Quick hits.
- The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Thursday to review the legality of President Biden’s loan-forgiveness plan, which is currently blocked by a lower court’s injunction. The court said it would hear arguments in February, with a decision expected by June. (The Chronicle)
- The Department of Justice filed a proposed decree in federal court to resolve allegations that the University of California at Berkeley is in violation of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The decree alleges that many of the university’s online resources lack disability accommodation. (The Daily Californian)
- The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating Stanford University for bias against men after a complaint alleged that the institution offers several programs to support women, but no equivalent programs for men. (Forbes)
- Ben Sasse, the incoming University of Florida president, was among three U.S. senators to abstain from voting on the Respect for Marriage Act, a piece of legislation that aims to offer federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriage. (Open Campus)
- New York University is investing $1 billion in its engineering school in Downtown Brooklyn to revamp labs and student spaces, as well as expand the school’s focus on cybersecurity, wireless technology, and artificial intelligence. (The New York Times)
- Police investigating the killings of four University of Idaho students reaffirmed on Thursday that the crime was a “targeted attack” after a previous department statement had walked back that account. Police said that it is not known whether the students or the house they rented were the target. (NBC News)
- Yale University students are suing the institution, alleging discrimination against students with mental-health disabilities. The lawsuit states that Yale has forced students to withdraw after showing severe mental-health symptoms. (CNN)
Are faculty still experiencing Covid-19 burnout?
Covid-19’s ripple effects continue to place strain on faculty members’ personal and professional lives, according to a new report from the University of New Mexico. It’s a telling portrait of where faculty morale stands today and a rare contemporary comparison to the campus well-being surveys that were in vogue during the height of the pandemic in 2020.
The first year or so of the pandemic saw more research into, and institutional attention to, concerns about the disruption of professors’ scholarship, their struggles to balance work with caregiving responsibilities, and the mental strain of burnout. In response, many institutions started offering tenure-clock stoppages, recalibrating promotion standards, and offering workload reductions. But as campuses have returned to in-person instruction and Covid-19 enters its third year, that attention has waned, perhaps because of hopes that things might return to business as usual.
Those hopes turned out to be at least somewhat misguided at New Mexico, where leaders of the campus Advance program, a National Science Foundation-funded effort to increase female representation in science and engineering, were hearing from scholars — particularly assistant professors, women, and those with children — who were still struggling, more than two years into the pandemic.
Read more from our Megan Zahneis.
Weekend reads.
Check out this week’s batch of Chronicle staff-recommended reads:
- The New Yorker‘s Ronan Farrow wrote about an American journalist working in El Salvador who was surveilled by software developed by a technology company named NSO Group. The journalist, whose phone was hacked four times, is now suing NSO Group in a U.S. federal court in a case that involves spyware manufacturers, cybersecurity, and press freedom.
- In the United Kingdom, “Climate change is not an abstraction but felt immediately and painfully in homes,” according to a team of The Washington Post reporters who created an interactive tour of how houses were (poorly) built for both cold and hot weather starting in the late 16th century.
- Six pediatric doctors wanted to know more about what happens to the body when foreign objects hit the digestive system, so they decided to experiment on themselves by swallowing Lego heads — objects small children might ingest — to see how long it would take for them to poop. Defector has the story.
Comings and goings.
- Scott Vignos, interim vice president and chief diversity officer at Oregon State University since September 2021, has been named to the post permanently.
- Grant Myers, dean of enrollment management at Tabor College, has been named vice president of enrollment management at Hesston College.
- Charles Lepper, vice president for student affairs and enrollment management at Salt Lake City Community College since 2015, has been named president of Grand Rapids Community College. He succeeds Juan R. Olivarez, who has served as interim president since July.
To submit a new-hire announcement, email people@chronicle.com.
Footnote.
Yesterday’s Daily Briefing asked readers to think about a word that could be considered the higher-education word of the year (inspired by Merriam-Webster‘s Word of the Year).
Some of you responded with creative ideas. Our favorite so far came from Farrell J. Webb, a provost administrative fellow at California State University at Northridge. Webb’s pick: “Interim.”
“It seems that everyone is now an interim,” he wrote. “It is very frightening.”
Point taken. Several recent college-president departures have resulted in interim higher-ed leaders.
Do you agree? What is your higher-education word of the year? Let me know at marcela@chronicle.com.
