Universities have long known that to increase enrollment they must cater to students’ needs. Following this strategy, some U.S. universities are accommodating Muslim students’ religious requests, but not without controversies. Among the accusations are that the accommodations show favoritism towards a particular religion, disregarding the separation of church and state at public universities.
Articles: Campus Life
7/18/2012
Students and technology go hand in hand, especially when you hand out smartphones at orientation. Seton Hall University (N.J.) did just that with Nokia Lumia 900 smartphones during orientation in June. “It’s an exciting time here at Seton Hall,” says David Middleton, assistant vice president for administration and executive director of the university’s Center for Mobile Research and Innovation.
7/17/2012
A hallmark of community colleges is that they are actually in the communities they serve, close to where their students live and work. But sometimes they aren’t in enough places at once.
Ten years ago, the presidents of Prince George’s Community College and Howard Community College realized that neither of their institutions reached the Maryland town of Laurel.
5/30/2012
Ever since the University of California system was criticized for the campus police reaction to student protests in 2011—namely the use of pepper spray at UC Davis and batons at UC Berkeley—the system has been investigating and reevaluating its protest reaction policies.
5/30/2012
Fraternities and sororities are at the core of numerous institutions’ social traditions. But as several universities and their Greek organizations have come under fire for excessive drinking and violent behavior, Ivy League schools have stepped up to make changes to the system. With the implementation of new policies and penalties, a few are hoping to curb behaviors often associated with Greek life pledging—and the negative image these behaviors create in the public eye.
5/30/2012
There are more out lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) college students today than there have been at any other time in the history of higher education. In decades past, many young LGBT people experienced their coming out processes in college, yet today’s rising college freshmen have increasingly become more out and more vocal in high school and even in middle school.
5/30/2012
Making dietary changes isn’t just a good idea for staying healthy—it’s a way of going green, too. Colleges and universities are quickly taking notice. By buying local and promoting eating less meat, they’re helping students change the way they think about food in their dining halls and across campus, for the health of not only the campus community, but the planet.
5/29/2012
E pluribus unum. Out of many, one. In 1776, Pierre Eugene du Simitiere proposed this motto to the government committee tasked with developing a seal for the young nation. The phrase was adopted for the newly created national emblem of the United States and still appears today as a guiding principle on the nation’s seal. In 2012, the expression persists on official documents such as passports, and is ever present on the seals of the President and Vice President of the United States, the U.S.
5/8/2012
At The University of Vermont, a small public research university, officials had realized that mobile would become very important to our stakeholders. It was 2007 and mobile adoption rates had begun to skyrocket. Smart phones had begun to proliferate nationally and at the institution, which has an average combined enrollment of 12,500 undergraduate, graduate, and medical students.
4/25/2012
Life can be insanely busy for students and non-students alike, especially near the mid-point of the semester. Rapid changes in technology have only managed to accelerate the pace even more with tweets and Facebook posts competing for our attention. Add in a few energy drinks or Starbucks lattés, and a formula has been created for an environment consisting of go, go, go with little time for pause and reflection.
3/28/2012
New research confirms what many in higher education have long suspected: Students who are the first in their families to attend college—first-generation college students—are at an unseen academic disadvantage in college.
2/24/2012
Futurist Richard Florida moved the needle with his book The Rise of the Creative Class (Basic Books, 2002)—establishing creativity as a 21st century learning and earning skill, and a driving force of economic growth, jobs creation, and cultural enrichment in today’s competitive global society.
2/24/2012
College campuses have long been accused of being bastions of liberal thought. But the most recent Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) survey of the nation’s entering students at four-year colleges and universities shows that current freshmen, at least, are arriving on campus with their own more liberal beliefs than previous classes.
2/10/2012
If you were to travel 10 years into the future and walk onto a college campus, what would you expect digital signage to look like? I’m not sure what it will look like, but what I do know is that my two young sons will want to interact with it. Steve Jobs left me a legacy of listening to endless fire truck videos; clips of animated cars, trucks, and trains speaking in German, Dutch, and Japanese; and video updates of the latest in dancing robots ("bebots," as my 18-month-old calls them).
12/23/2011
The Occupy movement that has swept the nation—and the world—also has a home at many colleges and universities. Long associated with protests, and historically touted as the home of open discourse, American colleges and universities have had a difficult balancing act on their hands: how to promote free speech while maintaining safety on campus.
