Photo: Gannon University

Where colleges are located is, in most cases, now a given, like the presence of a river or a major transportation hub. But what a college decides to do with and for the community outside its gates is a choice.

More colleges are recognizing both the responsibility and the potential rewards of choosing to make “town and gown” a serious priority rather than just a slogan. Gannon University epitomizes this trend, as does Colby College, a liberal arts institution in Waterville, Maine.

Photo: Kavitha Cardoza

Regardless of geography, nearly all school districts in the United States today face chronic challenges finding teachers for math, science, special education, foreign languages, and bilingual education.

But there are some things colleges and universities can do to address this issue. To start, schools of education can partner with districts—especially those in under-resourced communities—to build parallel pipelines into the teaching profession, writes Robert Lee of National University’s Sanford College of Education in this op-ed.

Mathematicians descended on Boston last week for the first in-person Joint Mathematics Meetings since the start of the pandemic.

But ongoing tensions over how the community fosters—or fails to foster—diversity and inclusion loomed large.