Background: Important tools in preventing the spread of COVID-19 include contract tracing and adherence to isolation guidelines after a positive diagnosis of COVID-19. This is especially relevant among college students who are often away from support systems at home, living in high-density housing, and may not experience serious symptoms from…

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the care crisis in the United States to the fore. Unprecedented closures of child care programs throughout 2020 placed a disproportionate burden on families, and mothers in particular. For parents enrolled in college or considering postsecondary enrollment at the time of the pandemic, the loss of child care services…

This paper presents two reflection activities that supported the creation of community and a sense of caring for students learning in an online environment in the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first activity, students indicated how they were feeling in terms of hope/despair, stress/calm and energy level in a "check-in" slide at the beginning…

Basic needs insecurity -- including housing and food insecurity, as well as lack of access to healthcare, childcare, transportation, and other basic needs -- is a critical barrier that can undermine persistence and completion rates for postsecondary students. The gaps in covering critical costs such as housing and food are pervasive among students…

In the shift from on campus to online education, liberal arts colleges have lost much of the interaction among students that fosters student engagement, learning, and satisfaction. We present an online, student peer-to-peer mentoring program that creates learning partnerships between students and recreates this vital cocurricular learning online.…

The Running Start Summer School Pilot program was established in 2020 by House Bill 2864 and enacted as Revised Code of Washington (RCW) 28A.630.600. To determine whether the summer term should be funded under the Running Start Program, a summer pilot was created to evaluate interest in and barriers to expanding the Running Start program to…

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant disruption to enrollment in higher education. The overall shut down of the nation in March of 2020 forced colleges and universities to shift their content delivery primarily online, a context which continued for the remainder of the 2019-20 academic year. As the pandemic stretched on through the summer,…

Lumina Foundation seeks to increase the proportion of Americans who hold a postsecondary credential to 60 percent by 2025, across all racial, ethnic, immigration, and income groups. Recognizing that this goal cannot be achieved through a focus on traditional-age college students alone, Lumina launched the Adult Promise initiative in 2017. Between…

Higher education is essential to accessing high-demand jobs with family-supporting wages and improving family financial wellbeing. This was true before the COVID-19 pandemic and is especially true now as the nation continues the process of recovering from one of the worst public health, economic, and social crises in modern U.S. history. To…