Pick Three: No time for all the articles? Here are three you might want to read.
AI in the University: From Generative Assistant to Autonomous Agent (Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed, August 5, 2025): This fall we are moving into the agentic generation of artificial intelligence.
Strategies for Changing Students’ Relationship with Reading (Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 7, 2025): Supiano shares one English professor’s strategies for changing her students’ relationship with reading.
Trump Issues Directives on College Admissions Data and Research Grants (Natalie Schwartz, Higher Ed Dive, August 7, 2025): Together, the orders set up the administration to exert more control over who institutions enroll and which grants are funded.
Teaching and Learning
Research: Equity Gaps in Academic Advising (Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed, August 8, 2025): A study of academic advising finds that historically marginalized groups are less likely to see improvements in time to graduation or GPA after meeting with an adviser compared with their white peers.
Teaching About Class in a Post-DEI Era (Sothy Eng, Inside Higher Ed, August 8, 2025): A simple sticky note activity can jump-start classroom conversations about a difficult topic.
What the Humanities Can Teach Us about Climate Change (Roy Scranton, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 6, 2025): We can’t save the world. But we can learn how to live in it.
New Assessment Tool Will Measure Higher Ed’s Impact on Student Flourishing (Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed, August 6, 2025): The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard will survey learners to gauge how colleges and universities influence their character growth, development and thriving.
Life vs. Education: The Empath Edition (Kenneth E. Scott, Faculty Focus, August 4, 2025): Empathy theories explore how we understand and respond to the emotions and experiences of others. Researchers might refer to this last statement as phenomenological, or the lived experiences of individuals. I simply call it helping students where they are.
Teaching with Technology
GPT-5: It Just Does Stuff (Ethan Mollick, One Useful Thing Substack, August 7, 2025): Putting the AI in charge.
Understanding Value of Learning Fuels ChatGPT’s Study Mode (Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed, August 7, 2025): Instead of generating immediate answers, OpenAI’s new Study Mode for ChatGPT acts more like a tutor, firing off questions, hints, self-reflection prompts and quizzes that are tailored to the user and informed by their past chat history.
Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam (Kattie Day Good, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 6, 2025): In an age of AI, we need to return to handwritten assignments.
Reimagining Humanities to Make Them AI Proof (Jessica Grose, New York Times, August 6, 2025): Through a combination of oral examinations, one-on-one discussions, community engagement and in-class projects, the professors the author spoke with are revitalizing the experience of humanities for 21st-century students.
Beyond Digital Literacy: Cultivating ‘Meta AI’ Skills in Students and Faculty (Kelly Ahuna, Faculty Focus, August 6, 2025): Generative artificial intelligence cannot be viewed as just another technology “tool.” Its breadth of use is unlike any prior technological development. Unfettered and uncritical use of generative AI by students will certainly affect learning gains and outcomes.
Guiding Principles for Artificial Intelligence in History Education (American Historical Association, August 5, 2025): the AHA’s Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence in History Education developed 14 foundational principles to assist educators and administrators.
5 College Students. 5 Views on Generative AI (Michael Theis and Carmen Mendoza, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 31, 2025): Five college students share how they use generative AI and how they think it will shape higher education’s future.
Academic Freedom and the Trump Administration
Trump Administration Freezes $584m in Grants for ‘Life-Saving Research’ at UCLA (Guardian staff, Guardian, August 6, 2025): School is first public university whose funding is targeted by White House over allegations of civil rights violations.
Columbia and Brown to Disclose Admissions and Race Data in Trump Deal (Sharon Otterman and Anemona Hartocollis, New York Times, August 5, 2025): A widely overlooked part of a settlement with the two universities could profoundly alter how elite schools determine who gets accepted.
Columbia’s Gaslighting (Jennifer Ruth, Inside Higher Ed, August 4, 2025): Columbia’s deal reaffirms rather than challenges a narrative of widespread antisemitism, while reinforcing the ongoing erasure of Palestinians.
When the Legislature Kills Your Department (Len Gutkin, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 4, 2025): Republican lawmakers have a new obsession: academic-program review.
With Grant Cuts, DOJ and Trump Are Pressuring UCLA to Make Deal (Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher Ed, August 4, 2025): Like it did for prestigious private universities, the administration has cut off federal grants for UCLA, alleging it failed to address antisemitism. The UC system must tell the DOJ by today whether it wants to negotiate.
I Spent Decades at Columbia. I’m Withdrawing My Fall Course Due to Its Deal with Trump (Rashid Khalidi, The Guardian, August 1, 2025): The university’s draconian policies and new definition of antisemitism make much teaching impossible.
Under Pressure from Trump, the Accreditor Overseeing Harvard Proposes Nixing DEI Standards (Eric Kelderman, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 1, 2025): The New England Commission of Higher Education, which accredits more than 200 colleges, was specifically targeted by the administration.
Trump Tightens Reins on Foreign Students in Multifront Immigration Crackdown on Universities (Lexi Lonas Cochran, The Hill, July 29, 2025): President Trump is making it harder and harder for international students and immigrants to pursue higher education in the U.S.
Extra Credit Reading
Moral Wounds (Mays Imad, Inside Higher Ed, August 5, 2025): As higher ed confronts a crisis of values, we must name, witness and transcend moral injury.
Trump Went to War With the Ivies. Community Colleges Are Being Hit (Ben Austen, New York Times, August 4, 2025): Measures intended to punish elite universities are inflicting collateral damage on the nation’s two-year colleges, which educate 40 percent of all undergraduates.
On the Bookshelf
SimonMary Asese Aihiokhai, Matt Daily, and Layla Garrigues, How First-Generation Students Navigate Higher Education through an Embrace of Their Multiple Identities (Routledge 2025) – review article by Sara Weissman in Inside Higher Ed (August 6, 2025).
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Steven Volk ([email protected]), Editor
GLCA/GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning
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Lew Ludwig ([email protected])
Colleen Monahan Smith ([email protected])