Daily Lumina News 080322

Native American students represent just a tiny fraction of all the college students in the United States. They come with different histories, confronting an education system once used to erase their languages and cultures.
Four Indigenous college students tell how they are using higher education to strengthen ties to their Native roots and support their people.

As the debate over student-loan cancellation continues, a report from The Education Trust is calling attention to how student debt disproportionately harms the mental health of Black borrowers.
Some of the borrowers in the study talk about falling into depression or even considering suicide because of their student loans. Others describe their growing balances under income-driven repayment plans as “shackles on their ankle” or “like Jim Crow” trapping them under the burden of debt.

Like each of the estimated 100,000 undocumented students who graduate from high school each year, R. (she wishes to remain anonymous) is ineligible for federal grants, loans, and work study. Her parents have scant savings and no viable way to borrow.
A promising student, R. saw no path to a four-year college. Then she met a helpful stranger.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities have a long tradition of going the extra mile to help students, including those with children.
Those most familiar with HBCUs say student parents thrive at these institutions because they never feel alone. They know that when someone is cheering them on and expecting them to succeed, it makes a difference.

LaShondra Jones went through years of mental illness and alcohol addiction. In her late 40s, she was living in a women’s shelter in Brooklyn. Finally stable and sober, she needed work—any type of work—for which her history wouldn’t count against her.
Jones is among a small but growing number of people being trained by community colleges to become certified recovery peer advocates for people who, like them, have experienced mental health and substance abuse issues.

After learning the vaccine she had helped design was highly effective against the coronavirus, Kizzmekia Corbett placed a call to the man who recognized her potential as a freshman: Freeman A. Hrabowski III.
Corbett's call is a testament to a lesser-known but arguably important part of Hrabowski's longtime legacy in higher education: serving as a mentor to a cross-section of leaders in science and academia, many of whom have come to emulate his style as much as his substance.