Math courses are often a barrier for students seeking to pursue a college credential, and for some, a lack of math curriculum during high school can make a STEM career seem out of reach.
A new course at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston serves as a stepping-stone for students who may not have had access to precalculus or calculus courses but are still interested in calculus-based learning. The university hopes the program will boost student enrollment and eliminate barriers to access for disadvantaged students.
What’s the need: The conversation about offering precalculus at Wentworth began in 2019, after university leaders saw that some students, despite having the same GPAs and high school transcripts as their peers, were less mathematically prepared, said Deirdre Donovan, Wentworth’s director of first-year math and interim associate dean of the School of Computing and Data Science.
At that time, Wentworth did not offer a math placement course, so all enrolled students launched at the calculus level.
Wentworth, like many colleges and universities, requires students to have already completed calculus coursework to enroll in specific major programs, which is “a barrier that can prevent otherwise qualified students from pursuing engineering and computing degrees,” Donovan said.
To complete calculus by the end of high school, students had to complete Algebra I in eighth grade, and not every student was ready, aware of or offered that course at their school, Donovan said.
Some high schools also push students to complete AP Statistics in lieu of calculus, and Donovan said this shift “can actually close more doors at STEM schools than it might open, because those AP credits can’t replace the calculus-based statistics required for engineering degrees.”
Campus leaders at Wentworth opted to review policies that were barring students from participating in STEM programs, starting with creating a math placement process and then developing a precalculus course.
How it works: In 2024, Wentworth removed precalculus as an admissions requirement for students, paving the way for the college to admit about 10 percent more students who might have previously received a conditional acceptance, Donovan said.
New students without calculus credit are now enrolled in a four-credit, first-semester course called Foundations of Calculus that helps them get up to speed. The investment in additional content hours is an indication of the university’s commitment to opportunities for students who may not have been able to enroll and succeed previously, Donovan said.
In addition to two hours of lectures each week, students also participate in two hours of labs that focus on engineering problem-solving skills, using real-world problems that are tied directly to a student’s major.
The course is also supported by embedded peer tutors who can address student questions, clarify confusing content and facilitate study groups outside of class time.
It was important to Donovan and her faculty team not to work from a deficit-minded perspective about students’ knowledge gaps. Language regarding the course and its content hours was specifically crafted to help students feel like they’re being guided onto an on-ramp, not held back or punished for not having precalculus experience.
The results: After the first semester, staff have seen promising results, Donovan said. “We are pinching ourselves that it went exactly how we had hoped it would go.”
In fall 2024, about 200 students participated in precalculus either because they lacked the course in high school or their placement exam results indicated it would benefit them.
Approximately 75 percent of precalc students passed their course in the first term, on par with national averages. When they attempted calculus in their second semester, students had similar passing rates to their peers who completed calculus in the first term.
University faculty and staff were encouraged to see that engineering programs received 20 percent more applications this year, signaling an increased level of interest in rigorous programs, Donovan said.
Fall-to-spring retention rates were slightly lower for precalc students, but that could be due to other factors, including students re-evaluating their chosen major or deciding whether they want to be at a STEM-focused institution.
The course has also expanded enrollment opportunities for students who otherwise might not have considered Wentworth. Overall applications were up 25 percent year over year this past application cycle, and deposits were up 30 percent, Donovan said.
What’s next: Student feedback from the first term has indicated a need for an additional credit hour of in-person, interactive lab work, which will be implemented this fall. The hour, which the university is calling a companion class, will function similarly to a first-year seminar, teaching students study skills and metacognition, as well as connecting back math concepts.
None of the downstream courses such as physics have undergone a curriculum change, requiring students to get up to speed in their first term to be successful over all in college. Students who complete precalc also may need to take summer classes to ensure they graduate in four years, but the university is looking to offer affordable online courses to accommodate learners, Donovan said.
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Erik Jacobsen, an associate professor of mathematics education at Indiana University, was nearing the end of a years-long project designed to address teacher biases with the goal of helping more students excel in math and pursue STEM careers. But that all stopped several weeks ago, when the National Science Foundation notified him that it had terminated the grant because it was “not in alignment with current agency priorities.”
Jacobsen’s grant, which was funding multiple graduate students and a postdoc, who are all now in limbo, is far from the only STEM education–focused grant the NSF recently canceled.
Of the approximately 1,500 grants the agency recently terminated, at least 750 came from the NSF’s education directorate, according to Grant Watch, an independent website that tracks terminated NSF grants. And that’s not the only shake-up happening at the NSF, which Congress created in 1950 to “promote the progress of science; advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; and secure the national defense.” The Trump administration has also laid off staff and proposed slashing the agency’s budget.
Additionally, NSF announced new priorities that include not funding projects aimed at recruiting more Americans from underrepresented backgrounds to the STEM workforce—a key focus for the agency historically.
The Trump administration says all these changes are part of its plan to reform the NSF, correct an alleged “scientific slowdown,” build a “a robust domestic STEM workforce” and “rapidly accelerate its investment in critical and advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and biotechnology.” The NSF sends billions to colleges and universities to support STEM education and nonmedical scientific research.
Researchers and policy experts are worried that the major cuts to STEM education programs will jeopardize the long-term future of the STEM workforce and leave the nation with a deficit of scientists and other skilled workers who are capable of carrying out Trump’s vision of winning “the technological race with our geopolitical adversaries.”
“There may be enough scientists to do the projects that are left. But for how long? They’re eventually going to retire and there won’t be this robust pipeline,” Jacobsen said. “There’s so many kids in our country that learn math and science every day. And the reason they learn it as well as they do is because of NSF’s historic investment in education.”
‘Nearsighted’ Changes
Since Trump started his second term in January, the NSF has upended its operations and spurred chaos and uncertainty within the research community. In February, the agency fired 10 percent of its staff—many who help university researchers navigate the grant application and funding process—though a federal judge later ordered the NSF to reinstate some of those employees.
“Their absence means that even if the budget is sufficient to fund new projects, distributing that money fairly and appropriately is going to be delayed if not made impossible,” Suzanne Ortega, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, said. While those and other changes are already “having immediate effects on graduate students, postdocs and early-career scientists,” she said there will also be “major downstream consequences” that won’t come home to roost for at least five years.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in STEM occupations is expected to grow 10.4 percent between 2023 and 2033, more than double the projections for non-STEM careers. But decimating the NSF’s education directorate—which funds many projects focused on researching how to improve STEM education outcomes starting in K-12—will make it harder to cultivate the robust STEM workforce Trump says he wants, Ortega said.
“This kind of research tells us how we can develop curricula that makes the pathway from a Ph.D. program into industry more seamless. Or how we can create mentoring networks or other kinds of connections that foster more rapid degree completion,” she said. “To forget that education research itself is vital to improving the system that our research enterprise depends on is very nearsighted.”
Adding to the challenges is the Trump administration’s crackdown on international student visa holders—who make up a sizable portion of STEM graduate students—which could make strengthening the STEM career pipeline increasingly difficult, said Holden Thorp, editor in chief of the Science family of journals.
“We desperately need more effort to produce scientists who are U.S. citizens,” he said. “Regardless of whether those programs are devoted to marginalized groups or anyone else, there’s people we need to encourage to go into science. Even if you don’t accept the reason why some of these programs were set up. It’s a disastrous economic strategy to get rid of programs—especially when they were in midstream—that would be growing the supply of scientists in the American workforce.”
As these changes keep coming, the NSF remains without permanent leadership. Sethuraman Panchanathan—the Trump appointee who had run the agency since 2020—resigned in late April, stating that he’d done all he could “to advance the critical mission of the agency.”
Earlier this month, the NSF announced a plan to cap indirect cost rates—which fund laboratory space and other research supports that can be used for multiple projects—for universities at 15 percent. At the same time, Trump’s budget bill proposed cutting the NSF’s 2026 budget by 55 percent, which includes cutting $3.5 billion from the agency’s general education and research budget, $1.1 billion from the Broadening Participation programs and $93 million for agency operations and awards management.
A coalition of former NSF directors and National Science Board chairs blasted the proposal, saying it “would thwart scientific progress, decimate the research workforce and take a decade or more to recover” and “fast-track China’s plans for technological dominance.”
Although Congress will have to approve Trump’s budget proposal later this year for it to become law, the NSF is already preparing for a future with less funding.
According to Science, NSF has eliminated 37 divisions across its eight directorates and is also creating a new oversight body of unknown membership that will have the final say in reviewing a proposal to ensure it doesn’t violate the agency’s new anti-DEI priorities. Additionally, the NSF announced earlier this month that it plans to cut more than half of its senior administrations and slash the number of “rotators”—academic scientists who serve two- to four-year terms to help the NSF choose which research to fund—as part of its cost-saving strategies.
That has big implications for NSF-funded initiatives like the Advanced Technological Education (ATE), which is a congressionally mandated effort led by community colleges designed to improve and expand educational programs for technicians to work in high-tech STEM fields that drive the U.S. economy.
“ATE is heavily influenced by rotators from community colleges,” said Ellen Hause, associate vice president for academic and student affairs at American Association of Community Colleges. “With the rotators on the chopping block, we would lose some of this expertise not only in STEM technician education, but in the community college space, which is a unique piece of the STEM workforce and STEM education.”
Many of the future community college students who may want to participate in a program like ATE in the coming years are just now getting exposure to STEM fields in their K-12 classrooms. And projects like Jacobsen’s (the math education researcher at IU) were supposed to help more of those students get comfortable with the academic material required to pursue such careers. But canceling his and other STEM education research grants midstream is already undermining decades of federal investment in STEM education, he and others said.
“We’d already done most of the work and spent most of the money,” he said. “By not having the final amount, we can’t complete our work, which means the public doesn’t get the benefit of the knowledge we would have learned. We still don’t know if the tool we were developing works. And now we’ll never know. It’s just wasting that investment.”
Commencement this year comes at a time of uncertainty for graduates, who find themselves entering a polarized country steeped in political and economic tumult. It’s a scenario many graduation speakers confronted head-on; actress Jane Fonda told the Class of 2025 that “the world has never faced anything like the challenges we face today.”
Much like 2024, this year’s commencement season has been marked by controversy, including at least twoinstances where student speakers were penalized for talking about the war in Gaza. Graduates also protested right-wing commencement speakers, including President Donald Trump himself, who spoke at the University of Alabama—which doesn’t traditionally invite guest speakers to commencement—and at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where his hourlong, meandering speech went viral.
But for many graduates, commencement went on as expected, with speakers doling out advice about how to survive—and even thrive—in these difficult times. Here’s what they had to say.
On the Current Political Climate
“Ignorance works for power. First, make the truth seekers live in fear. Sue the journalists and their companies for nothing, then send masked agents to abduct a college student who wrote an editorial in her college paper defending Palestinian rights and send her to a prison in Louisiana, charged with nothing. Then, move to destroy the law firms that stand up for the rights of others. With that done, power can rewrite history with grotesque false narratives. They can make criminals heroes and heroes criminals. Power can change the definition of the words we use to describe reality. ‘Diversity’ is now described as illegal. ‘Equity’ is to be shunned. ‘Inclusion’ is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends. There’s nothing new in this. George Orwell, who we met on the street in London, 1949, he warned us about what he called ‘newspeak.’ He understood that ignorance works for power. But then it is ignorance, isn’t it, that you have repudiated every single day here at Wake Forest University? … Can the truth win? My friends, nothing else does.”
“I could never have imagined 55 years [after I graduated college] that a young woman would write her truth in your paper and find herself kidnapped and arrested for speaking her truth, somehow. And be put in jail. I could not have imagined that, 55 years later. But let me tell you that all of America salutes your president and Tufts University for supporting that student, Ms. Öztürk. It’s so important, and there’s the point when you think about Rümeysa. She said something recently. She said, ‘I still believe in this country and the right to free speech and to due process.’ … And so I can tell you when you say, ‘Oh, we’re going down the tubes.’ No, we are not. I believe in this country. As Rümeysa said, ‘We believe in the people.’ In you. This country will be OK.”
—Freeman Hrabowski III, education advocate and former president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, May 18 at Tufts University
On Persistence
Maggie Rogers, pictured here in 2024, spoke at her alma mater, NYU, this month.
“My career arrived overnight. It’s this Cinderella story of a video—maybe you’ve seen it, maybe it was force-fed to you. If you haven’t seen it, I play a song for Pharrell Williams, he really likes it, his reaction goes on YouTube—ta-da, I’m famous. What people saw in that video was this moment of alignment; they saw a past life or the universe or whatever you want to call it come along and hold my hand to the flame. But no one saw all the hard work or all the times I almost quit. They never heard the songs that didn’t work or the shows that were just bad … I don’t know any artist that hasn’t considered quitting. But you didn’t get here because you wanted to do something easy; you got here because you wanted to do something great.”
“There’s a saying from one of America’s most practical minds, Benjamin Franklin, that I’ve used almost every day of my life: ‘Little strokes fell great oaks.’ It’s simple, it’s old, it’s absolutely true … I did run for governor in 1994 and lost, and one of the reasons I lost, I think, is I didn’t show my heart. I had five-point plans to cure every ailment in the state, but I didn’t really connect at a human level with people.
“So, in 1998, when I ran again, I vowed to campaign differently. For example, I went to visit 260 schools in a matter of a year. Back then, my views on education were considered pretty radical, so in essence I went into the lion’s den over and over and over again, trying to dehorn myself, I guess, with people that were skeptical of the ideas that I was advocating. I listened and learned, I shared my passion, I told stories of the challenges that teachers had. And I believe I became governor in 1998 because I was doggedly determined to show my heart. It’s easy to look at the world and believe that success happens overnight. We live in a world of immediate gratification, don’t we? Social media, movies, headlines often highlight the moments of triumph without showing the years of work, sacrifice and persistence that came before.”
“Don’t let anxiety or depression or hopelessness cause you to isolate. On the contrary, grow yourself a deep, solid community of people who share your values, have each other’s backs, check up on each other regularly, and be intentional about this. You know, in these uncertain times, we need to strengthen our ties to community, to our colleagues, our friends and family, because, more and more, we’re going to need this support for safety, for love, for help, for fun—let’s not forget fun—and for survival. You may not be aware of this, but since the 1980s, there’s been a concerted effort to promote individualism. You know, ‘I’m here for me and mine.’ And this shift to individualism is no accident; it’s being driven by people who want us disempowered. The myth of the rugged individual who needs no one is just that: It’s a myth created by stories through culture, told through culture, and the kinds of things that you all are going to be doing. So graduate students working with words and images—do the reverse. Encourage community versus individualism.”
Henry Winkler, pictured here in 2024, gave the commencement address at Georgetown University.
Harmony Gerber/Getty Images
“I was a negative thinker. I wanted to beat the system. ‘I can’t, I won’t, I’ll never, oh, she won’t go out with me.’ So, I tried to find the answer to negative thinking. I found Gurdjieff. He’s an Armenian philosopher who wrote a gigantic book. But he doesn’t want you to finish the book unless you understand him—so I didn’t. ’Cause I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. And I found a disciple of his, Ouspensky—also a big book. I got one sentence. OK, so, you’re walking to your dream. Never let your dream out of your brain. And when you decide what it is you want to do, just know it without a doubt, know it without ambivalence. So you’re walking to your dream, and you have your dream in your brain, and all of a sudden a negative thought comes in. Your shoulders drop, your head drops and then that negative thought, it blooms into a thesis of negativity. A negative thought comes into your mind—you say out loud, you say out loud, ‘I am sorry, I have no time for you now.’
“Yes, people will look at you very strangely, but it doesn’t matter, because it becomes your habit. A negative thought comes into your mind, you move it out, you move a positive in. For me, it is a Bundt cake with melty chocolate chips—no icing—and all of a sudden your shoulders fly back, your head flies up and you continue your dream. And then you get to stand here and talk to you.”
“[I was] sitting in a doctor’s office, facing one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had: continue living my life in pain, or consider having my leg amputated. In that moment, something clicked. I stopped letting the reality of my present circumstances dictate the potential of my future. I stopped coming from a place of victim mentality and realizing that everything happens for a reason and something bigger was going on. That shift in perspective gave me the courage to move forward, to make the decision to have my leg amputated and hope of a better future.
“Since then, I’ve come to realize something. Experiencing pain doesn’t disqualify you from discovering your purpose. It prepares you for it. The reality is, every single person here has lost something at some point, a dream, a loved one, a friend. You see, the promise in [James 1:2–3] wasn’t that trials would go away; it was that endurance would grow. That’s what trials do. They forge something in us that comfort never could. They teach us to keep going when nothing makes sense to believe, when hope feels distant, to see ourselves, not by what we’ve lost, but by who we’re becoming. That’s the hidden gift in pain, because it’s the journey, not the destination that shapes us the most. So if you’re in the middle of something broken, don’t run from it. Embrace it. Life is hard, but the journey is worth it.”
Rep. Jasmine Crockett spoke at the Southern University of New Orleans, an HBCU in Louisiana.
“I will start by saying your existence as a graduate of this HBCU alone is and will be seen as a resistance. Let me break it down this way: They never wanted us to be educated. This isn’t false. It is absolutely a fact. I know y’all know the history, but there is something special in this moment in time to be allowed to tell the story in the midst of the many haters and agitators being elevated to the highest positions of power and trying to use an old-school eraser—emphasis on old-school. You know, the old pink one? They want to use that old-school eraser to erase us. They have no idea that this big pink eraser can’t erase what was written in blood. Blood that was shed by the many who bled so that brighter days like this could come.
“Much like the creation of this school, nothing in this life will be given to you. You will always walk into spaces due to your meritocracy. And even the spaces they seek to disallow you from, just know that they fear your greatness. You see, in 1956, Act 28 of the Louisiana Legislature established SUNO, but only after local African American leaders in the ’40s pushed for public college for Black students during segregation. Turn to your neighbor and say, ‘SUNO wasn’t created out of generosity.’ [graduates repeat] ‘It was created out of segregation.’ [graduates repeat] You see, they sought to build barriers. But SUNO built beginnings.”
“So, you might wonder why I’m speaking here instead of at the business school. Well, it’s because the business school got Snoop Dogg. Hard to compete with Snoop. Even though I did later go to business school, I could not have navigated the business world the way I did without the liberal arts education I earned right here. USC is where I discovered what I liked and what I didn’t. I did not, for example, like writing. That’s ironic for the CEO of a publishing company, I know. Eventually I came around.
“Physics, though, that hooked me right away … Physics instilled something in me that was more valuable than equations and theories. It gave me confidence. It became second nature to think, ‘I don’t know how to solve this problem, but I do know that I will figure out how to solve it.’ And that, Trojans, is what your USC education is giving you. More than a degree, more than a line on a résumé. It’s equipped you with a way of thinking. You now know how to distinguish between fact and fiction, how to analyze and approach problems, how to craft arguments, and how to lead. And whether you know it or not, whether you study law or literature, physics, philosophy, political science or the lab-based kind of science, and whether it took you, like me, an extra year to finish quantum mechanics—that’s a true story—you now have the confidence to navigate the unknowns of life.”
“The artist de Kooning said, ‘The problem with being poor is that it takes up all your time.’ I came here as a scholarship kid, first-gen, loaded up with Pell Grants, work-study, which is actually quite isolating. I never went on a spring break. I never studied abroad. I never had an unpaid internship. I needed all my time to be billable. I was privileged to look like a rich girl, a city girl, a girl who had ridden in a yellow taxi and should rush Tabard. But no, I had, in fact, never ridden in a yellow taxi and should be a Tri Delt. I found a rusted 10-speed bike in the basement of a frat house, tuned it up, rode it around for three years, and left it unlocked on 40th and Irving the day I graduated. Why was I in the basement of a frat house? You know why.
“The point is, I didn’t come to Penn to pursue a career in the arts. I came here to use the best tool for class migration that’s ever existed: higher education. And that was it. It was a low bar: be employable, hopefully well-paid. When people ask me when I knew I wanted to be an actor, my answer is, when I got paid for it. Was I passionate about it? Sure. Did it bring me self-esteem and joy? It did. But I was practical, pragmatic. But during my time here, I began to think differently. I was in control of my life, and I was working hard to build the confidence, the life skills, the connections and the grit to believe success at anything I devoted myself to was possible.”
University of Florida presidential pick Santa Ono could earn nearly $3 million a year if confirmed by the Florida Board of Governors next week, according to a copy of the contract proposal.
Ono’s proposed base salary for the presidential role is $1.5 million, an increase from the $1.3 million he earned at the University of Michigan before stepping down to pursue the Florida job. He could also earn 20 percent annual performance bonuses and a yearly raise of 3 percent.
In addition, the proposal includes a role for Ono at UF Health, where he will chair the board and serve as a principal investigator, overseeing a lab, which comes with a $500,000 annual salary. That role also earns a 3 percent annual raise and performance and retention bonuses.
Other elements of the contract, such as benefits and deferred compensation, bring its total value to more than $3 million a year if Ono is approved by the Board of Governors, which has called a special meeting for Tuesday to decide.
Ono, an ophthalmologist by training, would also receive a tenured faculty role in the UF College of Medicine.
The contract includes some unusual provisions. It requires Ono to work with the Florida Department of Government Efficiency “to evaluate and reduce administrative overhead, ensuring that University resources are directed to teaching, research, and student success while safeguarding taxpayer and donor investments.” In addition, he would be prohibited from spending “any public or private funds” on “DEI or political or social activism.”
Though the University of Florida Board of Trustees unanimously approved Ono as president earlier this week, he has faced opposition from conservative critics over past support of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Ono spent much of his public interview with the board this week articulating how he changed his mind on DEI. He argued that while he was initially supportive of DEI, he now believes such initiatives are costly, divisive and counterproductive.
Ono’s public about-face comes amid a campaign from anti-DEI activist Chris Rufo, who circulated numerous videos on social media ahead of the UF Board of Trustees meeting that showed Ono supporting DEI and speaking against systemic racism, which Rufo argued was disqualifying because it ran counter to the goals of Republican governor Ron DeSantis.
Other conservative figures have since leveled additional criticism at Ono, including state officials and Donald Trump Jr., who wrote online, “This woke psycho might be a perfect fit for a Communist school in California, but how is he even being considered for this role in Florida?” Trump Jr. also encouraged the Florida Board of Governors to vote against confirming Ono.
While DeSantis, who has wielded considerable influence over university hiring decisions, told local media that Ono’s past comments on DEI have made him “cringe,” he has not joined the chorus of conservatives calling to block Ono and has expressed confidence in the search.
Administrators at Duke University have devised a creative program to encourage medical students to practice mindfulness and take time for themselves during a rigorous and demanding course of study.
A partnership between the Office of Learning Environment and Well-Being and Duke Arts Create established a free workshop that takes place twice a month to provide students the chance to unwind using various artistic media. The events help students engage in new art forms, connect with their peers and learn skills they can apply to their careers and beyond.
In the Literature
A 2018 research study found that medical students who had greater exposure to arts and humanities had better empathy, emotional intelligence and wisdom than those who didn’t. They were also less likely to develop burnout. Another study showed that art courses reduced stress for students enrolled in medical school.
Crafting opportunities: Duke’s School of Medicine enrolls over 1,400 students in a variety of health-profession programs, including doctor of medicine, physician assistant, master of biomedical sciences and doctor of physical therapy programs, each with its own goals and accrediting body. Students represent a variety of backgrounds and experiences, so “there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for well-being,” said Jane Gagliardi, associate dean for learning environment and well-being for the medical school.
Medical school students are able to participate in wider campus events, but the programs often feel siloed or off-limits to them, Gagliardi explained.
Gagliardi first met Anna Wallace, who is the student engagement coordinator for Duke Arts, the university’s school of arts, at a student resource fair where they both had tables. Wallace had decorated hers with brown paper and crayons, allowing visitors to stop by and color.
Gagliardi realized how much something as simple as coloring could be a pick-me-up for students, and she created a partnership with Wallace to provide art workshops for those in the medical school.
Getting artsy: The free workshops, part of Duke Arts Create Workshops, take place twice monthly throughout the academic year on Duke Medicine’s Wellness Wednesdays.
Activities include watercolor painting, needle felting, poetry through text deconstruction, zine making and singing workshops. One notable art project focused on the Duke chapel; students used watercolors to decorate a freely drawn image of the chapel.
Students bring a variety of skills and talent levels to the workshops, sometimes surprising the staff.
“It’s the students you think are the most clearly science-focused who are also just brilliant at expressing themselves creatively and supporting their classmates and colleagues at doing those things,” Gagliardi said.
Some of the events are cohosted by affinity organizations on campus; for instance, the Lunar New Year celebration was conducted in partnership with the Duke Med Chinese Association, which taught students paper cutting and shared treats like boba tea.
Events have been well received by everyone who’s participated, Gagliardi said, but having high attendance isn’t a goal. Rather, Gagliardi hopes such efforts show students that the school cares about their mental health and well-being.
“I wanted an outlet to be free and let my creativity flow,” said Carly Williams, a Ph.D. student in the department of biochemistry, according to a Duke Arts press release. “I remembered doing watercolors as a kid and loving it, so this seemed like the perfect art session for me. And it turned out to be a relaxing two hours of painting and good company.”
One of the benefits of the program is that it’s fairly low budget and easy to implement, Gagliardi said, allowing the school to pivot and be responsive to student interests as they arise.
Holistic support: In addition to art workshops, Gagliardi heads various well-being initiatives across the medical school to support students and staff.
“Finding ways to maintain your humanity while pursuing your rigorous study is important,” she said, particularly in a field like medicine, in which students learn about illness, recovery and death. “Equipping people with skills and strategies to deal with distress is important to maintain a functional ability to learn.”
Each week, she hosts Granola With Gagliardi, open hours for anyone to stop by, pick up a KIND bar and talk with her.
Duke Medicine also regularly collaborates with Medicine in Motion, hosting events like power yoga, running or pickleball tournaments to promote physical activity and well-being.
In the future, Gagliardi hopes to connect additional student groups with Wellness Wednesday events.
Do you have a wellness intervention that might help others promote student success? Tell us about it.
Every day, in articles, podcasts and social media, I learn about American higher education.
I learn that it aggressively stifles ideas that deviate from a narrow leftist orthodoxy. I learn that it privileges identity and politics over merit and knowledge.
I learn that it is rife with antisemitism while serving as a safe harbor for people of color and LGBTQ+ people. I learn that Harvard, Columbia and other Ivy League universities are the prominent tip of a higher education iceberg that threatens to destroy our culture and country.
If that is all I knew about American higher education, I would support tearing it down.
I would think that American higher education, in anything resembling its current form, cannot and should not be saved.
However, because I am a college president and have the opportunity to engage with students, faculty, staff and other college leaders every day, I think otherwise.
Every day, I see students from myriad backgrounds and with disparate beliefs flourishing because they interact with one another in class, in the dining hall, in student residences, on athletic teams and in clubs. I hear about students whose understanding of the world is being pushed and transformed by faculty who expose them to new perspectives and new information.
Every day I interact with students and alumni who are achieving their full potential because our college and our donors provide financial aid that caps student loans at $27,000 over four years, which is less than the average new car loan. Every day I am reminded that racism, sexism and transphobia have not been eliminated from our classrooms or our campuses—despite seeing daily evidence of our efforts to ensure that neither race, religion, nor any other identity confers advantages or disadvantages on our students, faculty and staff.
It is because I see what college is every day, and not just what occurs on rare days on some campuses, that I know that ongoing efforts to tear down higher education are a travesty for our children and our country.
It is why I know that the actions of those who are rarely on campus, and those who are focused on scoring political points, represent existential threats to America in what will continue to be a world in which knowledge and technology dominate.
Much of the past 80 years shows what happens when the United States chooses knowledge over ignorance and decides to invest in its young people. After World War II, the U.S. made it possible for veterans, and then women, people of color and lower-income students, to attend college, raising the quality of life for millions.
Our government partnered with universities to develop a research infrastructure that became the envy of the world. Innovations transformed lives and society. Diseases were cured. People lived longer and healthier lives.
So, what confronts us now is a decision that will determine what kind of lives our children and grandchildren have.
Are there too many colleges and universities at current prices? Are there some faculty who are intolerant of views that are inconsistent with their own? Would some college curricula benefit from more engagement with the real world?
Yes, yes and yes.
But will future generations thank us if we destroy the higher education system that took generations to build? Will they be better off if we judge every faculty member, administrator and student by the actions of those on the fringe, or by what we observe at a small number of colleges? Will they be better off if we shift control of scientific and intellectual innovations, course content and pedagogy from scholars to bureaucrats and politicians?
For the sake of future generations and our country, we must find ways to convene a national discussion on the future of higher education. What are we trying to accomplish as a country, what part does each college play in that collective goal and how can we ensure the system is effective? What is right for the country is not the sum of the paths colleges set for themselves. It is not what colleges individually decide while trying to avoid existential threats from protesters, activist donors or state and federal governments.
We must continue constructive engagement involving representatives from government, boards of trustees, college leadership, think tanks, student groups, the American Association of University Professors and other critical constituencies. The result must be a plan and action.
As a soon-to-be former college president and the father of a future college student, I look forward to continuing to be part of this fight in the years to come. Those who sacrificed to create our great country, and those who will be impacted by our actions in the future, deserve nothing less.
David R. Harris will step down in June after seven years as president of Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. He will join Harvard Graduate School of Education in the fall as a president in residence.
Earlier this week, we announced a new partnership between the University of Michigan and Google to provide free access to Google Career Certificates and Google’s AI training courses for more than 66,000 students across U-M’s Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint campuses. These high-demand, job-ready programs are now available through the university’s platform for online and hybrid learning, Michigan Online. The courses and certificates help students to develop in-demand skills in areas like cybersecurity, data analytics, digital marketing, UX design, project management and foundational AI.
We’re both proud graduates of the University of Michigan. Our undergraduate experiences in Ann Arbor were transformational, shaping how we think, who we are and the lives we’ve led. There are countless ways to take advantage of an extraordinary place like U-M. But with the benefit of hindsight, one lesson stands out: Learning how to learn may be the most valuable thing you can take with you.
That has always been true. But it’s becoming more essential in a world where technological change is accelerating and the life span of a “job-ready” skill is shrinking.
A False Choice We Can’t Afford to Make
Today’s learners are navigating a noisy debate: Is a degree still worth it? Should they invest in college—or seek out a set of marketable skills through short-term training?
Too often, this is framed as an either-or choice. But our new partnership underscores the power of both-and.
A college degree is a powerful foundation. And when paired with flexible, high-impact programs like Google Career Certificates, AI Essentials and Prompting Essentials, students are positioned to thrive in a dynamic global workforce. This is not about diluting the value of higher education. It’s about enhancing it—by equipping students with the durable intellectual tools of a university education and the technical fluency to succeed in real-world roles.
The stakes are high. Nearly 70 percent of recent college graduates report needing more training on emerging technologies, while a majority of employers expect job candidates to have foundational knowledge of generative AI. As noted in a New York Times opinion piece by Aneesh Raman, chief economic opportunity officer at LinkedIn, the rise of AI and automation is reshaping the skills required for many jobs, making it imperative for educational institutions to adapt their curricula accordingly. This underscores the importance of integrating practical, technology-focused training into traditional degree programs to ensure graduates are prepared for the modern workforce. The world of work is changing rapidly. Higher education can and must evolve with it.
Rethinking What It Means to Prepare Students for the Future
This partnership is part of a larger effort at the University of Michigan to reimagine what it means to support lifelong learning and life-changing education. Through Michigan Online, U-M students already have access to more than 280 open online courses and series created by faculty in partnership with the Center for Academic Innovation, as well as thousands of additional offerings from universities around the world. These new certificates and AI courses deepen that commitment, creating new on-ramps to opportunity for every student, regardless of background or campus.
Through Google’s flexible online programs, we’ve seen how high-quality, employer-validated training can make a meaningful difference. More than one million learners globally have completed Google Career Certificates, and over 70 percent report a positive career outcome—such as a new job, raise or promotion—within six months of completion. Google’s employer consortium, including more than 150 companies like AT&T, Deloitte, Ford, Lowe’s, Rocket Companies, Siemens, Southwest, T-Mobile, Verizon, Wells Fargo and Google itself, actively recruits from this pool of talent. Google partners with over 800 educational institutions in all 50 states, including universities, community colleges and high schools, to help people begin promising careers in the Google Career Certificate fields.This new partnership extends these opportunities to U-M students to further support career readiness.
By offering accessible, skill-based programs like the Google Career Certificates, we aim to provide additional scaffolding for student success and career readiness, alleviating some of the pressures associated with traditional academic routes and recognizing diverse forms of achievement.
An Invitation to Higher Ed and Higher Ed Ecosystem Leaders
We believe this partnership is a model for how industry and education can come together to create scalable, inclusive and future-forward solutions.
But it’s just one step.
As we reflect on this moment, we invite fellow leaders in higher education, industry and government to ask,
How can your institution better integrate career-relevant skills into the student journey without sacrificing the broader mission of a liberal arts education?
What partnerships or platforms might allow your students to benefit from both a degree and credentials with market value?
In an era defined by AI, how will your institution ensure students are not just informed users of new tools, but thoughtful, responsible and empowered innovators?
How can your institution or organization expand equitable access to high-value learning opportunities that lead to social and economic mobility?
What role should public-private partnerships play in shaping the future of education, work and innovation, and how can we design them for long-term impact?
The path forward isn’t a binary choice. It’s a commitment to both excellence and access, both degrees and skills, both tradition and transformation.
We’re honored to take this step together. And we look forward to learning alongside our students and our peers as we navigate what’s next. In a rapidly shifting higher education environment, we see reason for optimism: opportunities to reimagine student success, forge lasting strategic partnerships and strengthen the bridge between higher education and the future of work.
James DeVaney is special adviser to the president, associate vice provost for academic innovation and the founding executive director of the Center for Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan.
I’d be hard-pressed to find any person in higher ed who has had a larger influence on my own thinking than James Lang. Many folks will know Jim from his books like Cheating Lessons, Small Teaching and Distracted. He’s consistently ahead of the curve when it comes to identifying a problem in teaching and learning spaces—academic dishonesty, class disengagement, student attention problems—and proposing remedies that instructors can explore and make use of for themselves.
His new book, Write Like You Teach: Taking Your Classroom Skills to a Bigger Audience, part of the University of Chicago Press series of guides to writing, editing and publishing, is the best book I’ve ever seen for showing academics how to translate their current skills and practices to another audience and purpose. I’m excited by this book because we need as many academics as possible putting their voices into the world, not just because they have so many interesting and worthwhile things to say as individuals, but because it also helps remind everyone about the value of institutions where this kind of work happens.
I had a great time talking to Jim over email. This Q&A even breaks some news on Jim’s next book, too.
Jim Lang is a professor of the practice at the Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Notre Dame, and an emeritus professor of English at Assumption University. He’s the author of multiple books, including Small Teachingand Distracted, and a longtime columnist for The Chronicle of Higher Education. You can follow him on Substack at A General Education or connect with him on LinkedIn.
John Warner: One of my favorite initial questions for people who write is if they enjoy writing. So that’s my question: Do you enjoy writing?
James Lang: “Enjoyment” doesn’t seem like the right word for my feelings about writing. Writing has always been the activity that drives and gives meaning to my life. It helps me make sense of the world; if I have deep questions about the purpose of my life, or questions about anything important, I seek answers through writing, both within my published work and in my various notebooks. I have always been a very curious person who gets excited about learning new things, so writing has always been a way to satisfy those curiosities and push me into new places in my life.
If I focus specifically on the emotion of enjoyment … I hate to admit it, but I don’t seem to enjoy the actual writing process quite as much as I used to. I think I had a more unreserved embrace of writing when I was younger, when I felt like I had a lot to say and was confident that I had the ability to say it. I think both of those feelings have diminished, which I attribute in equal parts to the stroke I had a few years ago and to my age. I had to learn to speak and write again after my stroke, and while I have regained all of the words and writing skills I had before, I have to work a little harder than I used to [to] call them up and apply them. But even beyond the stroke, I guess I feel less of a desire to announce my ideas confidently to the world than I once felt. I have a great family, lots of friends and ongoing interests in many areas of my life. As my appreciation for those things has increased, the available real estate in the enjoyment part of my brain has shrunk slightly.
But the key word in that sentence is “slightly.” I do still take much pleasure from finding the perfect word, crafting a great sentence or launching a new essay or book. Writing still fills my life with meaning, and I could never envision my life without writing, or at least the desire to write, being part of who I am.
Q: What you describe sounds a bit like a winding down or maybe a shift in focus? I often say about myself that I’m never going to retire because I can’t imagine not reading and writing, which is both my pleasure and my work. But I do sometimes wonder if there’s a space to do less of it, if that makes sense. But as you note, it seems impossible to shut off that curiosity that drives those activities.
Where does that curiosity come from for you? You’ve had a varied career and it seems like every so often you shifted gears. Was that necessity or design or something else?
A: It comes from both a negative and a positive place. The negative place is that I do get bored of routines in any form, and when I feel like my life has fallen into a routine place, I start getting this itch to break it. I received tenure in the usual time frame, and it was only a couple of years after that I was seeking a new challenge, so I applied to direct our honors program. I enjoyed that work tremendously, but then once again sought a change and founded a new teaching center on campus. Right after the pandemic, based on the success of Small Teaching and Distracted, I decided to give myself a new challenge: give up tenure and try to make it with a mix of writing, speaking and adjunct teaching. That plan was upended by my long medical ordeal, but even after I was able to return to that life, I realized that I missed deeply having a home on a campus, which led me to Notre Dame. So that has definitely been a pattern in my career and in my life.
For the positive explanation for this restlessness, I would point to something my wife (an elementary school teacher) told me about the kids who come into her classrooms each year. She says that while we might be all born curious, by the time children get into school, they are already separating in terms of how much curiosity they bring to school. The differentiating factor she sees is how much exposure kids have to different kinds of life experiences. The kids who sit in their bedroom on their parents’ tablets all day or play video games in their rooms just don’t see as much of the world, and they aren’t being prompted to ask questions, wonder and explore. The ones who come in curious are the ones whose parents have deliberately tried to expose them to new things in some form—trips, walks outside, reading aloud, giving them books, etc.
When I heard that, I realized that I had been raised as one of those latter kids. My mother was also an elementary school teacher, but her best years were in preschool. She had a special love, and special gift, for very young children. And while I have only a few memories of my preschool years, I know from seeing how she interacted with my children that I must have been raised to become a curious person.
Q: I had a mini epiphany while reading the opening section of Write Like You Teach, which is that good teachers and good writers think of the needs of their audience (students/readers) first. This is something I think I’ve always done as a teacher, perhaps because I was a writer before I was a teacher, but you make it pretty explicit and then give it a little specific flesh. When did this connection first come to you?
A: I actually can’t quite remember where that specific connection came from. I do know that this book really came out of my desire to write some more about attention, the subject of my previous book. I have written books about several major issues in teaching and learning, and some of them I finished and felt like I was done with that topic. That wasn’t true for attention. The more you read and learn about attention, the more you realize how it has a part in almost everything that matters in our lives. Work, play, relationships, spirituality, learning—all of them demand our attention. They often go well or poorly depending upon the quality of our attention. And so I still find attention fascinating, and I keep reading and thinking and writing about it. I also just really enjoyed writing the book Distracted. So I think maybe I was trying to determine what else I could write about attention which would relate to another area where I have some interest and expertise.
Reading was the initial bridge to further thinking about attention. Anyone who reads a lot knows that some books capture our attention more than others. I think the teaching-writing connection that produced this book came from realizing both in classrooms and books, you have to be aware of the limits of a learner’s attention. Both as teachers and writers, we can either just expect people to pay attention or we can try to help them. I had made the case for the latter approach in Distracted and realized I could make the same case to writers: If you want readers to sustain their attention over the course of many pages, don’t just bang away at them with paragraph after paragraph of argument and idea. They need breaks, they need stories, they need space to pause and think—just as students do in the classroom. Seeing how attention informs both teaching and writing led to the basic idea of the book: The things we do in the classroom to help students learn can also be useful for our readers.
Q: In a note at Substack, Arvind Narayanan (coauthor of AI Snake Oil) offered a “hypothesis on the accelerating decline of reading.” It’s got a bunch of bullets, so I’ll do my best to paraphrase: Essentially, people mostly read for pleasure or to obtain information. These functions have been replaced by other things. Video is more entertaining than reading. We can use large language models to summarize long texts and deliver information to us. He theorizes that most people will be happy with the trade-off of increased speed/efficiency, the same way we’ve gravitated toward “shallow web search over deeper reading.” He’s worried about this but also believes that merely “moralizing” about this is not going to be helpful. (I tend to agree.) I’ve argued for years that getting students engaged with writing is a great way to get them reading, because reading is the necessary fodder for writing. Writing is also a tremendous way to cultivate our ability to pay attention. I’m wondering if you’re worried in the same way as Narayanan or if you have any additional ideas of what we can do about this.
A: First, thanks for sharing that note, which will be helpful to me as I am working on my next project—which I am happy to announce here. My next book will be The End of Reading?, which will be published by W. W. Norton, a publisher whose books I have been reading since high school and assigning in my courses for my entire teaching career. I’m so excited to dig into this project, but I am going to beg off on an answer here because I am just in the beginning of my thinking and writing and need more time to formulate my ideas. Put another way: Ask me that question again in two years!
Q: I have sort of the opposite problem as the folks this book is addressed to, in that I find it very natural to write to regular people—because that’s where I started—while writing for more formal or academic audiences is something I can struggle with. What is it about the experience of the academic that makes the transition you’re writing about difficult?
A: The problem here is that experts often lose track of what novices don’t know in their fields. The more we know in a discipline, the further away we get from our memories of what it was like to know very little about biology or literature or politics. When academics write to each other, they can assume their readers know certain things: basic facts, theories, common examples or cases, histories, major players in the field. Let’s say I’m a scholar of Victorian literature and want to write something about a work of Victorian literature. If I am writing to other scholars in that field, I can be confident that my readers know things I know: the expansion of the British Empire during that time period, the impact of Darwin and evolutionary theory on many writers in that era, the political turbulence and social unrest accompanying the Industrial Revolution.
If I am writing to a more public audience, I can’t assume my reader knows any of that stuff. In a classroom, I can always stop and just ask students, “Have you heard of this before?” If they haven’t, I can give a quick introduction. But as a writer with deep expertise in a subject, I have no idea what a more public audience knows or doesn’t know. Faced with that problem, I think a lot of academics just say, “Never mind, I’ll just keep writing to my people.” And that writing is important and can be great! I love a good scholarly book, and I still read them regularly. That kind of writing also helps people get and keep academic jobs, so I am not on some crusade to encourage everyone to write for the public. But I think the major sticking point for people who do want to expand their audiences is thinking more deeply about their audiences: what they know or don’t know, why they are reading your work, and what you want them to take away from the experience.
Q: Something I’ve often said about both writing and teaching is that they are “extended exercises in failure,” where failure means not missing the target entirely, but falling short of one’s initial expectations. I find this reality interesting, fascinating, really, because with both activities, you usually get a chance to try again. Does this make sense to you, or do you have any different frames for how you view these two activities?
A: No absolutely, and in fact that framework applies to all of the pursuits that give me satisfaction, including the other major intellectual pursuit of my life: learning languages. I did not start learning other languages until my first year of high school, where I started with Latin. Immediately I was fascinated, and so in my junior year I added ancient Greek into my curriculum. When I got to college, I took classes in both those languages, and then also took French. Over the next 30 years I have gone back and forth with those original three languages and also tried to learn Spanish and Italian and German.
I start every new language with this expectation that this time I’m going to really dig in and master this thing and become just totally fluent. The truth is that I have some basic knowledge in all six of those languages but know none of them particularly well. But I just love the fact that I can go back to any of them, at any time, and start trying again. I’m 55, and my brain has a different shape than it used to (because of the stroke), so I have to be realistic and acknowledge that it’s unlikely that I will ever become a fluent speaker in any other language than English. But gosh, I just love to keep trying.
As you say, teaching and writing are the same. You start off with such hope and expectation and excitement: This will be the best class I will ever teach! This essay or book is the one that will change people’s lives! But it never quite works out that way. Even when you teach a great course, not every class period will be perfect. Not every student will have a great experience. When I look at my own books, I am proud of them but can see places where I cringe and wish I had done better. But I don’t feel defeated by those feelings: They make me want to keep trying.
Q: The book is filled with practical approaches to writing for broader audiences, but I wouldn’t quite call it a book of “advice.” The word that comes to mind is “guidance.” Does that distinction make sense to you?
A: This distinction matters a lot to me, actually. I think because of the success of Small Teaching, which had a lot of concrete pieces of advice, people can view me as a “teaching tips” guy. I do love learning and thinking about specific practices in the classroom, so I don’t wholly disavow that association. Presenting theories and big ideas about teaching only gets people so far; they need to envision what those theories look like when they are standing in the classroom on Tuesday of week seven with 20 blank faces in front of them. Describing examples of specific practices helps them with that imaginative work.
But I always want people to understand that I am not advising them to do anything in particular: I am showing examples designed to spur their own creative thinking. Write Like You Teach, for example, has a chapter about the challenge of reader attention, and I do offer some very concrete pieces of advice based on writing strategies that I have observed in great writers. Ultimately, though, I want the readers of my book to move beyond these specific examples and develop their own strategies based on the principle readers are learners, and learners need support for their attention. With that principle in mind, I want people to analyze their classroom practices and see what translates to the page.
That leads me to the final thing I want to say: The first and final goal of this book is to help academics feel empowered and enabled to write for the public. The prospect of doing that kind of writing can be intimidating, and many of us shy away from it. But if I can convince academics of this one principle—a great teacher can become a great writer—then I hope they will be able to develop their own writing practices based on their experiences in the classroom.
Q: And finally, the last question I ask everyone: What’s one book you recommend that you think not enough people are aware of?
A: When people ask me to recommend a novel to them, or when people ask me to share my favorite novel, I always mention two: Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. I am cheating a little bit here because both of these novels were very well-known when they were published, sold many copies and won prizes. But they are both a couple of decades old now, and I believe that their themes are as relevant today as they were when they were first published. If you are a word person, choose Roy, whose prose comes as close to poetry as a novel can get; if you love a great plot, choose Smith, whose genius shines through the ebullience of her narrative construction. If I were forced to choose between the two, I would choose … I can’t. I just can’t.
In reflecting on my feelings about the advent of artificial intelligence in our lives, I must report they are mixed. I have the strong sense of the inevitability that this technology will meet and exceed its hype to alter the course of humanity, generally for the better. However, at the same time there is a measure of trepidation in my awe of the potential power and performance of AI.
I am receiving more frequent emails from colleagues reporting renewed intransigence among faculty regarding the push to adapt to AI use by students, to integrate the technology into teaching and to help prepare learners for the AI-enhanced workplace. I see parallels to the 1990s and early 2000s, when faculty also resisted the advent of online and blended learning. That resistance gradually subsided until the pandemic, when remote learning, albeit a less refined use of the technology, came to the rescue of universities.
In both instances, the resistance seems to be prompted by a general lack of understanding and comfort with the technology. This creates an elevated level of anxiety. It also requires a change in pedagogy to adapt to expanded capabilities in the hands of students. This involves reconceiving and rewriting lesson plans and, in some cases, learning outcomes for multiple classes. This can be time-consuming. Yet, this is not the first time that emerging technology has impacted teaching modes and methods.
I am fortunate to remember, as a faculty member, the advent of the personal computer in the late 1970s, graphing calculators in the mid-1980s, the rise of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, Google Search in 1998 and, in 2001, the launch of Wikipedia. Each one of these technologies demanded changes in the ways we presented and assessed learning. Questions of student integrity were raised in each of these cases. We also were urged to consider the students’ needs to become facile with these tools as they left to commence their careers. Imagine HR’s response to applicants who could not conduct an internet search or use a personal computer. The pressure was on to adapt to the emerging technologies while ensuring integrity.
Each of the technologies has become incrementally more sophisticated and more capable. They have required more and more attention by faculty to maintain a quality learning environment, and to prepare students for the rapidly changing workplace environment. In the case of AI, larger leaps in sophistication are coming on a weekly or monthly basis. The stakes are high. The integrity of the instruction, the relevance of the learning and the future employment of the students hang in the balance. The pressure is on the faculty to maintain quality and security in a rapidly changing environment.
Change in the AI field comes not on the rather pedestrian pace of new releases of the past, when we would see new versions released on annual schedules by just a handful of providers. Now, we must track 10 or 12 of the largest providers, as each of them releases new versions about every three or four months, or more often. Generative models still see improvements while agentic models offering awesome deep research and autonomous agents are flooding the market from around the world.
In a TED talk recorded last month in Vancouver, former Google CEO and chairman Eric Schmidt explained that, if anything, artificial intelligence is wildly underhyped, as near-constant breakthroughs give rise to systems capable of doing even the most complex tasks on their own. He points to the staggering opportunities, sobering challenges and urgent risks of AI. Schmidt asserts that everyone will need to engage with this technology in order to remain relevant. Meanwhile, in an interview this month, the current Alphabet/Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, on the All In podcast, affirms the commitment of the company to developing AI. He describes the evolution from Google search through AI, while it continues on the continuum of a discovery path of quantum computing and pursuing the concept of autonomous robots.
Just as Google is working to further develop and refine their multiple versions of AI, so too are many other major corporations and start-ups. What they come up with over the coming months and years will have a huge impact on higher education, the workplace, job market and society as a whole. The very nature of human jobs will change. Meanwhile, Elon Musk predicts smart robots will proliferate and will outnumber humans. His Optimus robots are to sell under the Tesla label, priced at $20,000 to $30,000. Of course, AI is central to the operation and functioning of such humanoid robots.
So, what might the workplace, or more specifically the individual human work assignment within that workplace, look like? In his recent podcast, Wes Roth reviews “The Age of the Agent Orchestrator” by OpenAI’s Shyamal Hitesh Anadkat. In the article, Anadkat describes the key new role that humans may play in the AI-enhanced workplace, noting that in the future “the scarce thing is no longer ‘who knows how to do that task by hand.’ The scarce thing becomes ‘who can orchestrate resources well’—compute, capital, access to data, and human/expert judgment.” That role he describes as the “agent orchestrator.” In sum, Anadkat writes,
“As always, the most important thing is to build something that users want. In a world where your marginal cost of expertise/knowledge goes to zero, your ability to turn cheap intelligence and expensive resources into valuable products is what will matter. i’m [sic] very excited to see the new companies, the new tools, and the new jobs that come out of this. Welcome to the Age of the Agent Orchestrator!”
The human will orchestrate what may be a very large number of highly capable intelligent AI agents. That may not seem as creative of a job as many of us now hold, such as authors, researchers, graphic designers, Web developers and the diversity of positions in designing and enhancing instructional resources. Yet, there is creativity, and certainly impact, in marshaling the vast resources at hand in the workplace of the future. Implicitly, the job becomes one of orchestrating abundant resources in conducting a symphony of interacting virtual workers to achieve desired goals. Doing so in the very best way calls upon higher-order creative thinking, strategic planning and execution.
All of these developments bring to mind the assertion of the pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus, who is credited with saying 2,500 years ago, “The only constant is change.” We can expect much more change in the field of AI over the coming months and years. It will be far-reaching and long-lasting. It will penetrate the very essence of what it means to be a human in a technological society. We in higher education cannot ignore this change or make it stop simply because it is inconvenient or incompatible to our teaching style. The money, momentum and weight of advantages of AI make it an inevitable advance to civilization. It is not stoppable. We must change our practice to meet the needs of the students and society.
I am left with a less-than-easy feeling to welcome artificial intelligence with all of its sweeping ramifications into our work, lives and future. Yet, at the same time, I know that we must move forward to meet that future, if not so much for ourselves, but rather for our students who will live the greater part of their lives alongside their AI companions.
In the late 1960s, a gifted folk music composer and performer, Joni Mitchell, released an impactful song titled “Both Sides Now.” Within that song is a phrase that has stayed with me through the decades: “Well, something’s lost, but something’s gained in living every day.” I suppose it helps to sum up my feelings about this new technology that is rapidly gaining momentum and promising to change our learning systems, workplaces, lives, identities and society.
Another former Florida lawmaker is stepping into a presidency after the University of West Florida Board of Trustees voted to hire Manny Diaz Jr. in an interim capacity Tuesday.
Diaz, who is currently Florida’s education commissioner, served in Florida’s Senate from 2019 to 2022. The former GOP lawmaker is a close ally of the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.
The UWF board approved the hire despite the objections of two trustees who raised concerns about transparency and argued that the process of selecting an interim was rushed. UWF’s current president, Martha Saunders, announced her resignation earlier this month after a board member took issue with social media posts from the university dating back several years. Zach Smith, who works for the Heritage Foundation, said he was troubled by actions that included encouraging students to read a book about antiracism and promoting a drag event in 2019.
Both board members and the public questioned Diaz’s qualifications at the meeting.
Trustee Alonzie Scott noted that it was unusual to select an interim without considering internal options and questioned how Diaz was elevated as a sudden candidate without a prior board discussion. He also pressed board chair Rebecca Matthews on whom she spoke with before advancing Diaz as the pick, though she did not offer specifics on those conversations.
“I don’t feel as if I have to run through that list with you today,” Matthews told Scott when he asked whom she had discussed the appointment with before adding it to the board agenda.
Scott also questioned whether the board had violated state sunshine laws.
“I can’t prove that any of us have violated the sunshine guidelines, but I can tell you everything that I read about all the different Florida news outlets, it appears that those decisions were made before this board even had a chance to even discuss. And to me, ma’am, that is a travesty in terms of how we operate,” Scott said, adding the process was “a disservice to the community.”
Matthews defended the hire, noting Diaz’s past work in K-12 education and the State Legislature.
Diaz will formally assume the interim presidency July 14. Despite tapping Diaz as interim, the board will begin a search for its next president, though some trustees argued that naming Diaz instead of an internal candidate to lead UWF would likely suppress the number of applicants.
Of five presidents hired at Florida’s public universities this year (including interim roles), Diaz is one of four who are either former lawmakers or directly connected to the governor’s office. Santa Ono, who was hired as president of the University of Florida on the same day UWF tapped Diaz, is the outlier.
