Thoreau College: An experiment in holistic higher education
For the past months, I’ve had a fellowship at a microcollege called Thoreau College in Viroqua, Wisconsin where I’m living and taking classes with artists and activists from ages 18 to 46. Thoreau College is working to create immersive, impactful, personalized higher education that is also financially accessible. The college currently has academic courses in regenerative agriculture, writing composition, political philosophy and visual arts. In addition to internships and classes, each student and faculty participates in self-governance of all college programs including admissions, outreach, curriculum design, operating the business aspect of a greenhouse called Thoreau’s Garden and stewarding all administrative elements of the community.
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Four Yale alumni are among 76 graduate students who have been named 2021 Knight-Hennessy Scholars at Stanford University.
They are Mez Belo-Osagie ’16, a Ph.D. candidate in political science in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences; Charlotte Finegold ’17, who is pursuing a J.D. at Stanford Law School; Tony Liu ’20, a Ph.D. student in bioengineering in the School of Engineering; and Elliot Setzer ’20, also pursuing a J.D. at Stanford Law School.
The Knight-Hennessy Scholars program cultivates and supports a multidisciplinary and multicultural community of graduate students and prepares them, through a diverse collection of educational experiences, to address complex challenges facing the world. Knight-Hennessy Scholars participate in the King Global Leadership Program and receive up to three years of financial support to pursue a graduate degree program in any of Stanford’s seven graduate schools.
By Susan Gonzalez
May 7, 2021
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Top row: Mez Belo-Osagie, Charlotte Finegold; Bottom-row: Tony Liu, Elliot Setzer
Four Yale alumni are among 76 graduate students who have been named 2021 Knight-Hennessy Scholars at Stanford University.
They are Mez Belo-Osagie ’16, a Ph.D. candidate in political science in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences; Charlotte Finegold ’17, who is pursuing a J.D. at Stanford Law School; Tony Liu ’20, a Ph.D. student in bioengineering in the School of Engineering; and Elliot Setzer ’20, also pursuing a J.D. at Stanford Law School.
Tiny college home to rare California toad
Endangered critter gets help from Deep Springs College By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times
Published: April 23, 2021, 6:06am
Share: The endangered black toad has the smallest range of any amphibian in North America: a mere 400 acres on the remote Deep Springs College campus nestled between the Inyo and White mountain ranges in Inyo County, Calif. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Time)
DEEP SPRINGS VALLEY, Calif. When you’re as rare and vulnerable as a black toad, you can’t afford to be coy about romance.
Surrounded by an unforgiving desert and forever isolated on a small patch of irrigated ranchland about 50 miles southeast of Yosemite National Park, black toads inhabit the smallest range of any North American amphibian.
Ivory Tower raises a number of fascinating questions and offers numerous facts on the current, deeply flawed state of the American system of higher education but suffers from a lack of focus or even a hint of what we do about the situation. In fact, there are at least three sections of Ivory Tower that could be branched out into their own, more satisfying standalone documentaries, including profiles of the UnCollege Movement, the recent events at the Cooper Union, and the lessons learned in the relationship between San Jose State University and the online learning company Udacity. There’s enough interesting, raw material in Ivory Tower to consider but one wishes it was shaped into something more cohesive and pointed in its attack and approach.