloppiness and honest mistakes,” Faber said in a statement. “The public should be outraged.”

    When investigating the public college’s books, state auditors were “unable to obtain audit evidence supporting the College’s compliance with applicable federal requirements for these programs,” according to the report. In other words, Eastern Gateway’s recordkeeping deficiencies may have violated federal law tied to Title IV, in the auditors’ view.

    Eastern Gateway indeed came under scrutiny over federal compliance, which ultimately hastened its demise. 

    In 2022, the U.S. Department of Education alleged the institution’s free college initiative illegally charged students with Pell Grants more than those without. The department told Eastern Gateway to stop offering the free college program and implemented other regulatory restrictions, at which point the institution sued the agency. However, Eastern Gateway eventually did end the program as part of a settlement with the feds. 

    The reputational damage and subsequent student decline after ending its free college program took a heavy toll on Eastern Gateway. In February 2024, the community college announced it would suspend enrollment for all students after its spring semester. By May, the institution announced it would permanently close in the fall. 

    But despite being shuttered for more than a year, Eastern Gateway continues to make headlines. The state auditor’s new report details issues across nearly all of the college’s operations. 

    Some were as small as missing signatures in vendor contracts and lack of a detailed policy for use of an institutional Amazon account. But some findings represented potentially massive oversights, such as issuing $13.6 million in bonds to buy a parking garage that cost more to demolish than the land underneath was worth. 

    More reports and details could yet emerge. Faber’s office noted in the Nov. 25 release that its Special Investigations Unit has an ongoing probe into Eastern Gateway’s operations that could produce future reports on the institution. The unit, together with several state law enforcement agencies, executed a search warrant in January 2024 related to the investigation.

    Meanwhile, nearby Youngstown State University — with which Eastern Gateway established a teach-out plan — plans to absorb what remains of the smaller institution. The university’s board last month approved a plan to acquire property belonging to the community college. Youngstown State officials have said it’s the first time a community college has operated under a four-year university in Ohio.

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  • The Growing Diversity of Community College Trustees

    The Growing Diversity of Community College Trustees

    Between 1997 and 2025, the proportion of women serving on community college boards grew from 33 percent to 47 percent.

    Maricopa County Community College District

    New data shows that community college trustees have become more reflective of the diverse student bodies they serve over the past three decades.

    That’s one of the big takeaways from a report the Association of Community College Trustees published last week in partnership with the Center for the Study of Community Colleges, which shows that the proportion of women serving on community college boards is on the rise. Between 1997 and 2025, female representation on the boards grew from 33 percent to 47 percent, with the biggest increases coming in the past seven years. During the same time frame, the proportion of nonwhite trustees grew from roughly 12 percent to 27 percent.

    Association of Community College Trustees/Center for the Study of Community Colleges

    While disparities remain, that breakdown is now closer to mirroring the diversity of community college students. In 2025, 57 percent of students were women and 58 percent identified as people of color, according to data from the American Association of Community Colleges.

    The report, “Community College Trusteeship in 2025: A Commitment to Serve,” draws on surveys of more than 2,000 community college trustees and 40 qualitative interviews with trustees, building on similar reports from 1997 and 2018. The study demonstrates that trustees “have a pulse on their communities’ needs, a deep commitment to the community college mission of open access to high-quality higher education for all people, and the kind of visionary thinking needed to keep their institutions thriving,” ACCT president and CEO Jee Hang Lee said in a news release.

    That’s in part because community college governing boards are also more likely now to have members who attended a community college.

    In 2025, 64 percent of trustees attended a community college and 27 percent previously worked at one, according to the report. In 1997, only 51 percent of trustees had been community college students and 22 percent had been employees. Today’s trustees also are also showcasing the earning potential of community college graduates: 71 percent of trustees who attended a two-year college made at least $100,000 a year in 2025, while 31 percent made close to $200,000, according to the report.

    community college trustee experience

    Association of Community College Trustees/Center for the Study of Community Colleges

    In an interview, one such trustee said that attending a community college first allowed them to continue on to a university “to get my education at a reasonable cost and also to improve my life and my business.”

    For many trustees, those firsthand experiences with the community college system have also translated into enthusiasm for higher education governance work. “I was a nontraditional college student,” one said in an interview for the report. “I went back to school with three kids in tow and got my bachelor’s and my master’s, and it’s just something that I believe in.”

    That’s a common trajectory for community college trustees.

    Among trustees who were once community college students, 83 percent have a bachelor’s or higher degree, and 54 percent have a graduate or professional degree. And over all, trustees have become even more educated over the past 28 years. Although the vast majority of trustees have long held a college degree, the proportion with a bachelor’s degree rose from 84 percent to 86 percent between 1997 and 2025; the proportion with a graduate or professional degree rose from 50 percent to 59 percent.

    But other aspects of community college governance haven’t changed as much since the 1990s, the report shows.

    In 2025, trustees spent an average of five hours a week on board duties—hardly any change from 1997. Similarly, trustees identified funding, access and affordability as top challenges in 1997, 2018 and in 2025. This year, however, 63 percent of trustees also cited enrollment as a top issue, “likely stemming from the fact that most states have begun to experience the anticipated enrollment cliff,” the report noted.

    Community college trustees have also maintained high levels of trust in and support for their college leaders. In 2025, 94 percent of respondents indicated a “somewhat or very strong level of trust” between boards and presidents, while 96 reported somewhat or very strong levels of support—numbers that have hardly changed since 1997.

    community college trustee trust and support

    Association of Community College Trustees/Center for the Study of Community Colleges

    And that’s an essential aspect of effective governance, one trustee said in an interview.

    “The demands [on] a college president are huge, and [it’s a] difficult job, which is one reason [that] when you get somebody, you’ve got to support them,” they said. “You hire somebody and then you get out of their way and let them do what you hired them to do. That is so important.”

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