Career Opportunity: Director of Membership and Resource Development
Want to change the world? We want you to be part of our team. We are currently hiring a Director of Membership and Resource Development. For details, please click here. All inquiries should be sent to Noël Harmon. Please pass along this opportunity to friends or colleagues that would be interested. Thanks!
How Colleges are Reviving Downtown
Photo by Nicholas I. Emenhiser
Universities are found all throughout the country, but those in urban downtowns provide us with additional benefits-- as our blog post points out. Read on to find out how some cities are leveraging their student population to breathe new life into the core and consequently increase economic potential.
The most successful cities right now merge economic development with improving quality of life.
Think of First-Generation Students as Pioneers, Not Problems
Photo by James Yang for The Chronicle
This article, published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, challenges us to understand first-generation students as a set of individuals with distinct needs. The author writes that "luck" needs to be removed from the success equation for this group of students. It is necessary to tackle the problem of entrants dropping out prior to graduation as a circumstance of their background.
"If we want more first-generation students to thrive today, we need to understand what makes them unique."
Designing Colleges For More Than Just Connectivity
Photo by Chris Leonard
This piece published by Fast Company explores a classroom beyond simply being wired-- taking us instead back to the seemingly ancient world of pen, paper, and organic interactivity. It focuses on the potential of technology to complement and evolve the traditional classroom and inspire space for greater learning potential.
"[students] want to feel inspired by the classrooms where those connections to big thinking are forged."
What We're Reading
We've read some articles with great ideas for improving both our universities and our cities-- we'd like to share them with you!
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Universities Benefit Cities in Many Ways: This piece on CDApress.com looks at some of the other benefits of having a university in the city.
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How Do We Get Students Ready For the Jobs of the Future?: The second post in a series on the balance between student learning and job skills, this piece published by GOOD examines some of the ways we can better prepare our students.
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100 Urban Trends: Though this amazing list put together by the BMW Guggenheim Lab includes many great ideas, we feel that their trends reflecting cities as idea generators, empowerment technologies, and learning by doing show an incredibly positive transition toward a more vibrant education and metropolitan environment.
Strategies for City Success: A Webinar Series
We hope you'll join us and our partners of the National Talent Dividend in a round of six great webinars on data use, engaging municipal leadership, economic and workforce development, and supporting adult learners. Please click here or on the image above to find details on dates and sessions!
American Dream Index
Xavier University has created The American Dream Composite Index, a statistically validated index that measures people's achievement of the American Dream. The index is currently available on the national and state levels, and they're considering making it available for cities. They'd love to get your opinion! Please take a minute to complete this short survey. Thank you so much!
