When schools and child-care centers shut down last spring, 5.1 million American mothers stopped working for pay. Today, 1.3 million of them remain out of work.

Their losses are more than economic. Across backgrounds and careers, they describe a loss of identity.

In an academic year shaped by a global health crisis, faculty members have encountered plenty of students who are grappling with mental-health issues.

But a recent report shows that, despite their willingness to assist students in distress, professors don’t know as much as they’d like about how to get them the help they need.

With millions of students and a variety of programs, community colleges have a lot going on. Yet all this teaching and learning isn’t always as well recognized or as thoroughly studied as the work taking place at four-year institutions.

The Community College Practice-Research-Policy Exchange plans to change that. The new effort will solicit ideas from the faculty and administrators who run community colleges day to day, convey those insights to higher ed researchers, and then deliver their analyses back to educators.