Christa Dutton

Christa Dutton is a reporting fellow at The Chronicle. She studied English and journalism at Wake Forest University and spent most of her time in college reporting and editing at the student newspaper, the Old Gold & Black. Her work has also appeared in the Triad Business Journal and on WFDD, an NPR affiliate in North Carolina’s Piedmont Triad region.

You can follow Christa on Twitter @christa_dutton or send her an email at christa.dutton@chronicle.com.

Stories by This Author

A student looks at her phone at the U. of Maryland in College Park.

Health & Wellness

Fewer College Students Reported Mental-Health Challenges for the First Time in Years

By Christa Dutton September 11, 2024

Experts caution that this year’s Healthy Minds Study is good news about bad news, because the prevalence of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation is still high.

Data

Tracking Higher Ed’s Dismantling of DEI

By Erin Gretzinger, Maggie Hicks, Christa Dutton, and others September 6, 2024

We’ve documented actions taken on dozens of campuses to alter or eliminate jobs, offices, hiring practices, and programs amid mounting political pressure to end identity-conscious recruitment and retention of minority staff and students.

illustration of different colored speech bubbles

'Dialogue Is a Skill'

Can You Teach Free Speech? These Colleges Are Trying.

By Christa Dutton September 3, 2024

After unrest on campuses in the last academic year, more colleges are discussing how to integrate civic dialogue into the curriculum.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Interim Chancellor Lee Roberts recaps the university’s commencement ceremonies at the UNC Board of Trustees meeting at theCenter for School Leadership Development in Chapel Hill, N.C., on Thursday, May 16, 2024.

Leadership

At Chapel Hill, a Politically Connected Interim Chancellor Gets the Permanent Post

By Christa Dutton August 9, 2024

Lee Roberts, who served as budget director for a Republican governor, was named permanent leader of the North Carolina flagship.

Illustration by David Plunkert shows a figure feeding books from a push cart into a computer-like machine, and watched by six disembodied heads.

Intellectual-Property Debate

Two Major Academic Publishers Signed Deals With AI Companies. Some Professors Are Outraged.

By Christa Dutton July 29, 2024

The agreements will allow tech giants access to the enormous archives of Wiley and Taylor & Francis.

photo illustration of a man surrounded by data and graphs

Student Success

Are Colleges’ Predictive Analytics Biased Against Black and Hispanic Students?

By Christa Dutton July 11, 2024

A new study suggests the student-success models widely used by colleges can wrongly predict that Black and Hispanic students will fail when they actually succeed.