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By Sarah Larson, The New Yorker, October 25, 2021 I n August, Brené Brown, the Houston-based writer, researcher, professor, social worker, podcast host, C.E.O., and consultant-guru to organizations including Pixar, Google, and the U.S. Special Forces, met with a group of graduate students at the McCombs School of Business, at the University of Texas at Austin, to talk about emotions. Brown, fifty-five, was wearing a shiny maize blouse, jeans, and a black face mask. It was the first day of...

By Anna Varela, Georgia State University News Hub, October 19, 2021 Georgia State University’s Gerontology Institute has received a $1.58 million grant to support training nursing home staff across the state to improve care for residents with dementia. The training will emphasize new trauma-informed approaches and reducing the use of antipsychotic drugs to manage residents’ symptoms. The three-year project, jointly funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the...

By Usha Lee McFarling, STAT, September 23, 2021 F ueled by the massive health disparities exposed by the coronavirus pandemic and the racial reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd, health equity research is now in vogue. Journals are clamoring for it, the media is covering it, and the National Institutes of Health, after publicly apologizing for giving the field short shrift, recently announced it would unleash nearly $100 million for research on the topic. This would seem to be...

Fifteen years ago, Kenny Butler was at a low point. He had just been sentenced to life in prison. Now Butler, 47, is on track to earn his bachelor’s degree through a new program at Pitzer College, a small private liberal arts school in Southern California. The program, which began last December and which the school says is the first of its kind in the nation, is based on Inside Out curriculum — a type of teaching that brings college students and professors into prisons to learn alongside...

© UC Berkeley photo by Keegan Houser Challenge and crisis have shaped the lives of today's college students. Where do they go from here? Students by the hundreds were streaming through Sather Gate on a brilliant morning last week at UC Berkeley, en route to class, or the library, or the familiar comforts of the Free Speech Café. It was such a pleasant scene, so familiar, and yet for Brianna Rivera, a senior in English, it was skewing a little strange. She was walking to her first class of...

By Alejandra Salgado, Cal Matters, August 23, 2021 This past school year, Madeline Waters struggled to find a way to pay for food while also studying for classes. As a nutrition major at Sacramento State, she wasn’t unfamiliar with what skipping meals could mean for her academic career. So this spring she applied, yet again, for food stamps. “I was really hungry, and my brain cells were barely functioning,” she said. “I was trying to get food and I’d fill out the paperwork and I was trying...

By Isabella Bloom, The Sacramento Bee, July 28, 2021 California community colleges will get $100 million to help homeless and food insecure students as part of a $47.1 billion higher education spending plan that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed on Tuesday. The community college money for students in need would help fund meal donation programs, food pantries, CalFresh enrollment and other nutrition assistance programs. It would also help colleges offer on- and off-campus housing resources. “Student...

By Nicole Lynn Lewis and Vinice Davis, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, July 13, 2021 When Ariel Ventura-Lazo’s son was born, he had a lot on his mind. Would he be a good father? Would he be able to support his young family as the bills piled up? He had tried community college while working full time shortly after graduating from high school, but he didn’t do well and figured college wasn’t for him. Now that he was a father, he realized his job as a cash vault teller wouldn’t pay the bills and...

By Humboldt State Now, July 9, 2021 The Center for Equity in Higher Education ( CEHE ) will conduct research to reduce equity gaps in higher education and ensure that basic needs, such as food and housing, don’t stand between any student and a college degree. The CEHE is made possible by $453,400 in combined seed funding from the California State University Chancellor’s Office to launch and staff the center. The financial investment is a clear sign of the University’s commitment to...

By Council on Social Work Education, June 21, 2021 The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) joined with the Association of American Colleges & Universities and dozens of other associations to decry a growing number of states that seek to dictate how racism can be taught in colleges and universities. In the June 2021 statement , AACU, CSWE and others highlight efforts in at least 20 states to propose laws that would “suppress teaching and learning about the role of racism in the...

By Ross E. O'Hara, Psychology Today, June 14, 2021 Through three parts of my series, Nudges for Equity , I’ve written about how students of color can reframe their college experiences to mitigate identity threats. First, they can view stressful moments through the lens of a growth mindset and respond to those events with a challenge appraisal . Students can also reframe the college environment. Reflecting on how college aligns with one’s interdependent values , such as being motivated by...

Vulnerability, beyond all other devices of human expression, is a great equalizer for the conditions of our society. When we expose our struggles and trauma to those in power, it is not burdening weakness that they feel, but rather it is the accountability to change. While this fact remains, the courage of vulnerability is grappling with a losing battle to stigma and discrimination within cultures that were built to unite us. Despite this past year forcing physical vulnerability in more ways...