Hello ARAC members and supporters!

It’s that exciting time of year again – scholarship season! 🎓 If you know any graduating high school seniors in Arizona who are planning to further their education in college, make sure to share the news about the incredibly valuable Ashby-Herring and William A. Campbell Memorial Scholarships.

Ashby-Herring Scholarships: Empowering the Next Generation

The Archer Ragsdale Arizona Chapter is thrilled to provide two $1,500 scholarships to deserving students through the Ashby-Herring scholarship program. This initiative is all about supporting African American high school seniors who have demonstrated academic excellence and are on the path to college.

Eligibility Criteria:

• Graduating high school senior from Arizona
• Planning to attend a 2 or 4-year college/university
• African American
• Minimum 3.0 GPA
• Demonstrated financial need

The deadline to apply for the Ashby-Herring scholarships is fast approaching—April 15! This is a fantastic opportunity for students to gain financial assistance as they embark on their college journey.

Students can simplify their application process by applying through the Arizona Community Foundation. One application opens the door to over 160 eligible scholarships, making it easier for them to find the right funding for their educational goals.

Honoring Legacy: The William A. Campbell Memorial Scholarship

In addition to the Ashby-Herring scholarships, we are delighted to continue the tradition of honoring the legacy of William A. Campbell with the William A. Campbell Memorial Scholarship. Sponsored by Steve Campbell, the son of the late William A. Campbell, and Colonel Richard Toliver Ret., this scholarship aims to support students pursuing careers in STEM.

Eligibility Criteria:

• High school senior with a minimum overall GPA of 2.7
• Attending college/university with a major in any STEM discipline
• Submission of a 500-word essay detailing how the Tuskegee Airmen’s legacy has motivated you

One to two scholarships of $1,500 will be awarded annually, with applications accepted until May 31. This scholarship not only provides financial support but also connects students to a rich heritage of perseverance and excellence.

Workshops and Support

To ensure that applicants feel confident and prepared, several workshops have been scheduled to guide students through the application process. These workshops will provide valuable insights and tips to help make the application stand out.

For more information about scholarship offerings or to attend a workshop, please reach out to the Arizona Community Foundation at [email protected].

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Spread the Word!

Help us ensure that deserving students don’t miss out on these fantastic opportunities! If you know someone who could benefit from these scholarships, please share this information with them. Together, we can empower the next generation of leaders and scholars.

Let’s make education accessible and celebrated. Thank you for your support and for spreading the word!

Happy scholarship season! 🌟

For further details, check the Arizona Community Foundation website or contact our scholarship contacts. Your support can make a world of difference! https://www.azfoundation.org/scholarship-seekers/scholarships/

STM Daily News is a vibrant news blog dedicated to sharing the brighter side of human experiences. Emphasizing positive, uplifting stories, the site focuses on delivering inspiring, informative, and well-researched content. With a commitment to accurate, fair, and responsible journalism, STM Daily News aims to foster a community of readers passionate about positive change and engaged in meaningful conversations. Join the movement and explore stories that celebrate the positive impacts shaping our world.

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The Bridge is a section of the STM Daily News Blog meant for diversity, offering real news stories about bona fide community efforts to perpetuate a greater good. The purpose of The Bridge is to connect the divides that separate us, fostering understanding and empathy among different groups. By highlighting positive initiatives and inspirational actions, The Bridge aims to create a sense of unity and shared purpose. This section brings to light stories of individuals and organizations working tirelessly to promote inclusivity, equality, and mutual respect. Through these narratives, readers are encouraged to appreciate the richness of diverse perspectives and to participate actively in building stronger, more cohesive communities.

https://stmdailynews.com/the-bridge

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Anna Mae Duane, University of Connecticut

Stereotypes abound about liberal arts degrees leading to low-paying jobs, despite research showing that humanities majors earn salaries comparable to students in many other majors.

Authorities from the White House to high school guidance counselors have encouraged students to prioritize degrees in science and technology over the humanities because of their applicability to the job market. Some legislators have even argued that humanities courses should be defunded entirely.

As a result, enrollment in humanities majors in college has plummeted by 24% since 2012. Lower enrollment also means fewer people are training to teach in this field as well.

But employers value the skills that humanities majors have. Courses in art, literature, history and philosophy can provide students with life skills they can use outside the classroom too. This includes recovering from the current loneliness epidemic afflicting young people.

I’m the director of the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. Here are three scientifically proven ways that humanities classes benefit students and help them develop social skills within and beyond the classroom.

Development of empathy

As an English professor, I know that when I ask students to discuss the motivations of characters in novels, they inevitably find ways to empathize with the character as well as one another. Both narrative theory and cognitive science back this up. Spending hours immersed in the words and beliefs of other people changes students’ capacity to connect with others.

The same is true of studying history. Students can learn to view the world as a historical figure would have seen it – a concept known as “historical empathy.”

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These benefits are not restricted to those who study these subjects as their majors. Medical students who take humanities courses score higher in terms of empathy than those who didn’t. This is a vital skill for those caring for sick patients.

Enrichment of conversational skills

Research suggests that an increase in technology use has atrophied humanity’s capacity to engage in and benefit from face-to-face conversations and to empathize and respond to people in real time.

Humanities classes give students the opportunity to build and sharpen these skills. As a result, there is increasing attention paid to the importance of students in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, taking these courses, too.

For example, students in humanities classes must listen to one another’s interpretations and respond, prompting deeper thinking. In one study, pharmacy students took a humanities course where they interpreted and discussed works of art that touched on themes of health care, patient experience and death. By the end of the course, they demonstrated more critical thinking and interpersonal skills, including better communication, self-awareness and ability to relate to others.

Developing the soft skills of interpersonal communication is necessary for students not only in the workplace but also in their lives as citizens.

Promotion of a sense of community

Because humanities courses engage a wide range of human experiences through reading, writing and conversation, students are able to experience other ways of living and relating. This allows them to feel a greater sense of choice in their own lives and a stronger connection to others, even those who make different choices. By studying the choices that people made long ago, students also reckon with how the actions of a few people can affect whole generations, a powerful indication of how profoundly connected people are to one another.

When students are exposed to literature written by authors from a wide range of backgrounds, they are better able to find common ground as they draw from both the author’s perspective and their teacher’s input to shape their own verbal and written responses.

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Further, because literature classes often involve collaborative discussion between instructors and students as they work together to approach the text, students see their own contributions as a necessary part of the whole.

For students from marginalized and impoverished backgrounds, the invitation to imagine other ways of life has also been shown to enhance confidence in themselves and connection to others. When these students felt that their voices were an essential part of group discussion, they reported increased feelings of self-efficacy and a greater willingness to engage with the world.

Just as educators teach students to code, they can also teach them to connect to others, understand human complexity and read emotions as skillfully as they read data. These are not just soft skills – but survival skills. I believe the greatest tool we have for combating loneliness, fostering empathy and building a more connected society isn’t silicon-based. It’s the age-old practice of engaging deeply with human stories, ideas and experiences.

Anna Mae Duane, Professor of English, University of Connecticut

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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STM Daily News is a vibrant news blog dedicated to sharing the brighter side of human experiences. Emphasizing positive, uplifting stories, the site focuses on delivering inspiring, informative, and well-researched content. With a commitment to accurate, fair, and responsible journalism, STM Daily News aims to foster a community of readers passionate about positive change and engaged in meaningful conversations. Join the movement and explore stories that celebrate the positive impacts shaping our world.

https://stmdailynews.com/

Karly Sarita Ford, Penn State

When the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions at American colleges and universities just over a year ago, many predicted U.S. campuses would become much less diverse. But in part due to students who decide not to disclose their race or ethnicity, coupled with universities’ selective use of statistics, it is not clear how much the decision has affected diversity on campus.

As higher education institutions begin reporting the racial makeup of the class of 2028 – the first to be affected by the 2023 decision – the data is hard to interpret, confusing and inconclusive.

As a sociologist who has studied how institutions of higher education collect and report data on race and ethnicity, I have identified some factors that contribute to this lack of clarity.

Students don’t identify with choices given

Some students may not select a racial or ethnic category because they don’t believe any of the categories really fit. For example, before multiracial students could select “one or more,” an option that became widely available in 2010, they were more likely to decline to identify their race or ethnicity. Some even boycotted checkboxes entirely.

Other students don’t view their race as important: 67% of the students who choose “race and ethnicity unknown” are white. Of these students, 33% say race and ethnicity are not a relevant part of their identity, a researcher found in 2008.

The number of students who don’t respond to questions about race or ethnicity – and are listed in the “race unknown” category – is increasing. At Harvard University, for example, the percentage of “race-unknown” undergrad students doubled from 2023 to 2024.

As the number of “race unknown” students grows, it not only becomes harder to determine a student body’s ethnic and racial diversity but also the impact of the ban on race-conscious admissions.

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Fearing discrimination, students don’t disclose race

Some students believe their race or ethnicity will harm their chances of admission.

This is particularly true at many selective institutions, which have higher nonresponse rates than less selective institutions, about 4% compared with 1% to 2%.

My research shows that students are even more likely to pass on identifying race or ethnicity at selective law schools, where race and ethnicity could be used among a variety of criteria for admissions before the Supreme Court ruled against that practice. An average of 8% of students at those schools chose not to identify, compared with 4% at less selective law schools.

‘We’re very diverse’: University decisions distort statistics

What a university chooses to report will also affect the student body demographic data the public sees. Harvard, for example, does not report its proportion of white students.

Some institutions use statistics strategically to appear more diverse than they are. These strategies include counting multiracial students multiple times – once for each race selected – or including international students as a separate category in demographic pie charts. The greater the number of different-colored slices on the chart, the more demographically “diverse” an institution appears to be.

Impact of Supreme Court ruling: Clearer picture coming soon

While universities may not all report their student demographics the same way in their own materials, they all have to report it the same way to the federal government – namely, to its Integrated Post Secondary Education Data System, better known as IPEDS. The next IPEDS report on characteristics for the 2024 enrollment class is expected to be released in spring 2025. Once that data is available, a better picture of how the Supreme Court’s decision has affected diversity in college enrollment should emerge.

That clearer picture might not last long. In 2027, the federal government will require colleges and universities to make changes to how they report student race and ethnicity. Among the changes is the addition of a Middle Eastern and North African category. Under the current standard, Middle Eastern and North African students are counted as white. As a result, white enrollment at some colleges and universities will appear to decline after 2027.

The new standards will also change the way universities treat Hispanic or Latino ethnicity on enrollment forms. Today, if students self-identify as Hispanic and white, they will be categorized as Hispanic. If students select Hispanic and white in 2027, they will be categorized as multiracial. The revised categories will muddy the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision. A drop in the number of Hispanic students reported could be due to the court’s ruling. Or it may result from the new way students will be counted.

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Until universities and colleges adjust to the new guidelines about collecting and reporting race – and as long as students decline to provide their racial identities – the full effect of banning consideration of race in college admissions will remain a cloudy picture at best.

Karly Sarita Ford, Associate Professor of Education and Sociology, Penn State

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Bridge is a section of the STM Daily News Blog meant for diversity, offering real news stories about bona fide community efforts to perpetuate a greater good. The purpose of The Bridge is to connect the divides that separate us, fostering understanding and empathy among different groups. By highlighting positive initiatives and inspirational actions, The Bridge aims to create a sense of unity and shared purpose. This section brings to light stories of individuals and organizations working tirelessly to promote inclusivity, equality, and mutual respect. Through these narratives, readers are encouraged to appreciate the richness of diverse perspectives and to participate actively in building stronger, more cohesive communities.

https://stmdailynews.com/the-bridge