21st Century Scholar

Next week, SummerTIME—our annual four-week intensive writing and college knowledge summer program for 90 transitioning college freshmen—starts. Besides helping out with the writing curriculum and the program logistics, I’ll be reviewing financial aid offers with students and troubleshooting any issues. As in previous years, I anticipate the usual breakdown … 75% of students will have [...]

Over 400,000 young people live in foster care in the United States. By the time a foster youth reaches high school, his likelihood of experiencing multiple residential placements is extremely high—most high school-aged foster youth have lived in over five placements. With each residential move, children are often required to change in schools as well. [...]

Because newly-minted Ph.D. graduates far outweigh the number of tenure-track positions [read about the sobering statistics here], many will have to travel if they want a job in academia. From my own experiences with friends and colleagues, graduate students deal with the possibility in different ways. Some have families and friends and roots. Travel is [...]

So here is a real e-mail that I received last week, I thought my response to it might be worth posting, so here it is. I’ve changed the name of the sender for privacy. Dr. Venegas: I am an English and AVID teacher at TW High School. I recently read your profile on the USC school [...]

As faculty members and co-directors of the Center for Urban Education (CUE) at the University of Southern California, we lead action research using CUE’s Equity Scorecard. The mission of our center is to create the “tools” needed for colleges and universities to bring about racial/ethnic equity in students’ collegiate experiences and outcomes. In the action [...]

AERA’s 2013 theme is centered on the issue of “poverty.” It is spurred by President Bill Tierney’s provocation that despite education’s ability to lift students out of poverty, schooling is often mired in economic relations surrounded by the debilitating effects of poverty. There are at least two senses of “poverty” invoked here, to which I [...]

There is a classic Abbott and Costello skit called “Who’s on first?” where Costello gets befuddled by the names of his friend’s team. We are close to getting into that situation without half as much humor in academe in terms of academic offerings. Not so long ago if someone wanted a bachelor’s degree we would [...]

A group of four students sit huddled around a lunchtime table at a Los Angeles high school close to USC. It’s the middle of fourth period. I’m zipping through the quad after just finishing a fast-paced playtest session of the new game we’ve been developing with our collaborators from USC’s Game Innovation Lab. The new [...]

When I look back on the events of education in general and higher education in particular this year I am struck by how much my view of these events depends on how far I look forward. If I am only concerned about the immediate present then the year turned out pretty okay. President Obama was [...]

There was recently a conference in New York City about systems of higher education. I was supposed to speak but after having my plane cancelled three times, and facing the prospect of spending the night in Buffalo in order to get to NYC, I cancelled. They had asked me to speak on a panel entitled [...]