Tag: Events

  • Saint Augustine’s U faces ticking clock to fix finances

    Saint Augustine’s U faces ticking clock to fix finances

    Approaching a critical vote on its accreditation status next month, Saint Augustine’s University has made controversial moves in recent months to stabilize its shaky financial position, but so far none have paid off, putting the beleaguered institution in a more precarious position.

    First, the historically Black university in North Carolina took out a $7 million loan last fall that many critics have described as predatory given its 24 percent interest rate and 2 percent management fee. The university also put real estate up as collateral in case of a loan default.

    Then, in November, SAU officials also struck a $70 million deal with 50 Plus 1 Sports, a fledgling Florida company, to lease its campus and develop university property for 99 years. The deal would have provided a much-needed financial lifeline for the cash-strapped university that needs to urgently fix its finances before the accreditation review. (The college was previously stripped of accreditation due to university financial and governance issues but appealed.)

    But that lifeline is in legal limbo after the North Carolina attorney general declined to sign off on the deal Monday.

    The North Carolina attorney general’s office, which reviewed the deal due to state law on the transfer of assets from a nonprofit, announced it would not approve the arrangement with 50 Plus 1 Sports as written due to a lack of “sufficient documentation to support the proposal” and concerns that the payout “is too low to justify transfer of the lease rights” for SAU’s campus, which is appraised at $198 million. The attorney general’s Office also expressed concerns about SAU’s “ability to continue to operate.”

    Ongoing Financial Struggles

    Saint Augustine’s has faced rising pressures since December 2023 when it fired then-president Christine McPhail, who subsequently lodged a gender-based discrimination complaint against the board. That same week the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges announced it had voted to strip SAU’s accreditation due to board and finance issues.

    (SAU lost an appeal to that decision but won a reprieve in court in July before SACSCOC voted again in December to strip accreditation. The accreditor will vote on SAU’s appeal next month.)

    Since early 2024—under the guidance of interim president Marcus Burgess—SAU has navigated a series of challenges in a bid to stay afloat. In February, it was hit with a $7.9 million tax lien. That same month, local officials encouraged SAU to explore a merger with nearby Shaw University, another HBCU. Months later, SAU board chair Brian Boulware cast the proposal as an aggressive effort to ramrod a partnership. (Local officials have denied his account.) In May, a group called the Save SAU Coalition sued Boulware and other trustees, alleging malfeasance and self-dealing by the board.

    That case was later dismissed due to a lack of standing.

    Enrollment has also plummeted, falling from more than 1,100 students in fall 2022 to a head count of around 200 students last fall, according to recent estimates. SAU has also announced major staff reductions.

    As its financial pressures added up, Saint Augustine’s borrowed $7 million from Gothic Ventures, an investment firm, and secured a $30 million line of credit. The deal, which came with a 24 percent interest rate and a 2 percent loan management fee, sparked alumni protests in the fall.

    Mark DeFusco, a senior consultant with Higher Ed Consolidation Solutions and sector finance expert, told Inside Higher Ed the terms of the Gothic Ventures loan were “crazy” and “irresponsible.” DeFusco agreed with the description of the loan as “predatory.”

    SAU officials have defended the agreement, writing that the deal is “crucial for maintaining educational services” and securing the loan contradicted “claims of irresponsibility in financial dealings” leveled by critics. SAU has cast criticism of the deal as a “smear campaign.”

    Earlier this month, two local publications, INDY Week and The Assembly, reported that last fall SAU turned down a more favorable loan offer of $19.5 million with a 9 percent interest rate. That offer, from Self-Help Credit Union, stipulated that two board members, including Boulware, resign, and would have included purchasing the existing Gothic Ventures loan. The university balked at the attached conditions.

    To DeFusco, the board resignations as part of the loan conditions were a reasonable request.

    “There are provisions in leadership for all kinds of lending. And with all due respect, it was a wise provision, because you have a board that’s allowed [financial issues] to go on for several years now. This isn’t something new,” DeFusco said. “They haven’t broken even for at least five years from what I could see in their records, and their accrediting body was going to close them down, except for that arbitration. And now they’re about to close them down again.”

    Continued financial struggles ultimately led SAU to a deal with 50 Plus 1 Sports, which describes itself on its website as a financing and development firm. That agreement, according to a university statement, would “generate a $70 million upfront investment” from the company.

    But the North Carolina attorney general’s office shut down that proposed deal.

    Beyond the lack of documentation on the proposal and the low payout, Assistant Attorney General Kunal Choksi also raised questions about the university’s due diligence of the deal.

    “SAU’s board and trustees were obligated to perform due diligence on whether 50+ can meet its obligations under the transaction and has the experience to develop revenue-generating property on the leased land,” Choksi wrote in a letter shared with Inside Higher Ed.

    Choksi added that the attorney general’s office had requested “sufficient proof that 50+ has the financial ability to comply with its obligations to SAU and avoid default with its financiers” and “details about similar deals 50+ has developed, including deals with other universities, or the company’s audited financial statements.” Choksi indicated in his letter that SAU had not yet provided those details on the proposal.

    In a Tuesday statement, SAU officials said little about the concerns raised by the attorney general about the 50 Plus 1 Sports deal or its ability to operate. Instead, university officials took aim at Self-Help Credit Union.

    SAU noted concerns “about the process that led to the recent rejection” of the agreement. Specifically, they pointed to a meeting between Marin Eakes of Self-Help Credit Union and alleged that the attorney general’s letter reflected comments made by Eakes in unspecified media coverage and alleged the 50 Plus 1 Sports proposal was shared without SAU’s consent.

    SAU officials wrote in the statement that they “suspect that the Attorney General’s Office used Mr. Eakes’ counsel and input to subsequently influence their decision. Such interference by Self-Help raises significant concerns about fairness. It suggests their attempt to weaponize the NC Attorney General’s Office to obstruct the approval process for the 50 Plus 1 Sports deal.”

    An Unknown Partner

    With the North Carolina attorney general’s office shutting down the 50 Plus 1 deal, SAU has little time to fix its finances ahead of a looming vote on its accreditation status in late February.

    And questions about both the deal and the company linger.

    Information on 50 Plus 1 Sports is sparse and it is unclear, as noted by the attorney general’s office, whether the nascent company has the resources to back the deal. Little is known about 50 Plus 1 Sports, which unsuccessfully big on a $800 million stadium development deal in St. Petersburg, Fla., in early 2023. The firm was not selected for the project amid questions from local officials about how it would finance the deal and a lack of experience as a lead developer.

    In its St. Petersburg proposal, 50 Plus Sports listed a $1.4 billion deal to develop a sports and entertainment district for the University of New Orleans among its reference projects. However, a UNO spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed by email it is not “moving forward with the project.”

    Monti Valrie, founder and CEO of 50 Plus 1 Sports, did not respond to a request for comment.

    What’s Next for SAU?

    The attorney general’s office did leave the door open to reconsider the deal. But the university would have to provide more details to the office, including evidence that SAU conducted due diligence on 50 Plus 1 Sports and its finances.

    SAU officials noted in their statement that “despite these challenges, SAU remains committed to working collaboratively with the Attorney General’s Office. We believe transparency and open dialogue are essential in securing the funding for our university’s sustainability and growth.”

    But SAU is facing a ticking clock to get that information to the attorney general or rework the deal. University officials have said that the deal needed to close by Jan. 31. Otherwise, “SAU risks failing to demonstrate financial sustainability” before its appeal hearing next month, according to a university statement.

    But DeFusco wonders if SAU’s finances are too far gone to fix.

    “Their finances are so bad they may be criminal,” he said, pointing to payroll and tax issues. (The university also allegedly failed to maintain worker’s compensation for employees recently.)

    As pressure mounts, DeFusco believes the board needs more scrutiny for SAU’s financial problems, arguing “they missed it for years” as the university slipped deeper into the red.

    “Now the question is, is the board acting as a fiduciary?” DeFusco said.

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  • Trump’s federal funding freeze concerns colleges

    Trump’s federal funding freeze concerns colleges

    President Trump’s plan to temporarily freeze federal grants and loans set off a wave of confusion and concerns across higher ed Tuesday. But just minutes before it was set to take effect, a federal judge blocked the order.

    It is now on hold until next Monday, at least.

    College leaders worried they would lose access to a wide variety of federal funds, though the specific programs affected by the pause remained in flux throughout the day. Education Department officials said Pell Grants, student loans and Federal Work-Study would not be subject to the pause. But critical STEM research and student success initiatives were among the thousands of programs whose funding would have been paused until at least Feb. 10, according to the original White House directive released late Monday night.

    University lobbyists and administrators predicted earlier Tuesday that the president’s unprecedented action would be blocked in the courts, but they warned of significant consequences as they worked to gather more information about the order. Comparable to a government shutdown, they said, the impact of a freeze, if it ever comes to pass, would largely depend on how long it lasts. 

    “Obviously it’s of great concern,” said Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday morning. “Most of us are finding the memo to be so broad and so incomprehensible that we don’t even quite know what the long-term impact is … But it makes no sense. Rather than helping ‘make America great again,’ it absolutely debilitates America.”

    Conservative policy experts say Trump’s actions are necessary to combat years of misguided spending and argue that institutions shouldn’t run budgets so razor-thin that a short-term loss of federal funds empties their coffers. But McGuire and other higher ed representatives say the proposed freeze along with other executive actions raises questions about whether they can count on stable federal funding in the long run.

    Universities have already seen some disruptions to research funding since Trump took office eight days ago, as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation canceled meetings to review grant applications last week. Before the federal court released its ruling, the proposed extension of that freeze had only further fueled academics’ initial concerns.

    The White House Office of Management and Budget had directed all federal agencies to pause any grants and loans they supervised in order to ensure that federal spending aligns with the president’s priorities, such as cracking down on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and illegal immigration. OMB specifically said it is aiming to cease any funding to activities that “may be implicated by the executive orders, including but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal,” according to the memo.

    The two-page directive specifically exempted Social Security, Medicare and other programs that provide direct financial assistance to individuals. But colleges and universities would still lose access to grants that are targeted at minority-serving institutions, college preparation programs, childcare for student parents, food banks, student retention and graduation initiatives, campus hospital systems, and more. Over all, more than 2,600 grant programs are up for consideration across dozens of agencies, Bloomberg reported.

    A follow-up memo was published Tuesday in an attempt to help clarify the president’s orders, but higher ed stakeholders said much uncertainty remains.

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said early Tuesday afternoon that the freeze would not be “a blanket pause on federal assistance and grant programs,” and she repeatedly said that direct federal assistance to individuals wouldn’t be affected. But she didn’t have a clear answer about what would happen to federal money that goes to states, organizations or colleges that support individuals. She also pushed back on questions about the legality of the pause and said the move was aimed at ensuring that federal spending aligns with the president’s priorities.

    “No more funding for illegal DEI programs,” she said. “No more funding for transgenderism and wokeness.”

    Leavitt was asked about funding for minority-serving institutions and said she hadn’t “seen the entire list” of programs either affected or exempted from the pause.

    Sarah Spreitzer, vice president and chief of staff for government relations at the American Council on Education, said concerns remain despite the legal injunction.

    In the initial memo, OMB instructed agencies to conduct a comprehensive review by Feb. 7 of federal programs to ensure they comply with Trump’s executive orders. White House officials offered more guidance Tuesday about what that would entail. Agencies will have to answer a series of questions for each program listed on the 52-page document by Feb. 7. Those questions include whether the programs fund DEI or support “illegal aliens,” the promotion of “gender ideology” or “activities overseas.”

    It’s just going to cause a lot of chaos when it comes to planning. It is definitely a developing story.”

    —Sarah Spreitzer, American Council on Education

    It’s unclear whether the judge’s order affects the broader review.

    To Spreitzer and others, that broader review could threaten more federal programs, as those considered unaligned with the president’s agenda could be altered or cut back entirely.

    “If there’s an injunction within a week and everything can start up again, I think that the impact is minimal,” Spreitzer said. But “there’s so much in that [memo] about the examination of all grants going forward … that go beyond just the pause that I think I’d have to see the further implementation instructions to understand the complete impact on the scientific and education enterprise.”

    ‘Unnecessary and Damaging’

    Higher ed officials and student advocacy groups warned throughout the day that the pause, in addition to a recent flurry of executive orders, would cause unnecessary disruption to the primary goals and functions of American colleges and universities and could jeopardize crucial scientific research. The National Association of College and University Business Officers said in a statement that the pause could cause “unnecessary disruption to the lives of tens of thousands of students and families at colleges and universities across the country.”

    “The overall impact to programs … could be both significant and chaotic,” NACUBO president Kara D. Freeman said. “College and university chief business officers will be front and center with their presidents, boards, and executive leadership in developing plans to mitigate immediate exposure and impacts. We urge the Trump administration to reconsider and rescind this misguided policy.”

    Mark Becker, president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, called the memo’s orders “unnecessary and damaging.”

    “While we understand the Trump administration wants to review programs to ensure consistency with its priorities, it is imperative that the reviews not interfere with American innovation and competitiveness,” Becker said. “It will have far-reaching impacts in every corner of the country and hamper American innovation at a moment when it’s being fiercely challenged on a global stage.”

    Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that she hopes Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill will see how the pause could hurt American citizens and address the gap by resuming grant distribution.

    “Federal programs need to be more efficient, but no one voted for a president to halt their services—services that were appropriated, authorized and extended by Congress,” she said in a statement. “Americans need a federal government that works for them, not against them.”

    Democratic lawmakers have also raised the red flag, responding with outrage and “extreme alarm,” warning that the pause would undermine Congress’s authority and have “devastating consequences across the country.”

    Reactions from professors and student advocacy groups were swift late Monday and early Tuesday.

    “I don’t see how any Democrat can get away with voting to confirm Linda McMahon after this memo. The entire hearing should be focused on how the U.S. government is tearing apart everyday life for regular people,” Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, wrote on X.

    Jody Freedman, a professor at Harvard Law School, took to BlueSky. “What is going on here?” she wrote. “I think what’s going on here is that Russell Vought (perhaps others in the administration too, but certainly him) … are testing the Republicans in Congress on this issue to see if they spring to life.”

    “It’s like Hey, the door’s open, no one’s home, let’s rob the place. And by rob I mean, let’s take all the power Congress thinks it has over the appropriations,” she added.

    ‘Extremely Widespread’ Abuse

    Congressional Republicans have said little in response to the pause, and conservative policy experts say the freeze is a necessary step to address years of “illegal spending” by Democrats to advance their political motives.

    Inside Higher Ed reached out to both Senator Dr. Bill Cassidy and Representative Tim Walberg, chairs of the congressional committees that handle education policy, but neither responded with comment.

    Michael Brickman, an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank, said that the Trump administration’s actions—though “aggressive”—are justified decisions aimed to restore the rule of law and ensure that government money “isn’t being set on fire at every turn.”

    “What you’re seeing overall across the administration is an attempt to get a handle on the waste and the abuse of taxpayer dollars,” Brickman said.

    He went on to say that though it would be ideal to only freeze certain programs and limit the consequences of stalled grants, breadth was a necessity in this scenario.

    “We saw during the Biden administration, brazen attempts again and again to ignore the law” when utilizing federal funds, Brickman said. “Why let good money continue to go out the door when we know for the last four years that so much of it has been wasted … I wish it were narrow and targeted, but unfortunately, the abuse is extremely widespread.”

    And if colleges don’t have a contingency plan in place for any kind of budgetary disruption, “that’s malpractice on their part,” he added.

    ‘Plan for the Worst’

    McGuire, from Trinity, said the pause would likely affect grants for predominantly Black institutions, which her university uses to provide student advising, new lab materials and certification programs in high-demand areas of the workforce.

    Trinity has already received its $250,000 in such grants for the current academic year, so no programs will have to shut down immediately if the freeze is reinstated, she said. But she worries about the reliability of federal funds moving forward. She explained that uncertainty about grants could mean cuts and amendments to the budget for fiscal year 2026. 

    “We hope for the best but plan for the worst,” she said. “We’re going into budget season right now, so we will probably have to plan alternative support for the programs funded through the PBI [grants].”

    Spreitzer, from ACE, echoed the future impact but also noted that certain colleges could pay the price more immediately. Many large research universities require billions of dollars in federal grants to keep their labs and hospitals running every day, she said, and there’s variation in when grant funds are dispersed, so many may have yet to receive the dollars needed to keep the lights on.

    “It’s going to depend on whether institutions have existing grants and whether they’re waiting for disbursements. It’s just going to cause a lot of chaos when it comes to planning,” she said. “It is definitely a developing story.” 

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  • Three questions for JHU’s Ira Gooding

    Three questions for JHU’s Ira Gooding

    Ira Gooding is well-known and highly respected within our digital and online learning community. At Johns Hopkins University, Ira serves in the provost’s office as a special adviser for digital initiatives, and he is the assistant director for open education at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

    Q:  Tell us about your roles at the provost’s office and the Bloomberg School. What does your work at Hopkins entail and how do your leadership positions interact?

    A: My work in the provost’s office is focused on three goals: fostering teaching innovation through digital technology, facilitating collaboration and connection across divisional lines, and managing our engagement with Coursera.

    A major project that incorporates all three goals is our Digital Education and Learning Technology Acceleration (DELTA) initiative. Each year, we use a portion of our Coursera royalty revenue to award internal grants of up to $75,000 to develop, implement and evaluate an innovative application of technology intended to enhance teaching and learning. To date, we’ve awarded more than $2.6 million to 41 different project teams focused on a wide array of innovative approaches, including VR/AR, generative AI, learning at scale, faculty development programming and clinical simulation, among others.

    We also hold an annual Provost’s DELTA Teaching Forum that brings together faculty and teaching and learning staff from across Johns Hopkins to provoke conversation, spark new thinking and advance the ongoing pursuit of teaching excellence. The next forum will be held on May 1.

    In the Bloomberg School of Public Health, I lead a small team within the Center for Teaching and Learning. We focus our attention on developing open learning experiences and open educational resources for independent learners and public health educators beyond the boundaries of our master’s and doctoral programs. We’ve supported the development of more than 80 MOOC courses, specializations and teach-outs, and we’re in the process of developing a new OER repository for JHU.

    The repository project is a good example of the interaction between my two roles. The Bloomberg School’s Center for Teaching and Learning is developing the platform, but it will serve as a repository for OER from across the entire university, and publishing authority will be distributed in order to reduce bottlenecks.

    Q: Looking forward to 2025, what challenges, trends and opportunities related to online and digital learning are at the top of your mind?

    A: I hope it’s OK that my answers go beyond 2025.

    I’m curious to see how higher education will be affected in the years ahead by the arrival of students whose early primary school years were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the switch to emergency remote teaching. The oldest members of that cohort are hitting high school this year, and it won’t be long before they arrive (or not) on our campuses. What expectations will they have for digital learning? Will they value in-person experiences differently from today’s students? What learning habits will they bring with them? So, I see an opportunity to start designing that cohort’s learning experiences now. How might we prepare ourselves to offer them a higher education experience that meets their needs and helps them thrive?

    Also, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about David Wiley’s recent argument about generative AI’s impact on open educational resources. In September, he gave a talk titled “Why Open Education Will Become Generative AI” for the University of Regina. In it, he argues pretty persuasively that generative AI has the potential to become a more effective tool than OER for increasing educational access due to its profound impact on the process of authoring, revising and remixing instructional materials.

    That’s a provocative position, and I don’t know whether things will play out as he predicts. Regardless, I’m curious to see the interplay of generative AI and OER in the years ahead.

    Q: What advice would you give an early or midcareer colleague interested in working toward a digital/online learning leadership role?

    A: I’d encourage them to look for opportunities to reduce institutional friction and to develop a reputation for clearing paths instead of erecting obstacles. A certain amount of friction is necessary for managing risk and encouraging high-quality work, but a lot of friction in higher ed comes from simple inertia.

    People who aspire to lead can make a lot of progress by understanding the constraints that hinder innovation and then actively working to mitigate them on behalf of the innovators within their institutions.

    Of course, people run the risk of becoming gatekeepers as they advance into leadership positions, so it’s important to question one’s own assumptions and the value of yesterday’s solutions and to look for new solutions instead of continuing to rely on the old ones.

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  • Skipping remedial courses impacts students’ completion

    Skipping remedial courses impacts students’ completion

    Developmental education has come under scrutiny for delaying students’ academic attainment and overall degree progression. While the purpose of remedial courses is to prepare learners to succeed in more difficult courses, it can produce the opposite effect, discouraging learners from pursuing more advanced courses or pushing them to drop out.

    A December report from the Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness (CAPR)—a partnership of MDRC and the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College—identified the benefits of placing students into college-level math and English classes and how it can impact their credit attainment and completion.

    “This research finds evidence that colleges should consider increasing the total number of students referred directly to college-level courses, whether by lowering their requirements for direct placement into college-level courses or by implementing other policies with the same effect,” according to the report.

    Methodology: Around three-quarters of colleges use multiple measures assessment (MMA) systems to place learners in remedial education, relying on standardized tests and high school GPA, among other factors, according to the CAPR report.

    This study evaluates data from 12 community colleges across Minnesota, New York and Wisconsin and 29,999 students to see how effective MMA systems are compared to traditional test-only placement methods on dictating students’ long-term success.

    Incoming students who took a placement test were randomly assigned to one of two groups: test-only referral or MMA placement. Researchers collected data on how students would have been placed under both systems to analyze different outcomes and gauge long-term outcomes.

    The findings: For most students, there was no material difference in their placement; 81 percent of the math sample and 68 percent of the English sample referred students to the same level of coursework, which researchers classified as “always college level” or “always developmental.”

    Around 44 percent of students from the New York sample were “bumped up” into a college-level English course, and 16 percent were bumped up into a college-level math class due to being assigned to the MMA group, whereas the test-only system would have sorted them into developmental education. Seven percent of learners were “bumped down” into developmental ed for English.

    In Wisconsin, 15 percent of students in the MMA group were bumped up in English, and 14 percent were bumped up in math placement.

    Students who were assigned to the MMA group and were placed into a higher-level course were more likely to have completed a college-level math or English course, compared to their peers in the test-only placement group with similar GPAs and scores.

    This bump-up group, across samples, was eight percentage points more likely to pass a college-level course and earned 2.0 credits more on average. These learners were also more likely to earn a degree or transfer to a four-year institution within nine semesters by 1.5 percentage points.

    Inversely, students who were recommended by MMA placement to take developmental ed, but not according to the test-only system, were less likely to succeed.

    So what? The evidence shows that referring more students into college-level courses is a better predictor of success than the placement system.

    Implementing an MMA is a small cost to the institution, around $60 per student, but it can result in students saving money because they take fewer developmental courses over all, and maybe earn more credits entirely.

    “Overall, this report concludes that MMA, when it allows more students to be directly placed in college-level coursework, is a cost-effective way to increase student educational achievement,” researchers wrote.

    If your student success program has a unique feature or twist, we’d like to know about it. Click here to submit.

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  • Thoughts on 20 years of college teaching (opinion)

    Thoughts on 20 years of college teaching (opinion)

    I have now been teaching at Duke University for 20 years. I have been through all kinds of teaching fads—active learning, team-based learning, alternative grading, service learning, etc. You might assume that I have become a better teacher over these many years. Yet I am noticing a curious trend in my course evaluations: Some of my students like me and my courses less and less.

    As a teaching faculty member, this matters greatly to my own career trajectory, and so I’ve wondered and worried about what to do. Why am I struggling to teach well and why are my students struggling to learn?

    Looking back on the past two decades of my teaching and reaching further back into my own college experience, I see six clear differences between now and then.

    Difference No. 1: Access to Information

    When I took my first college environmental science class, way back in 1992, I was mesmerized. This was before the days of Advanced Placement Environmental Science, so I came into the class knowing almost nothing about the topic, motivated by my naïve idea to be part of “saving the world.” To learn, I had a textbook (that I still have, all highlighted and marked up) and the lectures (for which I still have my notes). Sure, I could go to the library and find books and articles to learn more, but mostly I stuck to my textbook and my notes. I showed up to the lecture-based class to learn, to listen, to ask questions.

    Today, my students show up in my course often having taken AP Environmental Science, with access to unlimited information about the course topics, and with AI assistants that will help them organize their notes, write their essays and prepare for exams. I have had to shift from expert to curator, spending hours sifting through online articles, podcasts (SO many podcasts) and videos, instead of relying on a single textbook. I look for content that will engage students, knowing that some may also spend their class period fact-checking my lectures, which brings me to …

    Difference No. 2: Attention

    When I lecture, I look out to a sea of stickered laptops, with students shifting their attention between me, my slides and their screens. I remind them that I can tell when they are watching TikTok or texting, because the class material probably isn’t causing their amused facial expressions.

    Honestly, I am finding myself more distracted, too. While lecturing I am not only thinking about the lecture material and what’s on the next slide—I am also wondering how I can get my students’ attention. I often default to telling a personal anecdote, but even as they briefly look up to laugh, they just as quickly return their eyes to their screens.

    The obvious advice would be to have more engaging activities than lecturing but …

    Difference No. 3: More Lectures, Please

    After 2020, one comment showed up over and over on my course evaluations: lecture more. My students seemed not to see the value of small-group activities, gallery walks, interactive data exercises and discussions. They felt that they were not learning as much, and some of them assumed that meant that I didn’t know as much, which leads me to …

    Difference No. 4: Sense of Entitlement

    While I teach at a private elite university, my colleagues across a range of institutions have backed this up: Some students seem to not have much respect for faculty. The most common way this shows up is at the end of the semester, when students send me emails about why my course policies resulted in a grade they think is unfair, or after an exam, when they argue that I did not grade them fairly, which leads me to …

    Difference No. 5: Assessment Confusion

    When I was in college, I took midterms and finals. I rewrote my notes, made flash cards, created potential exam questions, asked friends for old exams and studied a lot. I took multiple-choice exams and essay exams, in-class exams and take-home exams. When I first started teaching my lecture-based class, I assigned two midterms and a final. I took the business of writing exams seriously, often using short-answer and essay exams that took a whole lot of time to grade. I wanted the experience of taking the exam to help students feel like they had learned something, and the experience of studying to actually entice them to learn.

    Then, two things happened. We faculty got all excited about alternative assessments, trying to make our classes more inclusive for more learning styles. And the students started rebelling about their exam grades, nitpicking our grading for a point here and there, angry that, as one student put it, I was “ruthless” in my grading. Students didn’t show up at my office hours eager to understand the concepts—they wanted more points.

    So, I threw out exams in favor of shorter papers, discussions and activities. In fall 2024, I had 74 students and I gave a whopping 67 of them A’s. To do well in my class now, you don’t really have to learn anything. You just need to show up. Except the problem with grading for attendance is …

    Difference No. 6: Our Students Are Struggling

    We all know that our students are struggling with more mental and emotional health issues, perhaps due to COVID-related learning loss, the state of the world and so many other things. Many of us include mental health resources in our syllabus, but we know that’s not enough. Students are much more open about their struggles with us, but we aren’t trained therapists and often don’t know the right thing to say. Who am I to determine whether or not one student’s excuse for missing a class is valid while another’s is not? How can I keep extending the deadlines for a struggling student while keeping the deadline firm for the rest? Sure, there are suggestions for this (e.g., offer everyone a “late assignment” ticket to use), but I still spend a lot of time sifting through student email requests for extensions and understanding. How can we be fair to all of our students while maintaining the rhythm of course expectations?

    Usually, one acknowledges the differences between students now and “back then” at retirement, reflecting on the long arc of a teaching career. But I am not at the end—I have a long way to go (hopefully). I am expected to be good at this in order to get reappointed to my teaching faculty position.

    Teaching requires much more agility now as we attempt to adapt to the ever-expanding information sphere, our students’ needs, and the state of the community and world beyond our classrooms. Instead of jumping to solutions (more active learning!), I think it’s reasonable to step back and acknowledge that there is no one change we need to make to be more effective educators in 2025. We also can acknowledge that some of the strategies we are using to make our classes more engaging and inclusive might backfire, and that there still is a time and place for really good, engaging lectures and really hard, useful exams.

    There are fads in teaching, and over the past 20 years, I have seen and tried plenty of them. We prize teaching innovation, highlighting new techniques as smashing successes. But sometimes we learn that our best-laid plans don’t work out, that what students really want is to hear from an expert, someone who can help them sort through the overwhelming crush of information to find a narrative that is relevant and meaningful.

    The students in our classrooms are not the same students we were, but maybe there is still a way to spark their enthusiasm for our subjects by simply asking them to be present. As debates about the value of higher education swirl around us, maybe caring about our students and their learning means asking them to put away their screens, take out a notebook and be present for our lectures, discussions and occasional gallery walk. For my part, I’m reminding myself that some students aren’t all that different than I was—curious, excited, eager to learn—and that I owe it to them to keep showing up committed to their learning and, maybe, prepared with a few more light-on-text lecture slides.

    Rebecca Vidra is a senior lecturer at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.

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  • The King’s College aims to reopen

    The King’s College aims to reopen

    When the King’s College in New York shut down in summer 2023, its leadership said the cancellation of fall classes and termination of faculty and staff did not mean permanent closure. Now its Board of Trustees is seeking to revive the evangelical institution, according to a report from Religion Unplugged.

    The news outlet obtained a document that detailed a plan “to gift the college, including its charter and intellectual property … to likeminded evangelical Christians who propose the most compelling vision to resume the operations of the college.” The document—reportedly a request for proposals—listed a deadline of Feb. 7 for potential partners.

    TKC officials did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

    The King’s College shut down in July 2023 amid severe financial pressures and a failed $2.6 million fundraising effort earlier that year that officials said was necessary to meet immediate needs. However, the emergency fundraising effort only brought in $178,000 by its initial deadline.

    The college, which enrolled a few hundred students a year, had faced declining enrollment in its final years and the loss of generous donors who had long buoyed TKC. Richard DeVos—the co-founder of Amway and father-in-law of former education secretary Betsy DeVos—donated millions of dollars to the college before his death in 2018. Another major donor, Bill Hwang, also contributed several million before he was arrested in 2022 on fraud charges.

    Facing financial pressures in 2021, the college put its faith in another wealthy entrepreneur, striking a deal with Canadian investment company Primacorp Ventures, owned by Peter Chung, a for-profit education mogul who had also loaned the college $2 million in early 2023. Acting as an online program manager, Primacorp Ventures promised to enroll 10,000 students over three years, sources previously told Inside Higher Ed. The catch, according to one source, was that Primacorp would collect 95 percent of the revenue generated from online enrollment, a deal that struck experts as predatory. The online program—which cost TKC at least $470,00 to launch, according to tax documents—delivered around 150 students its first year and soon folded.

    The college had previously tried and failed to find a partner to keep it open in 2023. If it finds one this time, the board will submit a “go-forward plan” to the New York State Education Department by mid-July, according to the RFP obtained by Religion Unplugged.

    The King’s College will face a series of obstacles in its reopening effort, including accreditation. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education stripped TKC’s accreditation in May 2023, noting a failure “to demonstrate that it can sustain itself in the short or long term.”

    If the King’s College manages to reopen, it would be history repeating itself. Founded in New Jersey in 1941, TKC closed in 1994, only to be revived in 1997 and re-established in New York City.

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  • Biology syllabi lack learner-centered principles

    Biology syllabi lack learner-centered principles

    A course syllabus serves as a road map for navigating the upcoming term and content that will be covered, but researchers believe it could support students’ self-directed learning as well.

    A November study published in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, authored by a team of faculty from Auburn University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, shows few introductory biology syllabi engage students in effective study habits or encourage help-seeking behaviors, instead favoring content.

    The research highlights opportunities to address the hidden curriculum of higher education and support success for historically marginalized students.

    What’s the need: Some college students lack effective study habits, and these gaps are often a piece of larger equity concerns for marginalized groups, highlighting limited opportunities or resources for underprivileged communities.

    Introductory science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses, in particular, often serve as gatekeepers, limiting which students can pursue these degree programs and resulting in less diverse STEM degree attainment.

    Today’s college students also demonstrate less college readiness in their academic skills, due in part to remote instruction as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Often, colleges or universities will create co-curricular interventions such as workshops to teach these skills or introduce best practices in a first-year seminar course. While these can be effective, institutions may lack the resources or time to deliver the interventions, which researchers say underscores a need for alternative strategies that reach students.

    Researchers theorized that embedding within the syllabus explicit instruction to promote three skills—study behaviors, metacognitive evaluation or academic help-seeking—could impact student success.

    Methodology: Researchers evaluated 115 introductory biology syllabi from 94 unique institutions, including 48 percent research-intensive institutions, 29 percent minority-serving institutions, 72 percent publics and 61 percent with enrollment over 10,000 students.

    A Deeper Look at STEM Syllabi

    A Worcester Polytechnic Institute study found instructors could help create a more inclusive learning environment in STEM courses through tailoring their syllabus to feature elements like materials from diverse scholars and accessibility statements. Read more here.

    One engineering professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst redesigned her syllabus as a zine, or miniature magazine, to promote student engagement and build community in the classroom.

    Syllabi were categorized by having the presence of study behaviors, academic help-seeking and metacognition suggestions; the type of suggestions of those three factors; and the quality of these recommendations (effective or ineffective).

    Further syllabus analysis covered four factors to gauge how learner-centered they were, including having clear and appropriate learning goals and objectives, aligned and define assessment activities, a logically sequenced course schedule, and a positive and organized learning environment. Each syllabus was awarded between zero and 48 points, with higher scores indicating they were more learner-centered.

    The findings: Among the 115 syllabi evaluated, only 14 percent earned a score of at least 31 to be considered learner-centered. Around three in 10 syllabi were considered “content-centered,” earning a score of 16 or less. Researchers theorized faculty may lack time or interest when creating their own syllabi, instead relying on templates from the institution or previously generated documents.

    Design by Ashley Mowreader

    Only 3.5 percent of syllabi showed evidence of reducing opportunity gaps in STEM courses, which researchers defined as de-emphasizing course rules, encouraging the use of external resources for continued learning outside the classroom and emphasizing the role of students in their own learning.

    “Most of the syllabi in our sample provided learning resources but focused primarily on course policies and did not address students as engaged learners,” according to the study.

    A majority of syllabi did offer suggestions for study behaviors, metacognition or approaches for academic help-seeking (61 percent), although the greatest share of these only addressed help-seeking (45 percent). When the syllabus did share advice to seek help, many just provided a list of resources, and fewer encouraged students to utilize them.

    “Only 17.9 percent of syllabi provided a listing of academic help-seeking resources, encouragement to use those resources, and an explanation on how to use those resources,” researchers wrote, with the explanation piece critical for addressing equity gaps and the hidden curriculum of higher education.

    Of the syllabi that provided recommendations for students’ study behaviors, a significant number gave students unhelpful advice or shared practices that are not affirmed with research.

    “We found that most biology syllabi endorsed effective study strategies such as self-testing and spacing,” researchers wrote. “However, we also found that syllabi recommended strategies that have been described as ineffective for long-term learning (e.g., re-reading textbooks and re-writing notes).”

    Twenty-nine percent of syllabi recommended only effective, evidence-based study habits. A greater share (42 percent) offered both effective and ineffective techniques, and 24 percent only offered ineffective behaviors.

    Just because the syllabus was lacking details on how to study or practice metacognition doesn’t mean it was absent from the class entirely, researchers noted, as instructors may discuss these topics in class or provide additional resources with this information. This presents an opportunity for instructors to make themselves more aware of evidence-based practices to close equity gaps and bring the syllabus into better alignment with their pedagogy, according to the study.

    Do you have an academic intervention that might help others improve student success? Tell us about it.

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  • Did the Ivy League really break America? (opinion)

    Did the Ivy League really break America? (opinion)

    Are many of the ills that plague American society caused by Ivy League admission policies?

    That is the premise of David Brooks’s cover story for the December issue of The Atlantic, “How the Ivy League Broke America.” Brooks blames the Ivies and “meritocracy” for a host of societal problems, including:

    • Overbearing parenting
    • Less time for recess (as well as art and shop) in schools
    • An economy that doesn’t provide opportunities for those without a college degree
    • The death of civic organizations like Elks Lodge and Kiwanis Club
    • The high percentage of Ivy League graduates who choose careers in finance and consulting
    • The rise of populism based on “crude exaggerations, gross generalizations, and bald-faced lies.”

    Brooks somehow left the decline of small-town mom-and-pop businesses and the popularity of reality television off his laundry list.

    You may be wondering how the Ivies contributed to or caused all these problems. The essence of Brooks’s argument is that “every coherent society has a social ideal—an image of what the superior person looks like.” His hypothesis is that America’s social ideals reflect and are determined by the qualities that Ivy League universities value in admission.

    One hundred years ago, the Ivy League social ideal was what Brooks terms the “Well-Bred Man”—white, male, aristocratic and preppy, athletic, good-looking, and personable. What was not part of the ideal was intellectual brilliance or academic prowess, and in fact those who cared about studying were social outcasts. Applying to the Ivies resembled applying for membership to elite social clubs.

    That changed starting in the 1930s when a group of educational leaders, the most prominent being Harvard president James Conant, worried that the United States was not producing leaders capable of dealing with the problems it would face in the future. Their solution was to move to an admission process that rewarded intelligence rather than family lineage. They believed that intelligence was the highest human trait, one that is innate and distributed randomly throughout the population. Conant and his peers believed the change would lead to a nation with greater opportunities for social mobility.

    Brooks seems far from sure that the change was positive for America. He acknowledges that “the amount of bigotry—against women, Black people, the LGBTQ community—has declined” (that might be debatable given the current political climate), but observes that the previous ideal produced the New Deal, victory in World War II, NATO and the postwar world led by America, while the products of the ideal pushed by Conant have produced “quagmires in Vietnam and Afghanistan, needless carnage in Iraq, the 2008 financial crisis, the toxic rise of social media, and our current age of political dysfunction.” Those examples seem cherry-picked.

    In the essay, Brooks cites a number of troubling societal problems and trends, all supported with extensive research, but the weakness of his argument is that he tries to find a single cause to explain all of them. That common denominator is what he calls “meritocracy.”

    Meritocracy, a society with opportunities based on merit, is an appealing concept in theory, but defining merit is where things get sticky. Merit may be similar to Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart’s description of pornography, in that you know it when you see it. Does merit consist of talent alone? Talent combined with work ethic? Talent, work ethic and character?

    Merit is in the eye of the beholder. If I was admitted to an Ivy League university, it was obviously because I had merit. If someone else, especially someone from an underrepresented population, got the acceptance instead of me, factors other than merit must have been at play. If two candidates have identical transcripts but different SAT scores, which one possesses more merit? Complicating the discussion is the fact that many things cited as measures of merit are in fact measures of privilege.

    For Brooks, Ivy League meritocracy involves an overreliance on intelligence and academic achievement, to the detriment of noncognitive skills that are more central to success and happiness in life. He argues that “success in school is not the same thing as success in life,” with success in school primarily being individual while success in life is team-based. He quotes Adam Grant’s argument that academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence.

    Ultimately, he argues that “meritocracy” has spurred the creation of “an American caste system,” one in which “a chasm divides the educated from the less well-educated,” triggering “a populist backlash that is tearing society apart.” Yet Brooks’s beef is not so much with meritocracy as it is with a mindset that he attributes to Conant and his brethren. He equates meritocracy with a belief in rationalism and social engineering that assumes that anything of value can be measured and counted. What he is criticizing is something different from meritocracy, or at least reflects a narrow definition of meritocracy.

    Even if we don’t agree with Brooks’s definitions, or the implication that Ivy League admission policies are responsible for the ills of society, his article raises a number of important questions about the college admission process at elite colleges and universities.

    First, is the worship of standardized testing misplaced? The SAT became prominent in college admission at around the same time that Conant and others were changing the Ivy League admission paradigm. They believed that intelligence could be measured and latched onto the SAT as a “pure,” objective measure of aptitude. Today, of course, we recognize that test scores are correlated with family income and that scores can be manipulated through test preparation. And the “A” in SAT no longer stands for aptitude.

    Do we measure what we value or do we value what we can measure? Brooks criticizes the Ivies for focusing on academic achievement in school at the expense of “noncognitive skills” that might be more important to success in life after college, things like curiosity, relationship-building skills and work ethic. He’s right, but there are two reasons for the current emphasis. One is that going to college is going to school, so an admission process focused on scholastic academic achievement is defensible. The other is that we haven’t developed a good mechanism for measuring noncognitive skills.

    That raises a larger question. What do we want the admission process to accomplish? The SAT is intended to predict freshman year college GPA (in conjunction with high school grades). Is that a satisfactory goal? Shouldn’t we have a larger lens, aiming to identify those who will be most successful at the end of college, or after college? Should we admit those with the greatest potential, those who will grow the most from the college experience, or those who will make the greatest contribution to society after college?

    Brooks questions elite colleges’ preferences for “spiky” students over those who are well-rounded. Is a student body full of spiky students really better? An even more important question arises from a distinction Brooks made some years ago between “résumé virtues” and “eulogy virtues.”

    Does the elite college admission process as currently constituted reward and encourage students who are good at building résumés? A former student attending an elite university commented that almost every classmate had done independent academic research and started a nonprofit. Do students aspiring to the Ivies choose activities because they really care about them or because they think they will impress admission officers, and can admission officers tell the difference? What is the consequence of having a student body full of those who are good at playing the résumé-building game?

    There is one other issue raised by Brooks that I find particularly important. He argues that those who are successful in the elite admission process end up possessing greater “hubris,” in that they believe their success is the product of their talent and hard work rather than privilege and luck. Rather than appreciating their good fortune, they may believe they are entitled to it. That misconception may also fuel the populist backlash to elites that has increased the division within our country.

    I don’t buy Brooks’s definition of meritocracy or his contention that the Ivy League “broke” America, but his article nevertheless merits reading and discussion.

    Jim Jump recently retired after 33 years as the academic dean and director of college counseling at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, Va. He previously served as an admissions officer, philosophy instructor and women’s basketball coach at the college level and is a past president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. He is the 2024 recipient of NACAC’s John B. Muir Excellence in Media Award.

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  • Rutgers cancels HBCU event to align with Trump DEI orders

    Rutgers cancels HBCU event to align with Trump DEI orders

    The virtual mini-conference sponsored by Jobs for the Future was scheduled for Jan. 30.

    The Rutgers University Center for Minority Serving Institutions announced Thursday that it has canceled an upcoming virtual conference about registered apprenticeship programs as a result of President Trump’s executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

    “We were very excited to bring the HBCUs and Registered Apprenticeship Mini-Conference to you next week,” said the email sent to registered attendees. “Unfortunately, due to President Trump’s Executive Orders … we have been asked to cease all work under the auspices of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility HUB at Jobs for the Future, which the U.S. Department of Labor funds.”

    Jobs for the Future, an organization focused on helping college and workforce leaders create equitable economic outcomes for students, runs a national innovation hub focused on improving access to registered apprenticeships for women, people of color and other underrepresented groups.

    Located in New Jersey, a blue state for more the 30 years, Rutgers has not faced pressure from state legislators to dismantle DEI. But the cancellation demonstrates the leverage and power the federal government can hold over colleges and universities by threatening to pull funding from programs that don’t comply with the president’s demands.

    It’s just the kind of reaction higher ed policy experts and DEI advocates predicted as a result of the Republican agenda.

    “That wariness and sort of pre-emptive compliance, even absent direct threats from the federal or state government, might be somewhat universal,” Brendan Cantwell, a professor of education at Michigan State University, told Inside Higher Ed.

    “These leaders will be worried about losing their federal funding, which is exactly what DEI opponents want,” added Shaun Harper, a professor of education, business and public policy; the founder of the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center; and an Inside Higher Ed opinion contributor.

    More cancellations are anticipated in the weeks and months to come as the Trump administration continues to issue executive orders. For instance, Trump’s growing team at the Department of Education announced a series of actions Thursday related to eliminating DEI.

    “The Department removed or archived hundreds of guidance documents, reports, and training materials that include mentions of DEI from its outward facing communication channels [and] put employees charged with leading DEI initiatives on paid administrative leave,” agency officials said in a news release. “These actions are in line with President Trump’s ongoing commitment to end illegal discrimination and wasteful spending across the federal government. They are the first step in reorienting the agency toward prioritizing meaningful learning ahead of divisive ideology in our schools.”

    Other actions the department has taken include:

    • Dissolving the department’s Diversity and Inclusion Council.
    • Terminating the Employee Engagement Diversity Equity Inclusion Accessibility Council within the Office for Civil Rights.
    • Canceling ongoing DEI training and service contracts that total over $2.6 million.
    • Withdrawing the department’s Equity Action Plan, which was released in 2023 to align with former president Joe Biden’s executive order to advance racial equity and support for underserved communities.

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  • Four ways to help students return from a leave of absence

    Four ways to help students return from a leave of absence

    Some students may need to take a leave of absence for their mental health before returning to an institution. Here’s how the institution can help.

    Brothers91/E+/Getty Images

    In the past few years, more students have shared the toll their mental health can take on their academic pursuits. Recent surveys of students who left higher education prior to completing a credential or degree reveal that mental health challenges or stress are primary reasons why they discontinue their education.

    Some learners opt to take a pause, withdrawing from the university for a semester or longer to prioritize their health and wellness.

    To promote student completion and success, institutions can consider formal procedures and initiatives targeted toward easing the transition of re-enrollment after a voluntary mental health leave of absence.

    The background: Colleges have historically offered students the opportunity to temporarily unenroll to address health conditions, but only more recently has that definition expanded to include students’ mental health.

    At some institutions, students who withdrew found it difficult to return. Other institutions prioritized risk mitigation versus student success and pushed learners to withdraw rather than providing solutions.

    “Such policies and practices actually discourage students—not just the student with a mental health condition, but all others—from seeking help,” according to a 2021 report from Boston University and the Ruderman Family Foundation.

    A recent survey from the Princeton Review found 43 percent of colleges and universities now have an official support program in place for students returning from mental health leave of absence.

    However, there is little consistency in policies and practices regarding medical or psychiatric leaves of absence, according to the BU report: “Students are often left to confusing, conflicting information and sometimes, discriminatory policies and practices that make a return to higher education difficult.”

    State policymakers have worked to expand the conditions included in leave-of-absence policies at institutions to recognize mental health difficulties.

    In May 2024, Maryland passed legislation that expanded formal health withdrawal policies at public institutions to include mental health. The legislation also requires institutions to provide partial refunds for students who withdraw for physical or mental health reasons in the middle of the term.

    A 2022 bill introduced to the New York State Legislature would require university systems to review enrollment and re-enrollment policies for students who take extended mental health leaves.

    Students Taking Action

    Active Minds, a youth-led mental health advocacy group, developed a guide for students who are advocating for improved leave-of-absence policies at their institution.

    How to help: Some of the ways institutions assist learners are through:

    • Outlining the return process. The University of Southern California offers a step-by-step outline of the different offices a student must contact to re-enroll. Stanford University also created a Returning to Stanford booklet to answer frequently asked questions.
    • Consolidating resources. Many learners are unaware of the full scope of resources available at the institution. A centralized website, such as this one at Cornell University, can help students during their transition back to campus.
    • Providing coaching services for returners. Institutions, themselves or in partnership with outside organizations, can deliver intentional coaching for skill development and resource coordination to re-enroll learners.
    • Connecting students with peers. Supportive communities can help reconnect students to the institution and affirm their commitments to healthy habits, like engaging in social activities or demonstrating good study behaviors. Georgetown University offers a special support group, Back on the Hilltop, for learners who are returning from a leave of absence or who have recently transferred.

    Do you know of a wellness intervention that might help others encourage student success? Tell us about it.

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