Diversity

IT DIDN’T TAKE PRESIDENT Obama long to follow through on his campaign promise to make higher education more affordable for students and families. Within his first 50 days in office his administration worked closely with Congress to increase the maximum Pell Grant by $500 as part of the $787 billion economic stimulus package.

What’s hot for today’s engineering students? What’s really hot is the emerging field of assistive technologies. Combining professional career fields like robotics, electrical and mechanical engineering, computer science, and occupational health, a new breed of polytechnic programs are serving up state-of-the-art, adaptive technology courses for civically engaged engineering students who want to make the world a better place for the disabled.

IN MAY 1994, ENRIQUETA CORTEZ became the first Hispanic woman in Texas to earn a PhD in physical chemistry. Just a decade earlier, no one could have foreseen her achievement. As a high school student in the Rio Grande Valley, Enriqueta followed the cotton crop more than the school football team.

ALL YEAR LONG, BUT THROUGHOUT the colder months in particular, health care needs inevitably arise. But for college students, particularly those in traditionally underserved minority groups, access to health care may be as slippery as the roads they come to school on.

For decades, the G.I. Bill has been a primary motivator for young men and women to enlist in the U.S. military, and Veterans Administration statistics show an increasing number of veterans are taking advantage of educational benefits. For many young people not necessarily able to afford college immediately out of high school, the promise of a free education is an opportunity too good to pass up. Yet, there is a large disparity between the educational benefits provided to veterans through the G.I. Bill and the full cost of attaining a four-year degree.

Yale University’s Sharon Kugler just hired a coordinator for Muslim life. Another of her program coordinators recently searched out a kosher-Chinese food restaurant in surrounding New Haven.

Those of us at residential liberal arts institutions are used to attracting the traditional, “18-year-old fresh out of high school” student.

DO ANY OF THE FOLLOWING campus disputes sound familiar to you?

--An academic department chair is struggling with warring factions among the faculty who do not get along and are engaged in petty in fighting.

VIRTUALLY EVERY HIGHER ed institution offers some type of employee retirement program along with a handful of optional workshops on retirement-related topics. But is that enough?

Rugged four-hour practices, aggressive recruiting, fierce competition, and the non-stop pursuit of national championships are what you would expect to find on the campuses of college basketball and football powerhouses. But those same elements are in full view at the considerably smaller University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and University of Texas at Dallas, where the world-class chess teams are generating national attention, giving new meaning to sports scholarships, and offering novel ways to recruit high-caliber students.