CONAHEC News and Information

Wednesday, May. 23, 2018

Efforts to increase the number of people in the state with advanced degrees has earned Wyoming support from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE).

Following a competitive application process, Wyoming was selected as one of three Western states to receive funding and technical support to look at gaps in educational attainment.

Wyoming’s WICHE-sponsored task force will work with diverse stakeholders from education, industry and state government to develop policy recommendations.

Wednesday, May. 23, 2018

As an academic, I am constantly traveling to present at conferences, network and create change in communities.

The one question I am always asked is, “Where are you from?” My response is Salt Lake City, Utah. It is my home, and not the answer people expect to hear. I get one of two replies: First, are you Mormon? Second, I didn’t think people of color lived there.

Wednesday, May. 23, 2018

Rob Paige, provost emeritus of Arizona State University, has spoken of “indicators of clear and present danger to the humanities”. Yet Blaine Greteman, associate professor of English at the University of Iowa, has argued that “the humanities death watch for the past 60 years” is marked “both by its recurring character and its disconnect from objective fact”.

Wednesday, May. 23, 2018

Higher education leaders have often bemoaned university ranking systems as unfairly highlighting institutions that have empirically had a great deal of resources and large endowments, while positioning colleges that are working to enroll low-income, underserved students as being behind the pack. That was a major complaint behind the Obama-era College Scorecardinitiative, for which a number of community college leaders said devalued their institutions and made them look less appealing to potential enrollees' parents. 

Wednesday, May. 23, 2018

Ángel Tuninetti, chair of the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Linguisticsand associate professor of Spanish at West Virginia University, will exchange classrooms this semester with Paola Vera Báez, professor of culinary anthropology at the Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla, Mexico, as part of a short-term faculty exchange program. 

Wednesday, May. 09, 2018

At universities in Canada, as in many other countries, professors must have their research plan approved by the research ethics board or REB at their institution before they can launch their study. This process ensures that participants are not exposed to physical or psychological harm. 

Interviews, surveys, focus groups or medical interventions, all methods that involve human participants, must receive REB approval, and for good reason. We have distanced ourselves from the days of recruiting vulnerable members of society and testing new discoveries on them. 

Tuesday, May. 08, 2018

Florida State University recently announced plans to cancel its “big deal” with Elsevier, but it is far from the first university to do so. In recent years, there has been an uptick in the number of reports of libraries dropping their bundled journal deals with big publishers, which can cost upward of $1 million annually. Rather than subscribing to a large volume of journals in a publisher’s collection, often at a substantial discount off the individual list price, some institutions are choosing to pay only for the journals they determine they need the most.

Tuesday, May. 08, 2018

The United States has been the leader in fundamental research for the past seven decades, remaining the single-largest contributor to worldwide research, but this is changing. In 2000 the US accounted for 40% of global research and development (R&D) output, reducing to 29.3% by 2013. A central reason for this reduction is China’s investment, which will likely surpass the US in total R&D funding by 2019. The US now faces a dilemma over the future of this national achievement and the supporting arrangements making it sustainable.

Wednesday, May. 02, 2018

College students without a financial safety net are in a tough spot when unexpected costs arise. “The chances their parents can pick up the bill are not as high,” says Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and founder of the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, a research center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wednesday, May. 02, 2018

Since Hurricane Maria’s deadly rampage last September, the Education Department has doled out tens of millions of taxpayer dollars in disaster relief to colleges and universities supposedly affected by last year’s hurricanes. Only a fraction has gone to institutions where the storm had its most profound impact: Puerto Rico.

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