Daily Briefing

Welcome to Tuesday, March 22. Today, how students are reacting to loosened mask mandates on campuses. We explore the trauma Covid-19 has brought to international educators. And the story behind a job listing at UCLA that advertised a position without pay.

Today’s Briefing was written by Megan Zahneis, with contributions from Kate Hidalgo Bellows, Julia Piper, and Abbi Ross. Write us: megan.zahneis@chronicle.com.

Campuses ditch mask mandates as students return from spring break.

Many students across the country are returning to campuses this week from their most normal spring break in two years. And many of those campuses are simultaneously rolling back mask mandates.

Some colleges started dropping the requirements or loosening their mask policies in the weeks leading up to spring break, while others decided to remove their mandates as soon as students came back. A few institutions, like Central Washington University, are keeping their mask mandates for a couple of weeks after their planned breaks so officials can monitor Covid-19 caseloads.

Students at Appalachian State University, in North Carolina, had mixed feelings about being able to go maskless. One student described the timing as “idiotic,” while another felt the campus was ready “to get back to normal.” A few professors who asked their classes to continue to mask reported that students have obliged, even with no mandate.

Rolling back masking carries risks. But with so many students’ having already been infected with the coronavirus, it is not likely that a major outbreak will occur on campuses, an Ohio State University doctor told The Columbus Dispatch. Some counties continue to report lower case numbers after the end of spring break, like Ingham County, Mich., home of Michigan State University.

Quick hits.

• Tarrant County College’s trustees voted unanimously to fire the college’s chancellor. That decision followed a lawsuit alleging that the chancellor, Eugene Giovannini, had harassed, abused, and retaliated against an employee who supervised Giovannini’s girlfriend. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
• The University of Michigan plans to spend $41 million on new scoreboards at its stadium. The Ann Arbor campus’s athletics department, which reported a $48-million deficit last year, will finance the project with a bond issue, if the university’s board approves it. (Detroit Free Press)

How Covid burnt out international educators.

For the field of international education, Covid-19’s impact has been deep and profound. With airplanes grounded and borders locked down, the very purpose and objective of international educators’ work was suspended, suddenly and seemingly indefinitely.

But there was still work to be done — lots of it, from scrambling in the pandemic’s early days to bring Americans back from study overseas and helping international students return safely to their home countries, to facilitating Zoom classes for students half a world away, and accommodating those in the United States as American visa rules changed abruptly.

Still, many global programs were planned, only to be canceled. International students who were recruited couldn’t make it to campus. The pandemic has taken its toll on international education, where everyone seems to know someone who has lost a job or been furloughed. Our Karin Fischer has the story.

The story behind the controversial UCLA job ad.

You may have seen conversations online over the weekend about a job ad from the University of California at Los Angeles that sought an assistant adjunct professor to teach in the chemistry and biochemistry department, “on a without salary basis.” The idea of an unpaid position — for which UCLA required a doctoral degree — struck a nerve with some academics, who called it exploitative.

The listing was taken down on Saturday, and the department apologized on Twitter, citing “unfortunate wording.” The ad may have been a product of bureaucracy — targeted, for instance, at an internal candidate for whom other accommodations were being made. But the conversation surrounding it prompts larger questions about the state of academic labor. Read my story here.

Comings and goings.

• John Hoffman, vice chancellor for academic and student affairs at the University of Minnesota at Crookston, has been named president of Bemidji State University and Northwest Technical College, also in Minnesota.
• Toyin Tofade, dean of the College of Pharmacy at Howard University, has been named president of Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, in New York. She will be the first Black woman to serve as president of the college.
• Alexander Landen, assistant director of admissions-visit programs at Eastern Michigan University, has been named director of admissions.
• Jonathan D. Schwarz, associate director of institutional research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been named director.
  

Footnote.

File this under “I Wish They Offered This When I Was in College”: a New York University course devoted entirely to the pop singer-songwriter Taylor Swift.

Taught by Brittany Spanos, a 29-year-old writer for Rolling Stone and an NYU alumna herself, the course invited 20 students to discuss Swift’s impact on music, songwriting style, and personal feuds.

Every Wednesday night for two months, the students met at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, in Brooklyn, to analyze Swift’s music, read articles, and watch interviews.

The last class was held in early March. NYU might bring back the course, but no date has been announced.

Until then, we’ll be right where you left us.

Correction: In Monday’s Briefing, we wrote that Nasser Paydar had been nominated to be assistant secretary of postsecondary education, “the Education Department’s top higher-education official.” We were wrong; the assistant secretary reports to the under secretary of education, James Kvaal.