Today (Wednesday, May 22, 2019) marks the start of commencement season here at SJSU: three college ceremonies are on tap today, followed by two each tomorrow and Friday. Then on Saturday special ceremonies are held, such as “Black Grad” for African-American students. Graduation ceremonies are mostly fun, but they can also be nerve wracking. The College of Social Sciences ceremony on Friday should be fine…if it doesn’t rain. Send good vibes!
undergraduate students
“It’s easy to look around a college campus and think – there’s no digital divide here,” begins a blog post on a new digital divide by sociologist Jessica Calarco. Despite the ubiquity of digital devices on today’s campuses, Calaraco argues that college students are still very much divided into haves and have nots: “the digital divide on college campuses has shifted from one of technology access to one of technology maintenance. [In a recent study] we [found] big gaps in the quality and reliability of the technology students own.” Inside Higher Education also has a story about new digital divide research of Professor Calarco and others.
“It’s not surprising that elite schools report high graduation rates or alumni success.” So begins the description of MONEY magazine’s 2018-2019 Most Transformative Colleges article. The description continues: “What’s impressive is when a college helps students do far better than would be expected from their academic and economic backgrounds. We call this a college’s value add. For this list, we ranked colleges based on our exclusive value-added scores for graduation rates, earnings, and student loan repayment, eliminating schools with any negative scores or a graduation rate below 50%.” SJSU is #4 on the list!
The Pacific Standard recently posted an article about micro-grants for college students: “Often college students nearing graduation have bills that, while small, could prevent them from graduating. Many universities now offer micro-grants to cover such expenses, which helps keep such students on track to graduation.” Today is the first day of fall 2018 classes here at San José State University. Luckily we have a small micro-grant program as a component of the SJSU Cares program. As the article notes, this type of program is very beneficial.
The Posse Foundation recruits high school students with high academic and leadership potential to attend higher education institutions in groups as a strategy for decreasing isolation and improving student success. An alumna from the very first cohort in 1989 will soon become the first Posse member to become a college president. Awesome!
Each year in August Beloit College releases its Mindset List, which provides “a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students about to enter college.” The list for the class of 2020 includes items such as “Serena Williams has always been winning Grand Slam singles titles” and “presidents have always been denied line item veto power.” I wondered what the list for my graduation year (1990) included, but I discovered that the list was started in 1998, for the class of 2002. An interesting class project would be for students to create pre-1998 lists!
One of my favorite books of all time is Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. I used an analysis of it as my first published article. I enjoy speaking about it with students (the book, that is; I can barely remember an article written 22 years on the past!). Usually these students are enrolled in college, but three years ago a high school teacher in Iowa asked me to interact with her students while she discussed the book with them during Black History Month. After some brainstorming, we decided that she would set up a blog for us to interact: in groups students would post questions to me, and I would answer them. At the end of each response I posed a question to each group, which generated additional discussion. It was a lot of fun, and the students learned a lot, I hope. This year Kris asked me if I would repeat the project with her current group of students in AP Literature, and I readily agreed. Check out our discussions by visiting the course blog!
Two years ago I posted a note about January-term classes. SJSU’s “Winter Session” of January 2016 classes has come and gone, and I didn’t have much time to investigate it, as I was preoccupied by buying a house. Next year I’ll have to visit a few classes and talk to students about their impressions!
First Lady Michelle Obama and comedian Jay Pharaoh have partnered on a music video about the importance of going to college:
Awesome!
The news these days is filled with stories about students organizing on campus to improve the climate for those who are not members of traditional privileged college populations. This week I came across two very interesting — but very different — reactions to student activism. Check out “Jamar Clark: I’m Not Sure What to Say” and “This is Not a Day Care. It’s a University!” Which one resonates more closely with your views?
“It’s easy to look around a college campus and think – there’s no digital divide here,” begins a blog post on a new digital divide by sociologist Jessica Calarco. Despite the ubiquity of digital devices on today’s campuses, Calaraco argues that college students are still very much divided into haves and have nots: “the digital divide on college campuses has shifted from one of technology access to one of technology maintenance. [In a recent study] we [found] big gaps in the quality and reliability of the technology students own.” Inside Higher Education also has a story about new digital divide research of Professor Calarco and others.
“It’s not surprising that elite schools report high graduation rates or alumni success.” So begins the description of MONEY magazine’s 2018-2019 Most Transformative Colleges article. The description continues: “What’s impressive is when a college helps students do far better than would be expected from their academic and economic backgrounds. We call this a college’s value add. For this list, we ranked colleges based on our exclusive value-added scores for graduation rates, earnings, and student loan repayment, eliminating schools with any negative scores or a graduation rate below 50%.” SJSU is #4 on the list!
The Pacific Standard recently posted an article about micro-grants for college students: “Often college students nearing graduation have bills that, while small, could prevent them from graduating. Many universities now offer micro-grants to cover such expenses, which helps keep such students on track to graduation.” Today is the first day of fall 2018 classes here at San José State University. Luckily we have a small micro-grant program as a component of the SJSU Cares program. As the article notes, this type of program is very beneficial.
The Posse Foundation recruits high school students with high academic and leadership potential to attend higher education institutions in groups as a strategy for decreasing isolation and improving student success. An alumna from the very first cohort in 1989 will soon become the first Posse member to become a college president. Awesome!
Each year in August Beloit College releases its Mindset List, which provides “a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students about to enter college.” The list for the class of 2020 includes items such as “Serena Williams has always been winning Grand Slam singles titles” and “presidents have always been denied line item veto power.” I wondered what the list for my graduation year (1990) included, but I discovered that the list was started in 1998, for the class of 2002. An interesting class project would be for students to create pre-1998 lists!
One of my favorite books of all time is Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. I used an analysis of it as my first published article. I enjoy speaking about it with students (the book, that is; I can barely remember an article written 22 years on the past!). Usually these students are enrolled in college, but three years ago a high school teacher in Iowa asked me to interact with her students while she discussed the book with them during Black History Month. After some brainstorming, we decided that she would set up a blog for us to interact: in groups students would post questions to me, and I would answer them. At the end of each response I posed a question to each group, which generated additional discussion. It was a lot of fun, and the students learned a lot, I hope. This year Kris asked me if I would repeat the project with her current group of students in AP Literature, and I readily agreed. Check out our discussions by visiting the course blog!
Two years ago I posted a note about January-term classes. SJSU’s “Winter Session” of January 2016 classes has come and gone, and I didn’t have much time to investigate it, as I was preoccupied by buying a house. Next year I’ll have to visit a few classes and talk to students about their impressions!
First Lady Michelle Obama and comedian Jay Pharaoh have partnered on a music video about the importance of going to college:
Awesome!
The news these days is filled with stories about students organizing on campus to improve the climate for those who are not members of traditional privileged college populations. This week I came across two very interesting — but very different — reactions to student activism. Check out “Jamar Clark: I’m Not Sure What to Say” and “This is Not a Day Care. It’s a University!” Which one resonates more closely with your views?