Tag: reflect

  • Designed with purpose: Why campus restrooms should reflect the school behind them

    Designed with purpose: Why campus restrooms should reflect the school behind them

    Restrooms don’t have to be showpieces — but they also shouldn’t be an afterthought.

    Across campuses, every space tells a story. The student center. The admissions office. The lecture hall. Each one reflects the institution’s priorities, personality and pride. But too often, the restroom is left out of that story — treated as a utility rather than a touchpoint.

    That’s starting to change.

    Forward-thinking colleges and universities are reimagining what restrooms can contribute to the campus experience. Whether they blend quietly into the background or become a branded statement — they’re being designed with intention.

    To reinforce school spirit. To align with campus standards. To simplify operations across varied facilities. And most of all, to support a seamless experience for students, staff and guests.

    Because the restroom may not be the centerpiece of campus life — but it still reflects the care behind it.

    A Daily Experience That Deserves Design

    Restrooms are among the most frequently visited and most visibly judged spaces on campus by prospective students, visiting families, faculty, alumni, donors and staff. Their condition, look and functionality can either reinforce the university’s values…or quietly undermine them.

    In fact, nearly 60% of people say a poorly maintained restroom negatively affects their perception of an organization.¹ And while universities don’t compete on toilet paper, they do compete on experience, reputation and pride.

    That makes restrooms more than a maintenance checklist — they’re part of the brand.

    One Standard. Many Spaces.

    From dorms to arenas to academic halls, no two campus buildings are exactly alike. But consistency still matters for both the brand and the teams behind it.

    A welcome center might feature subtle brand cues or custom faceplates. A student union might highlight school spirit or student accomplishments. An admin wing may favor quieter design that blends in. The point isn’t sameness; it’s cohesion.

    So how do universities achieve that without adding complexity?

    They’re working from a flexible foundation — systems that adapt to each building’s needs while maintaining a cohesive experience across campus.

    That might mean:

    • High-capacity towel systems in athletic centers to reduce servicing during peak hours
    • Touchless, ADA-compliant dispensers in classrooms and libraries to support accessibility
    • Customizable faceplates in front-facing spaces to reflect branding or student life
    • Smart technology that tracks supply levels and helps janitorial staff focus where it’s needed most

    By choosing tools that support both visual customization and operational ease, campuses are creating restrooms that feel thoughtful, consistent and easy to maintain — no matter the setting.

    It’s not one-size-fits-all. It’s one strategy applied intentionally.

    Built to Work — and Work Hard

    Restrooms can look great — but if they’re hard to service, the system breaks down fast. On a busy campus with lean facility teams, every efficiency matters.

    Elevated doesn’t mean complex. In fact, the best elevated solutions simplify operations with:

    • Refill systems designed to reduce changeouts and user error
    • Configurations that match space and capacity without overloading custodial teams
    • Smart restroom monitoring that helps direct staff where they’re needed most
    • Soft-close and touchless features that create quieter, more seamless experiences

    The result: less downtime, fewer complaints, smoother campus operations. And all of it happening behind the scenes — just as it should.

    A restroom shouldn’t steal the spotlight. But it should reflect your standards.

    Whether you’re reimagining a flagship student space or refreshing legacy buildings, intentional restroom design can help bring your brand and your operations into better alignment — and create a more consistent experience, one space at a time. 

    Because small details send big signals — to students, staff and everyone who walks your halls.

    Explore what elevated could look like for your campus.


    Sources:

    1Bradley Corporation. (2023, February 28). Bradley survey illustrates why clean restrooms are good for business. https://www.bradleycorp.com/news/bradley-survey-illustrates-why-clean-restrooms-are-good-for-business

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  • REF panels must reflect the diversity of the UK higher education sector

    REF panels must reflect the diversity of the UK higher education sector

    As the sector begins to prepare for REF 2029, with a greater emphasis on people, culture and environment and the breadth of forms of research and inclusive production, one critical issue demands renewed attention: the composition of the REF panels themselves. While much of the focus rightly centres on shaping fairer metrics and redefining engagement and impact, we should not overlook who is sitting at the table making the judgments.

    If the Research Excellence Framework is to command the trust of the full spectrum of UK higher education institutions, then its panels must reflect the diversity of that spectrum. That means ensuring meaningful representation from a wide range of universities, including Russell Group institutions, pre- and post-92s, specialist colleges, teaching-led universities, and those with strong regional or civic missions.

    Without diverse panel representation, there is a real risk that excellence will be defined too narrowly, inadvertently privileging certain types of research and institutional profiles over others.

    Broadening the lens

    Research excellence looks different in different contexts. A university with a strong regional engagement strategy might produce research that is deeply embedded in local communities, with impacts that are tangible but not easily measured by traditional academic metrics, but with clear international excellence. A specialist arts institution may demonstrate world-leading innovation through creative practice that doesn’t align neatly with standard research output categories.

    The RAND report looking at the impact of research through the lens of the REF 2021 impact cases rightly recognised the importance of “hyperlocality” – and we need to ensure that research and impact is equally recognised in the forthcoming REF exercise.

    UK higher education institutions are incredibly diverse, with different institutions having distinct missions, research priorities, and challenges. REF panels that lack representation from the full spectrum of institutions risks bias toward certain types of research outputs or methodologies, particularly those dominant in elite institutions.

    Dominance of one type of institution on the panels could lead to an underappreciation of applied, practice-based, or interdisciplinary research, which is often produced by newer or specialist institutions.

    Fairness, credibility, and innovation

    Fair assessment depends not only on the criteria applied but also on the perspectives and experiences of those applying them. Including assessors from a wide range of institutional backgrounds helps surface blind spots and reduce unconscious bias. It also allows the panels to better understand and account for contextual factors, such as variations in institutional resources, missions, and community roles, when evaluating submissions.

    Diverse panels also enhance the credibility of the process. The REF is not just a technical exercise; it shapes funding, reputations, and careers. A panel that visibly includes internationally recognised experts from across the breadth of the sector helps ensure that all institutions – and their staff – feel seen, heard, and fairly treated, and that a rigorous assessment of UK’s research prowess is made across the diversity of research outputs whatever their form.

    Academic prestige and structural advantages (such as funding, legacy reputations, or networks) can skew assessment outcomes if not checked. Diversity helps counter bias that may favour research norms associated with more research established institutions. Panel diversity encourages broader thinking about what constitutes excellence, helping to recognize high-quality work regardless of institutional setting.

    Plus there is the question of innovation. Fresh thinking often comes from the edges. A wider variety of voices on REF panels can challenge groupthink and encourage more inclusive and creative understandings of impact, quality, and engagement.

    A test of the sector’s commitment

    This isn’t about ticking boxes. True diversity means valuing the insights and expertise of panel members from all corners of the sector and ensuring they have the opportunity to shape outcomes, not just observe them. It also means recognising that institutional diversity intersects with other forms of diversity, including protected characteristics, professions and career stage, which must also be addressed.

    The REF is one of the most powerful instruments shaping UK research culture. Who gets to define excellence in the international context has a profound impact on what research is done, how it is valued, and who is supported to succeed. REF panels should reflect the diversity of UK HEIs to ensure fairness, credibility, and a comprehensive understanding of research excellence across all contexts.

    If REF 2029 is to live up to the sector’s ambitions for equity, inclusion, and innovation, then we must start with its panels. Without diverse panels, the REF risks perpetuating inequality and undervaluing the full range of scholarly contributions made across the sector, even as it evaluates universities on their own people, culture, and environment. The composition of those panels will be a litmus test for how seriously we take those commitments.

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  • Head Start turns 60: Alumni reflect on lifelong impact of early learning

    Head Start turns 60: Alumni reflect on lifelong impact of early learning

    In the six decades of Head Start’s existence, it has served nearly 40 million children and their families. But supporters and alumni are quick to point out that the program for children from low-income families provides more than preschool opportunities. 

    “It is more than child care and early learning, it’s a lifeline for children and families in our communities who face the steepest hills to climb to achieve success in school and in life,” said Yasmina Vinci, executive director for the National Head Start Association, during a call last month with hundreds of supporters and advocates. The association represents program leaders, children and families. 

    Head Start serves children from various backgrounds

    In the mid to late 1960s when Head Start began, about 75% of the children served were not White, which is similar to these demographics from fiscal year 2023.

    “If we want to build a healthier, freer and more fair America, we have to start by giving every child a real shot, regardless of circumstances at birth, a head start in life, and that’s why programs like Head Start matter,” Vinci said.

    The call was held to rally opposition to an anticipated request from the Trump administration to eliminate Head Start in the fiscal year 2026 budget request. However, despite those reports, the program was not dropped in the top-line FY 2026 budget proposal released May 2. A more detailed budget proposal is expected within the next month.

    The Trump administration has been cutting spending across federal agencies to reduce what it considers waste and to give states more fiscal authority. Some Republicans in Congress and other critics have called Head Start unsafe and ineffective at boosting children’s academic performance.

    But NHSA and other Head Start supporters point to research and anecdotal stories demonstrating positive academic, social and economic returns from the long-time program

    When President Lyndon B. Johnson announced the launch of Project Head Start on May 18, 1965, he said rather than it being a federal effort, the program was a “neighborhood effort.”

    Head Start funded enrollment grew over past 60 years

    In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to dips in funded enrollment.

    Today, Head Start serves nearly 800,000 infants, toddlers and preschool children a year. More than 17,000 Head Start centers operate nationwide. A companion Early Head Start program provides prenatal services.

    As the 60th anniversary approached, K-12 Dive spoke with three women who spent their preschool years in Head Start programs in the 1970s. They reminisced about supportive teachers, tasty meals and favorite songs. They also shared how that educational foundation impacted their life journeys, including how they still hold connections to the program.

    Sonya Hill has vivid memories of attending Head Start as a preschooler in the 1970s in Orlando, Fla. Now director of the same program, she’s pictured greeting children after speaking to Orlando government officials about the services on Oct. 8, 2024.

    Sonya Hill

    Sonya Hill

    Sonya Hill’s connection to Head Start has been a full-circle experience — from her participation as a child living in Orlando, Florida, in the 1970s to her role today as director of the area’s same Orange County Head Start program. 

    Hill, 52, has vivid memories of her own Head Start experience. One of her favorite activities was when all the children held onto the ends of a colorful parachute. They would shake it and run under it. Another special moment came when her father, who worked in a bakery, visited her class for a special event featuring community helpers — and brought doughnuts for all the students. 

    Her favorite teacher, she said, was Shirley Brown. 

    Years later, right after graduating from South Carolina State University with a degree in social work in 1994, Hill was waiting to be interviewed for a job at a Head Start program. Somehow she hadn’t made the connection that this was the same program she had attended as a child. And then Brown walked around the corner.

    “I hugged her so hard. It was the same feeling of hugging her when I was in her Head Start classroom, and I couldn’t believe it,” Hill said. 

    Hill got the job, and for the past 30 years, she has worked in various roles there, eventually being named director in 2016.

    As leader of the program, she travels to the Florida state capital and to Washington, D.C, to advocate for Head Start services, telling lawmakers about former students who have gone on to college and careers.

    “I’m just thinking this is a program that has impacted so many people across the United States, but I know firsthand that Head Start works,” Hill said.

    She credits her childhood Head Start experience with helping her become the first in her family to graduate college and also to earn a master’s degree.

    Her family — which she notes extends today from her grandmother to children of her nieces and nephews — is “extremely proud” of her, Hill says, and she doesn’t take that lightly. “I know I have a lot of responsibility to my family, to my community,” Hill said. “Head Start truly gave me my foundation, and that’s why I’ve stayed here, because I owe so much to the program, and I get to see firsthand how it’s changed lives.”

    Toscha Blalock remembers enjoying the routines in the Head Start program she attended in the 1970s in western Pennsylvania. She is currently the chief learning and evaluation officer at Trust for Learning.

    Toscha Blalock

    Toscha Blalock

    As a young child growing up in the small town of Monessen, Pennsylvania, Toscha Blalock’s home life was fun and welcoming, but hectic. She lived with nine relatives, including her mother, Gloria Anderson, who had Blalock when she was a teenager. As the youngest, Blalock remembers the adults and her cousins caring for her by braiding her hair and playing games with her. Even at a young age, her family labeled her “the smart one.”

    But the family struggled financially, she said. Her mother, who had negative experiences as a student during desegregation efforts, sought out the area’s Head Start program for her daughter, determined that she would have a better education.

    As a Head Start student in the 1970s, Blalock loved reading books. She also enjoyed the school day routines of learning, meal time and napping. By the time Blalock was ready for kindergarten, she was reading above her age level. In 1st grade, when she wasn’t included in the highest level reading group, Blalock’s mother spoke to school administrators, and the young student moved to the higher level group.

    “There were a lot of experiences like that in the school. There was a challenging racial dynamic in the town, and I think that spilled into how children were treated,” said Blalock, 53.

    In high school, Blalock was one of only two Black students in her 89-student graduating class enrolled in college prep classes. 

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  • 6 higher education experts reflect on COVID’s sectorwide influence

    6 higher education experts reflect on COVID’s sectorwide influence

    In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, grinding life to a halt and severely disrupting instruction across higher education. Colleges are still feeling the effects of the virus five years later.

    We asked higher education experts to look back at the changes made and how the pandemic continues to shape the sector today.

    Their written responses are below, lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

    Chief content officer at Coursera

    Marni Baker Stein

    Permission granted by Caroline Bresler

    The pandemic made online learning mainstream in ways that were unimaginable in 2019. A global generation of learners who would likely have not experienced the online classroom now understand its potential, pitfalls, and power. While online learning’s ubiquity didn’t last, its impact on student preferences and university strategy remains. For learners, Coursera research shows that a clear majority of students now want their universities to deliver short-form, job-relevant, for-credit content, delivered digitally. Universities have had to respond to remain attractive, with an increase in micro-credential adoption, and further plans to accelerate uptake among university leaders. Without the economic pressures created by the pandemic, and the exposure to online learning it accelerated, both demand and uptake would have been slower and less pronounced than we see today.

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    CEO at National Association for College Admission Counseling

    Angel Pérez

    Permission granted by Melanie Marquez Parra

    We can’t talk about the impact of the pandemic in isolation — multiple converging factors have created a perfect storm for higher education. During the pandemic, we lost over a million students from the college pipeline — a loss the sector has yet to recover from. That blow, compounded by the ongoing FAFSA crisis, demographic shifts, and rising anti-higher education rhetoric, continues to destabilize institutions. Adding to the strain, executive orders and Dear Colleague letters coming out of Washington, D.C., are making it harder for colleges to move forward. Higher education is not just recovering — it’s fighting to remain relevant, accessible, and resilient.

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    Vice president for policy analysis and research at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education

    Patrick Lane

    Permission granted by Patrick Lane

    Five years after the pandemic started, data shows that there wasn’t a major impact on high school graduate numbers, though there may be about 1% fewer graduates in the future than previously projected. Whether these students choose to enroll in higher education at the same rates as they did in the past is a different question as the pandemic itself seems to have made some students less likely to pursue higher education. The bigger impact may come from learning loss and chronic absenteeism in K-12. Students who were in early grades when COVID started are facing uphill battles and probably will not be able to make up that ground by the time they finish high school. Postsecondary education (along with employers) will have to grapple with this challenge — on top of overall changing demographics – for years to come. But there are options, including doubling down on developmental ed redesign, enhanced advising, and simplifying postsecondary pathways (among others). 

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    Executive director of Commonfund Institute

    George Suttles

    Permission granted by Chandler Stearns

    The pandemic forced colleges and universities to rapidly adopt online platforms for teaching and learning. The shift to remote learning has led to the widespread use of fully remote and hybrid models, combining in-person and online education. Relatedly, the pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities amongst student populations across the country. For example, students from low-income backgrounds faced greater challenges due to housing insecurity, lack of internet access, and limited access to technology. As we continue to learn lessons from the pandemic, it will be important to further leverage technology to enhance teaching and learning, while at the same time taking care of students across the socio-economic spectrum, recognizing that the student experience is just a part of their entire lived experience.

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    Head of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at University of Tennessee, Knoxville

    Robert Kelchen

    Permission granted by Robert Kelchen

    A key lesson that higher education leaders remember from the early days of the pandemic is that cash is king. Colleges that had financial flexibility were able to avoid layoffs and budget cuts, while institutions that were unable to access funds had to make painful cuts that permanently scarred their communities. The financial state of American higher education is more uncertain right now than even in the darkest days of March 2020, and colleges are starting to implement cost-cutting measures in order to avoid having to make even more difficult decisions down the road.

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    Executive director of WCET

    Van Davis

    Permission granted by Melanie Sidwell

    Even before the pivot to emergency remote instruction, the number of students enrolled in at least one distance education course was steadily rising. If you look at IPEDS data, that number has only accelerated since the pandemic. Many students, and some faculty, discovered that they liked the flexibility and opportunities that asynchronous distance education affords and have continued to enroll in that course modality. Institutions that offered very little distance education now find themselves responding to student demand and increasing their offerings. For many institutions, distance education is now a strategic part of their course offerings.

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