August 2025, Vol. 11, No. 2

What Does the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley Mean in 2025?

Amish Askri

What happens inside a university is not always a matter of public concern. Classroom pedagogy, innovations in food preservation or disease treatment, a college football team defeating its archrivals, or a public figure making a political pronouncement at a commencement ceremony may all make headlines—but they rarely sustain public attention. The fall of 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) was not one of these events. It was a student revolt that defined the trajectories of politics inside campus for years to come. Read more.

Promoting Pre-service Teachers’ Critical Thinking Skills in Hybrid Learning Environments in Higher Education: Teachers’ and Students’ Perspectives

Fatiha Bazouche

Critical thinking skills are essential in today’s educational landscape. They play a pivotal role in addressing future challenges and fostering economic competitiveness. However, many current teaching practices fail to effectively nurture fair-minded critical thinking. This study investigated how preservice teachers acquire and promote critical thinking skills, focusing on the perspectives of both instructors and students regarding pedagogical strategies in hybrid learning environments, particularly in the context of the AI age. Read more.

Supporting Queer and Trans* College Students Amidst Political Turmoil

Emma Goebel

The crises that continue to rock our society seem never ending, especially for queer and trans* folks who continue to deal with the politicization of their bodies and threats to change the legality of gay marriage. These sociopolitical debates pose challenges for people of all ages but especially for students at colleges and universities. Partaking in an institution that is heavily heterosexist and white-knuckling the gender-binary, queer and trans* students are already struggling to fit within higher education. Read more.

Faculty Support and Mental Health in Higher Education

Benji Koshy

The mental health crisis on American campuses has been increasing over the past several decades. The Healthy Minds Study received data from over 350,000 college students in the United States between 2013-2021 (Lipson et al., 2022). It found that over 60% of college students “met criteria for one or more mental health problems, a nearly 50% increase from 2013” (Lipson et. al., 2022, p. 138). How can faculty at institutions of higher education partner with students in promoting better mental health outcomes? I will explore how faculty can support students struggling with mental health and provide ideas for faculty to engage students as allies in this fight. Read more.

A Case for Caring: Humanizing Student Experience (Part II)

Amy Martin Melody Kruzic Vic Massaglia

In our last article, we built the case for caring by showing that care pedagogy positively impacts student learning, engagement, and retention (Massaglia, Kruzic, & Martin, 2025). Care is more than “being nice”; care is a deliberate, theory-informed practice rooted in educational traditions such as humanistic learning theory, ethics of care, and critical caring pedagogy (Chinn & Falk‐Rafael, 2018; Maslow, 1968; Noddings, 2012). To recap, care is not inflating grades, telling students what they want to hear, saying “yes” all the time, and/or solving their personal problems. Read more.

Paycheck with a Purpose: Reimagining On-Campus Employment as a High-Impact Practice

Joe McMahon

As a higher education professional who works with student employees, I have witnessed how on-campus employment can become an unlikely yet powerful site for belonging. These jobs can become more than a financial necessity for many first-generation, poor, and working-class students. They can offer mentorship, community, professional identity, and a sense of purpose that extends beyond the work shift. And yet, the potential of on-campus employment rarely extends beyond the chance for students to earn money while in school. Read more.

Navigating Uncertainty with the Field of Study Method

Marisa Morris

In Hacking College, Laff and Carlson (2025) introduce a novel method of career guidance for undergraduate students, which they call the Field of Study approach. This method involves connecting a student’s natural, hidden intellectualism with their vocational purpose through exploration of the people and organizations already working to solve the “wicked problems” they see in the world. It requires students to “test their ideas about that life pursuit by engaging with people in the world outside academe and then … use the entirety of the college curriculum and resources to explore that interest” (p. 25). Other approaches to career advising take the major of study at face value as a signal to employers about a student’s competencies. Accounting majors become accountants, biology majors become biologists, and so on. But Laff and Carlson argue that there is a hidden world of opportunity if students can learn the inner workings of the organizations that interest them. Read more.

Exploring Participatory Learning and Engagement Through a Moral and Civic Compass

Augustine Nwaka

Participatory learning and student engagement in higher education have gained renewed attention in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participatory learning, in particular, emphasizes the cultivation of civic and moral awareness among students and signals a transformative shift in pedagogy—one that prepares students not only for the workforce but also for engaged and ethical citizenship (Bosio, 2024; Philominraj et al., 2020). As the world faces intensifying challenges, including climate change, higher education must evolve from traditional lecture-based instruction to a more interactive, student-centered, and civic-oriented model (Dunbar & Yadav, 2022; Valarmathi et al., 2024). Read more.

The Caring University: A Review of Kevin McClure’s New Release

Julie Olson Rand

In recent years, higher education has found itself with a culture problem in the wake of the Great Resignation (Zehneis, 2025). The Great Resignation represents the 50 million Americans who left their jobs in 2022 (Smith, 2023). Quit rates reached a record high of 3% in late 2021 and early 2022 (Kenton, 2023). Yet the culture issues we face today do not stem from COVID-19 nor the Great Resignation alone but rather from several systemic issues that have plagued higher education for years. McClure and Fryar (2022) refer to the phenomenon as the great faculty disengagement. These issues are contributing to employee burnout (McClure, 2025). Read more.

Reframing Disability in Higher Education: Toward Equity-Centered, Justice-Informed Practice

Gillian Puryear

Reframing disability within higher education is essential for advancing equitable access, as current structures too often reflect and reproduce systemic ableism rather than dismantle it. I am a graduate student studying higher education at the University of Minnesota. Before coming to the University, I worked as a K-12 classroom teacher, where I taught students with language-based learning disabilities. As a currently non-disabled individual, I recognize the importance of reflecting on my own positionality to better understand how to more effectively support college students with visible and invisible disabilities, especially those with multiple marginalized identities. Read more.

Book Review of Hacking College: Why the Major Doesn’t Matter—and What Really Does

Danielle Rintala

While higher education continues to face rising tuition, student debt anxiety, and questions about its value, there has to be a change if institutions want to exist into the future. Ned Scott Laff and Scott Carlson’s (2025) book Hacking College: Why the Major Doesn't Matter—and What Really Does challenges the conventional college journey. The authors draw on decades of combined experience—Laff in student affairs, Carlson in higher education journalism. Together, they offer a compelling vision for students to “hack” their college experience. While ambitious at times, Hacking College delivers a framework for student success. This review explores their approach, suggests actionable measures for higher education professionals, and considers the potential impact this approach could have on the future of higher education. Read more.

The Role of AI Technology and Ethical Decision-Making: Perspectives From An Undergraduate Student and Faculty Member

Aysa Tarana Michael J. Stebleton

Most college students keep a detailed checklist of priority “to-do” items. As students head back to campus at the start of a new semester, two items stand out as highlights: 1) ensuring that they have their course syllabi downloaded, and 2) confirming that their ChatGPT subscription has not expired yet. In a few short years, AI (including Chat) has become many students’ favorite tutor and tool, integrating itself into higher education and transforming the way students approach their academic work (Walsh, 2025). The ethical quagmire around the use of AI begs the question, “Is this reliance on AI technology really a good idea?” This AI issue poses an ongoing quandary around student integrity and ethical decision-making, as many educators and students grapple with the pros and cons of the usage of AI in academic settings. Read more.