A Minnesota community college serving rural students is getting a lift as it works to bring more innovation to its campus.

The school was selected as part of a national effort to ensure smaller institutions have the tools to thrive.

Riverland Community College, with locations in greater southeastern Minnesota, was chosen for support from the Accelerating Equitable Outcomes initiative.

It's part of an organization known as Achieving the Dream.

The group's President and CEO Karen Stout said rural community colleges tend to work with tight budgets, making it hard to access outside expertise, and their contributions are often overlooked.

"Sometimes, our community colleges in rural communities are the largest employer," said Stout. "They are sometimes the cultural hub for the community, they can be the social services hub for the community, you know, they can be the recreational hub for the community."

Stout said many students at these schools also lack key resources, and improving their campus experience might propel them to better outcomes.

Just across the border, Chippewa Valley Technical College in Wisconsin was also chosen to join the support network. The program offers a three-year engagement process where school leaders work with coaches and each other on various strategies.

Stout said a lot of these schools are the only post-secondary education option for miles around. She noted they hope to make them ready to adapt to the changing needs of their surrounding communities.

"Some of them are bringing digital skills into their general education work," said Stout, "so that every graduate of that rural community college is digitally savvy."

Stout added that as smaller towns become more diverse, these schools are likely to be serving many first-generation college students in the years ahead.

Understanding what those individuals need to succeed is viewed as a top priority. This initiative is funded through a donation from private philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.


Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.




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Texas Tech University and the online public-school TTU K-12 are teaming up to offer high school students an opportunity to earn a bachelor's degree in six years.

The partnership creates the Texas Tech University College Preparatory Academy.

High school students who enroll in the academy can earn their high school diploma and get college credits by taking dual enrollment courses.

After graduation, students can earn a bachelor's degree in leadership studies in just two years at a four-year university.

TTU K-12 Principal Cari Moye said enrollment is open, and the courses begin in August.

"Lots of high school students are taking dual credit," said Moye. "A lot of them are participating in programs where they can get an associate's degree, and we just wanted to take that one step further and give them an opportunity to start right into that bachelor's degree."

Moye said students don't have to enroll in the academy to take advantage of the college credit courses.

TTU K-12 is a state-approved online kindergarten through 12th grade school. It started in 1993 and currently has an enrollment of about a thousand students - approximately 600 are in high school.

Moye said many families choose online schools because of convenience and flexibility.

In addition to traditional homeschoolers, their students have families who are in the military, live overseas, and travel a lot.

She said the self-paced courses in the academy will prepare students for their college journey.

"When you're able to take those courses in high school, you know, you're still living at home, you're not paying for those on-campus expenses" said Moye. "And it's ultimately saving you time to earn that four-year degree. So, if you're able to get two years ahead while you're still in high school, and then just have the remainder left once you get onto campus."

Students who start the program in their freshman or sophomore year can earn more than 60 college credit hours.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.




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Officials at Dartmouth College say a massive campus decarbonization project will serve as a real-world classroom for students interested in sustainability.

The school is investing an initial $500 million to overhaul its aging heating infrastructure, with a goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

Dartmouth Sustainability Director Rosi Kerr said students today expect their schools to be climate-friendly spaces.

"We can view everything," said Kerr, "including this massive infrastructural change, through the lens of 'how might we leverage this as an educational opportunity for our students,' and really engage them in a process that's going to have to happen all over the world."

Kerr said some students will get hands-on experience with the various technologies required for the campus energy transition, while others will study the cultural and community impacts of the growing green economy.

Dartmouth is betting big on sustainability, and the decarbonization project is the school's largest infrastructural investment in its more than 250 year history.

School officials have set an initial goal of reducing emissions by 60% by 2030, and are adding initiatives to reduce energy consumption and improve energy efficiency.

Kerr said students see the need to prepare for a climate-impacted future.

"And also see a huge amount of opportunity in tackling climate change," said Kerr, "who see that there's going to be many jobs associated with the transition from our current ways of doing things to lower carbon ways of doing things."

Research shows the number of renewable-energy and environmental jobs grew by more than 200% over the last five years, and that demand for workers with green skills will already surpass the available worker supply by 2026.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.






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The University of Wyoming is scrambling to address a major funding cut state legislators passed in a footnote to the state budget.

During this year's session, Wyoming lawmakers banned appropriation dollars from funding the University of Wyoming office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The office has fostered inclusivity in race, sex, national origins and gender identity since its founding in 2017, providing resources for language assistance, Americans with disabilities, religious accommodations and more.

The University of Wyoming is not alone in facing such cuts. Since 2021, more than 150 bills have been brought to state legislatures aimed at academic freedom and university governance, according to a new paper from the American Association of University Professors.

Isaac Kamola, associate professor of political science at Trinity College and director of the association's Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, said academic freedom is vital for higher education to serve the public interest.

"The teaching and research that takes place within those institutions has to be free from external pressures," Kamola argued. "To ensure that what takes place in the classroom and in research, pursues truth wherever it leads, not where those with political and economic power wishes that it leads."

Opponents of DEI initiatives said they lead to fear and resentment but Kamola noted the office closures are among several trending threats to higher education, including banning critical race theory, weakening tenure or accreditation and mandating content.

A working group provided suggestions to the University of Wyoming on how to proceed including continuing DEI funding through private support, under a changed name or reorganizing under a different university office. Kamola observed when Texas universities took a similar approach, they were told they were in violation and a round of layoffs followed.

"We can imagine that something similar might happen, where the political operatives that are behind these attacks on DEI will want to see blood in the water," Kamola stressed.

The working group's report asserted the DEI office grounded its work in the Wyoming Constitution.


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